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Multi-instrumentiste Bluegrass US né le 16 Août 1939. Eric Weissberg est
notamment connu pour son single "Dueling Banjos". Il est décédé le 22
Mars 2020.
Multi-instrumentalist
Eric Weissberg will always be remembered as a one-hit wonder for his 1973 smash
"Dueling Banjos," but that was only a small part of his lengthy career as a
studio musician. Master of ten instruments — bass (acoustic and electric),
guitar, fiddle, banjo, kazoo, mandolin, pedal steel, Dobro, and jew's harp —
Weissberg has accompanied a who's who of folk-pop artists, including Judy
Collins, Jim Croce,
John Denver, Bob Dylan, Art
Garfunkel, Richie Havens, Ian & Sylvia, Melanie, Tom Paxton, Peter, Paul & Mary,
and Doc Watson, as well as mainstream
pop and rock stars like Burt Bacharach, David Byrne, Billy Joel, Bette Midler,
Barbra Streisand, and Talking Heads, and such jazz performers as Bob James, Earl
Klugh, and Herbie Mann in a career that started in the late '50s and was still
going strong at the end of the century.
After graduating from the University of Wisconsin and the Juilliard School of
Music, Weissberg was part of a community of young New York City musicians who
became interested in old-time country and bluegrass music in the late '50s and
began to gather to play on Sunday afternoons in Washington Square Park in
Greenwich Village. The group included Stefan Grossman, Roger Sprung, Bob Yellin,
David Grisman, and Marshall
Brickman, among others. In 1958, Weissberg, Yellin, and singer/guitarist John
Herald formed the Greenbriar Boys, one of the first groups to play at Gerde's
Folk City, but Weissberg was with the band only a short time before leaving in
1959. He performed at the Newport Folk Festival that summer and began to get his
first session work, appearing on records by Tommy Makem and
Cisco Houston, among others. In 1963,
he and Brickman recorded a duo album for Elektra Records, New Dimensions in
Banjo and Bluegrass.
During the '60s, Weissberg was a late member of the folk group the Tarriers (with
Brickman, Clarence Cooper, and Bob Carey), appearing on their final album for
Decca Records, The Tarriers, which was recorded live at the Bitter End
coffeehouse in Greenwich Village. He was also a member of the Blue Velvet Band (with
Jim Rooney, Richard Greene, and Bill Keith),
which released the album Sweet Moments on Warner Bros. Records in 1969. And he
performed the world premiere of Earl Robinson's "Concerto for Five-String Banjo"
with Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Symphony in 1967. But most of his time was
spent doing session work. Between 1964 and 1969, he appeared on albums by Ian &
Sylvia, Judy Collins, Buffy Sainte-Marie,
Doc Watson, Country Joe McDonald, Jim
Croce, and John Denver, among
others. He was just as busy in the early '70s, appearing on albums by Herbie
Mann, John Denver, Country Joe
McDonald, Melanie, Sha Na Na, Barbra
Streisand, and Loudon Wainwright III, among others.
As part of his other session work of the time, Weissberg received a call to
perform music for a film soundtrack. A movie was being made of Southern poet
James Dickey's best-selling novel Deliverance, about a group of suburbanites who
go for a hunting trip in the woods that has unexpected consequences. Dickey, who
wrote the screenplay, had heard an old banjo tune on the radio and gotten the
idea of using it in a scene in which one of the characters encounters a mute
country boy and communicates with him by playing a banjo/guitar duo. Weissberg
called fellow musician Steve Mandell, and the two traveled to Atlanta to attend
the shooting and coach the actors in miming their performance of the song. That
was the last Weissberg heard of it until the fall of 1972, when Warner Bros.
released the film and "Dueling Banjos," as the track had been dubbed, began to
get such a reaction that Warner Bros. issued the Weissberg/Mandell recording as
a single. The label did not bother to inform Weissberg of its action, and some
early copies of the disc were even credited to Deliverance. (It also turned out
that, far from being a traditional song, the tune was actually "Feuding Banjos,"
written by Arthur Smith and first
recorded by him for MGM Records in 1955.) When the single took off after
entering the charts in January 1973, Warner Bros., which had acquired Elektra
Records, dug up the ten-year-old Weissberg/Brickman album New Dimensions in
Banjo and Bluegrass, replaced the opening cuts on each side with "Dueling
Banjos" and its B-side, "End of a Dream," and re-released it under the title "Dueling
Banjos" from the Original Soundtrack Deliverance. Weissberg was not informed of
this action in advance, either.
