Mandolinist and photographer Akira Otsuka and Gary Kopp have spent a great deal of time putting together this tribute to the great John Duffey, co-founder of both The Country Gentlemen and The Seldom Scene.
It includes audio from a get-together hosted on the 15th anniversary of John’s passing in 1996, where many of his friends and bandmates reminisced about the towering figure of John Duffey, a legendary artist and personality in bluegrass. Photos of the various speakers are displayed over the audio to help identify who is speaking throughout.
Watching/listening is a must for any Duffey fans, and for lovers of the Gentlemen, the Scene, or of the bluegrass community around the nation’s capitol during its hey day in the 1970s and ’80s.
Akira explained in a note why he has made the video available now.
“It’s John Duffey’s birthday today. I might have mentioned it before but I have been making this Duffey Stories video for a long time, and this morning I made it public on YouTube. The audio portion is from a party in 2011, and John’s old band mates and friends (John Starling, Mike Auldrige, Ben Eldridge, Bill Emerson, Jimmy Gaudreau, Pete and Kitsy Kuykendall, Dudley Connell, Fred Travers, Katy Daley, Ronnie Freeland, and others) tell their Duffey Stories. I provided the photos.”
Many of the people who remember John here have since passed on themselves, so it’s a double treat to hear their voices again, as well as their reminiscences. For younger people, or new bluegrass fans, Duffey was not only a tenor singer of remarkable power and clarity, but an entertainer supreme whose stage antics were as unpredictable as they were hilarious. Many are recounted in the video.
John and Akira were great friends while Duffey was alive, and this has been a passion project for Otsuka in his retirement.
Many thanks to Akira and Gary for their work putting this together. It is a treasure.
