Metro Pulse/Music/Don Cassell

Comment
on this story

The versatile Don Cassell invites his friends into the studio

by Jack Neely

Don't be fooled by the title. Music Pals isn't Barney's sleepytime sing-along record for kids. It's a wonderful collection of recordings from Don Cassell, one of the finest mandolinists in the Knoxville area, and a standout member of the ancient bluegrass outfit Dismembered Tennesseans. He plays on all these cuts, usually mandolin, with a little dobro, guitar, and even bouzouki for good measure. Music Pals shows off his virtuosity as both performer and tunesmith: he wrote three instrumental pieces, and they make for some of the record's finest moments.

But Don Cassell's also one of the friendliest guys in town. He can't sit for a picture or greet a friend on the sidewalk without his big grin. The premise of this album, and the best excuse for its title, is that Don has made a whole lot of friends in his quarter-century in Knoxville, and also, not incidentally, that some of them are talented. Don wanted to pay tribute to them by gathering them all together on one disc. Music Pals is likely the only opportunity you'll ever find that comprises the work of jazzman Bill Scarlett, guitar virtuoso Steve Kaufman, dulcimer maestro Evan Carawan, and guitarist/vocalist—and former Heartland writer—Linda Billman on the same piece of plastic. Along with 23 other accomplished musicians and singers, all of whom deserve more notice than we'll have space to give them in this column, and all of whom seem happy for the chance to sit in with the affable Cassell, who may be the most liked musician in town.

The album shows a lot of range, not only in its personnel, but also in Cassell's own versatility. The tunes range from the jazzy instrumental "Crestwood" (an original, named for a street in Holston Hills) to the Bill Monroe bluegrass-gospel number "Wicked Path of Sin," to a surprisingly sinister version of "Golden Ring," the George Jones-Tammy Wynette standard. That's not Lyle Lovett singing the male role, but Bob Deck (yes, fans of the coolest talk show in Knoxville TV history, that Bob Deck) dueling with songstress Nancy Brennan Strange. (She's one of several prominent guest singers, including Laura Walker and Em Turner.)

Cassell's work is gracefully defiant of any genre. "Kansas City Kitty" is a 1920s jazz dance number, and the combo that plays it here may be one you've seen at Lucille's: Scarlett on clarinet, Marquis (you may know him as Marcus) Shirley on piano, Taylor Coker on bass. Doug Barron helps out on guitar, as Cassell strays from the mandolin to play an appropriately Hawaiian-sounding dobro. (No oddball, the song fits right in, as Cassell explains in the liner notes: he first heard the song as played by "Bashful Brother Oswald" Kirby, the onetime Knoxvillian who, as a member of Roy Acuff's band, introduced the dobro to a national audience.) Gillian Welch's "Red Clay Halo" is on here, with Danny Gammon on fiddle and David Lovett on clawhammer banjo. And there's even some straight-ahead bluegrass, like "Little Girl of Mine In Tennessee."

The album has such variety it's impossible to get tired of; Cassell's virtuosity is the river that runs through it, what makes it all work together.

His own songs show us the depths he conceals behind his open grin, and never moreso than on his own, mostly recent, compositions. "Hot Springs" is an agile string duet with national flat-picking champ Steve Kaufman. "Holston River Tune" is a new piece that could pass for an early-American fiddle-banjo tune (with Fletcher Bright and Doc Cullis doing the respective honors). "Insomnia" is the most unusual piece on the record, an old-world air (with Cassell on bouzouki!) which sounds like a theme to a Grimm's fable, only to dissolve into a manic Reinhardt-Grappelli bridge, then return. And there's the sadly beautiful "Waltz for Sarah," which is the best local antidote for those who have tired of "Ashoken Farewell."

If you don't like Don Cassell, you've never met him. For those who haven't, this album is a dandy introduction. Don's pals are your pals, and mine. I'll judge all this year's holiday parties by the standard of whether it's as good as being alone in my own kitchen with a bottle of beer and Music Pals.