Both the single and the album topped the charts and went gold. (The single also
topped the easy listening charts and made the Top Five of the country charts,
and the album also topped the country charts.) The following year, "Dueling
Banjos" won Weissberg and Mandell the Grammy Award for Best Country Instrumental
Performance. Weissberg assembled a performing group, which he naturally called
Deliverance, featuring Mandell, Charlie Brown, Tony Brown, and Richard Crooks,
and played a series of clubs and concert halls. Reconciling with Warner Bros.,
he signed a recording contract with the label and recorded an album, Rural Free
Delivery, which appeared in the charts briefly in the fall of 1973. He kept the
band together for a while, and even placed a revival of "Yakety Yak" in the
lower reaches of the country charts in the spring of 1975 on Epic Records, but "Dueling
Banjos" was really a fluke, and soon he was spending most of his time backing
other musicians once again.
Not that he had ever left such work. Between 1973 and 1975, he had appeared on
albums by Judy Collins, Jim Croce,
John Denver, Richie Havens, Billy
Joel, B.J. Thomas, Bob James, Willie Nelson,
and Esther Phillips, among others, even getting a call from Bob Dylan to play on
Blood on the Tracks. From then to the end of the decade, his studio clients
included Blood, Sweat & Tears, John
Denver, Bette Midler, Dory Previn, the Starland Vocals Band, Loudon
Wainwright III, Burt Bacharach, Leon Redbone, and Tom Paxton. A particularly
notable recording was Jean Ritchie's None But One (1977), on which Ritchie was
backed by a band organized by Weissberg; the LP was named Best Folk Album of the
Year by Rolling Stone magazine.
Weissberg seems to have been less active in the early '80s, but in the second
half of the decade he was heard on albums by Leon Redbone, Talking Heads, Aztec
Two-Step, Art Garfunkel, Earl Klugh, Jude Cole, Peter, Paul & Mary, David Byrne,
and Anita Carter. The early '90s
found him taking more selected sessions, though he still appeared on albums by
Bill Keith, Doc Severinsen, Judy Collins, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, Robert
James Waller, and Tom Chapin. In the mid-'90s, he began touring regularly as a
backup musician for Art Garfunkel, who had him perform "Dueling Banjos" as part
of the show, but he also found time to do occasional sessions such as those for
Nanci Griffith's Other Voices, Too
(1998), Bette Midler's Bathhouse Betty (1998), the original Broadway cast album
for The Civil War (1999), Tom Chapin's This Pretty Planet (2000), and Judy
Collins' Judy Collins Live at Wolf Trap (2000).
Eric Weissberg died on March 22, 2020.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Weissberg
Talents : Banjo, Mandolin, Steel Guitar
Style musical : Progressive Bluegrass, Bluegrass, Traditional Bluegrass
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1cc5JKIlAU
Years in activity :
| 1910 | 20 | 30 | 40 | 50 | 60 | 70 | 80 | 90 | 2000 | 10 | 20 |
DISCOGRAPHY
Singles & EP
| 11/1972 | SP WARNER BROS. PRO 539 (US) (promo) | . | Dueling Banjos |
| 11/1972 | SP WARNER BROS. WB 7659 (US) | . | Dueling Banjos / End Of A Dream |
| 11/1972 | SP WARNER BROS. WB 7659 (US) (promo) | . | Dueling Banjos [short version] / Dueling Banjos [long version] |
| 1973 | SP WARNER BROS. 16 223 (F) |
 |
Dueling Banjos / End Of A Dream |
| 1973 | SP WARNER BROS. K 16 223 (UK) |
 |
Dueling Banjos / End Of A Dream |
| 1973 | SP WARNER BROS. WB 16 223 (GER) |
 |
Dueling Banjos / End Of A Dream |
| 1973 | SP WARNER BROS. WB 16 223 (GER) (promo) |
