Interview with Glen Duncan

Thomas Adler

Thomas A. Adler, a bluegrass scholar, musician, and writer, sat down with fiddler Glen Duncan in Glenn’s home in Gallatin, TN in 2004 to record a wonderful and detailed interview with former Blue Grass Boy Glen Duncan. Glen has a lot of great insights and truly captures the feel of performing with and watching Bill Monroe. Worth reading!

Here’s how it started:

“So we set through whoever would have been the first act, and whoever would have been the second act, and then Ralph. And this was when Ralph had Roy Lee [Centers] . . . and we set through Ralph.  It was Roy Lee and Jack and Curly.   Man, they were nuclear-powered!  I mean, they wrecked that place!  And by this time, Sunday crowds were good.  It was crowded.  It was big-time, full–  and, uh, they were sensational.  I remember Ralph wearing a black suit.  I remember the conversation in the car being —-  I don’t think we had seen him since Carter had passed away — and so, I remember my Dad telling me, well, people didn’t know if he was gonna go on and play, or what. . . .  “

Fiddler Glen Duncan

 “So we go over there, and we see his whole show.  It was great.  They do
everything, and right towards the end he does “Little Maggie,” and so I’m happy as I can be.  So Monroe’s getting ready to come on.  And my Dad said, “Well, you want to stay and see Bill, or what?”  It’s like, “Oh, I’ve got to go to school tomorrow, and gosh, we’ve seen him so many times, let’s just go ahead and go.”  So we’re literally walking out of the old barn, and we’re clear back by the concession stand, and knowin’ what I know now–   Stanley had gone over so big, ’cause they’d encored two or three times, that Monroe come right out of the hatch with “Uncle Pen,” which he never did.  The whole time I played with him, we had a very set show.  Now, he would move the banjo numbers and fiddle numbers around, if he was really trying to gouge somebody that he knew was there, but never, ever, did we ever come on with “Uncle Pen” in all those two-hundred shows I played with him, or whatever.  They come on with “Uncle Pen,” so, I mean, we are literally walking out of the place, all the way at the back, and [Kenny] Baker’s playing with him.  And we’re all the way back, where they used to have some bleachers, clear at the back of the place, you remember that?  We’re back by those bleachers, and they do “Uncle Pen,” and I mean, I had never heard anything like–  I mean, I literally froze in my tracks, and turned around, and heard them do it.  ‘Cause he had a great band, it was a great Bill Monroe band.  And I had never ever heard the fiddle played that well in a bluegrass setting.  I’d never heard fiddle of that quality, tone, smoothness, precision, and just an elegance and beauty about it that I just had to have it.   And then it was like, “well, can we go watch this?” 

  So we just go all the way back down, and sit in about the third row, and watched ’em do the whole show.  And of course in typical Monroe fashion they probably played ninety minutes, you know, ’cause he’s trying to really show ’em, you know, “I’m the guy,” you know, “pay no attention to the band behind the curtain!”   

But it changed my life forever;  then, from that time forward, I was a fiddle player.  It just changed the whole thing.  Changed the whole thing.  I’m a fiddle player today because of that.”

To read the full interview, visit this page [https://www.thomasadler.com/interviews/bean-blossom/duncan-glen].