 |
Dueling Banjos / End Of A Dream |
| 1973 | SP WARNER BROS. K 16 223 (I) |
 |
Dueling Banjos (Eric Weissberg & Steve Mandell) / End Of A Dream (Eric Weissberg) |
| 1973 | SP WARNER BROS. WB 7659 (ISR) |
 |
Dueling Banjos / End Of A Dream |
| 1973 | SP WARNER BROS. P-1214W (JAP) |
 |
Dueling Banjos / End Of A Dream |
| 1973 | SP WARNER BROS. N-S-63-35 (POR) |
 |
Dueling Banjos / End Of A Dream |
| 05/1973 | EP 33 t. WARNER BROS. S 2683 (US) (jukebox) |
 |
Eric Weissberg & Steve Mandell - "Dueling Banjos" From The Original Sound Track Of "Deliverance" - Eight More Miles To Louisville / Dueling Banjos / Little Maggie / Pony Express / Buffalo Gals / Eight Of January |
| 1973 | EP Gamma GX 07-789 (MEX) |
 |
Eric Weissberg y Steve Mandel - Duelo De Banjos - Duelo De Banjos (Dueling Banjos) / El Final De Un Sueno (End Of A Dream) / El Blues Del Adios (Farewell Blues) / Fuego En La Montana (Fire On The Mountain) |
| 06/1973 | SP WARNER BROS. 7718 (US) | . | Eric WEISSBERG & DELIVERANCE - Reuben's Train / Scalded Cat |
| 11/1973 | SP WARNER BROS. 7756 (US) | . | Eric WEISSBERG & DELIVERANCE - Concerte Canyon Boogie / Opening Day |
| 11/1973 | SP WARNER BROS. 7756 (US) (promo) | . | Eric WEISSBERG & DELIVERANCE - Concrete Canyon Boogie [mono] / Concrete Canyon Boogie [stereo] |
| 1974 | SP WARNER BROS. Back To Back Hits | . |
Dueling Banjos (Eric Weissberg) / Reuben's Train (Eric WEISSBERG & DELIVERANCE) |
| 1975 | SP EPIC 8-50072 (US) | . | Eric WEISSBERG & DELIVERANCE - Yakity Yak / Meadow Muffins |
| 1976 | SP United Artists UP 36169 (F) |
 |
John Williams, Eric Weissberg - THEME DU FILM Missouri Breaks - Missouri Breaks / Bee Side |
| 11/1979 | SP WARNER BROS. K 16223 (UK) |
 |
Eric Weissberg & Steve Mandell - Dueling Banjos / End Of A Dream |
| 03/1986 | SP OLD GOLD OG 9574 (UK) |
 |
Eric Weissberg & Steve Mandell - Duelling Banjos / Reuben's Train |
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Albums
| 1957 | LP 12" Judson L 3017 (US) |
 |
Banjos, Banjos, And More Banjos! - Dick Weissman, Billy Faier, Eric Weissberg - Buck Dancer's Choice / Little Birdie / Glory, Glory / Old Joe Clark / Chilly Winds / East Tennessee Blues And Shout Lulu / Pigtown Fling / Cape Cod Blues / Hard, Ain't It Hard / Red Wing / A Day In The Kentucky Mountains / You Can Dig My Grave / Sourwood Mountain / 900 Miles / Cripple Creek / Blue Goose |
| 1960 | LP 12" Cameo C 1030 (US) |
 |
Sunny's Gallery Of Folk Ballads - Sunny Schwartz with Fred Hellerman & Eric Weisberg - The Cuckoo / Two Brothers / Baby, Lie Easy / Every Night / Little Brown Dog / Where Does It Lead / Maid Of Constant Sorrow / The Water Is Wide / Dirty Old Town / Madame Jeanette / Flowers Of Peace / Fernario |
| 1963 | LP 12" ELEKTRA EKL 238 (mono) / EKS 7238 (stereo) (US) |
 |
NEW DIMENSIONS IN BANJO AND BLUEGRASS - Marshall BRICKMAN & Eric WEISSBERG - Shuckin' The Corn / Pony Express / No Title Yet Blues / Old Joe Clark / Eight More Miles To Louisville / Farewell Blues / Little Maggie / Black Rock Turnpike / Earl's Breakdown / Reuben's Train / Riding The Waves / Fire On The Mountain / Eighth Of January / Bugle Call Rag / Hard Ain't It Hard / Mountain Dew / Buffalo Gals / Rawhide |
| 1968 | LP 12" ELEKTRA SWG-7111 (JAP) |
 |
Golden Bluegrass - The DILLARDS & Byron Berline, Eric Weissberg & Marshall Brickman, Dian & The Greenbriar Boys - The DILLARDS & Byron BERLINE : Somebody Touched Me / Dooley / Lonesome Indian / Rainnin' Here This Morning / Reuben's Train / Dixie Breakdown / Pretty Polly / Black Mountain Rag / DIAN & The GREENBRIAR BOYS : Sally Let Your Gangs Hang Down / Cannon Ball Blues / Brown's Ferry Blues / Master's Bouquet / Eric Weissberg & Marshall BRICKMAN : Rawhide / Mountain Dew / Eigth Of January / Earl's Breakdown |
| 01/1973 | LP 12" WARNER BROS. BS 2683-2 (US) |
 |
DUELING BANJOS - FROM THE ORIGINAL SOUND TRACK OF DELIVERANCE - Eric WEISSBERG & Steve MANDEL - Dueling Banjos / Little Maggie / Shuckin' The Corn / Pony Express / Old Joe Clark / Eight More Miles To Louisville / Farewell Blues / Earl's Breakdown / End Of A Dream / Buffalo Gals / Reuben's Train / Riding The Waves / Fire On The Mountain / Eighth Of January / Bugle Call Rag / Hard, Ain't It Hard / Mountain Dew / Rawhide |
| 1973 | LP 12" WARNER BROS. 46 214 (F) |
 |
DUELING BANJOS - FROM THE ORIGINAL SOUND TRACK OF DELIVERANCE - Eric WEISSBERG & Steve MANDEL - Dueling Banjos / Little Maggie / Shuckin' The Corn / Pony Express / Old Joe Clark / Eight More Miles To Louisville / Farewell Blues / Earl's Breakdown / End Of A Dream / Buffalo Gals / Reuben's Train / Riding The Waves / Fire On The Mountain / Eighth Of January / Bugle Call Rag / Hard, Ain't It Hard / Mountain Dew / Rawhide |
| 1973 | LP 12" WARNER BROS. BS 2720 (US) |
 |
RURAL FREE DELIVERY - Eric WEISSBERG & DELIVERANCE - Uncle Pen / Hard Hearted / Thanks For Bein' You And Lovin' Me / Somewhere In Time / Concrete Canyone Boogie / Ride In The Country / Scalded Cat / Blessed Is The Man / Lend Me Your Heart / Opening Day / 'Til The End Of The World Rolls Around |
| 1979 | LP 12" Elektra 22.016 (BRA) |
 |
Dueling Banjos - Deliverance II - Eric Weissberg, Marshall Brickman, The Dillards, Tom Paley & Art Rosenbaum - No Title Yet Blues / Black Rock Turnpike / Lonesome Road Blues / Nine Hundred Miles / John Henry / Marching Through Georgia / Reuben's Train / Old Joseph / Banjo In The Hollow / Somebody Touched Me / Lonesome Indian / Old Mand At The Mill / Cold Trailin' / Harlan County Farewell Tune / Bluegrass Medley / Forty Winks / Devil's Dream / Flop-Eared Mule / Wildwood Flower / Duelin' Banjo |
| 12/1987 | CD WARNER BROS. 246 214 (GER) |
 |
DUELING BANJOS - FROM THE ORIGINAL SOUND TRACK OF DELIVERANCE - Eric WEISSBERG & Steve MANDEL - Dueling Banjos / Little Maggie / Shuckin' The Corn / Pony Express / Old Joe Clark / Eight More Miles To Louisville / Farewell Blues / Earl's Breakdown / End Of A Dream / Buffalo Gals / Reuben's Train / Riding The Waves / Fire On The Mountain / Eighth Of January / Bugle Call Rag / Hard, Ain't It Hard / Mountain Dew / Rawhide |
| 1990 | CD WARNER BROS. 075992726825 (US) |
 |
DUELING BANJOS - FROM THE ORIGINAL SOUND TRACK OF DELIVERANCE - Eric WEISSBERG, Steve MANDEL & Marshall BRICKMAN - Dueling Banjos / Little Maggie / Shuckin' The Corn / Pony Express / Old Joe Clark / Eight More Miles To Louisville / Farewell Blues / Earl's Breakdown / End Of A Dream / Buffalo Gals / Reuben's Train / Riding The Waves / Fire On The Mountain / Eighth Of January / Bugle Call Rag / Hard, Ain't It Hard / Mountain Dew / Rawhide |
| 1995 | CD Legacy International CD 351 (US) |
 |
Feuding Banjos - Roger McGuinn, Eric Weissberg, Mason Williams - Feuding Banjos / Saturday Night Banjo / Cripple Creek / Flop Eared Mule / Blue Grass Banjo / Banjo Bach / Hundreds Of Miles / Mountain Stomp / Blugrass Mountain Medley / Banjo Road / Mountain Breakdown / Ramblin' Banjo / Banjo Rhythms / Red Apple Juice / Hooka Tooka / Old Joe Clark / The Johnson Boys / Clinch Mountain Backstop |
| 2001 | CD Warner Music 9362-48088-2 (F) |
 |
DELIVERANCE - MUSIC FOR THE MOTION PICTURE - Eric WEISSBERG & Steve MANDEL - Dueling Banjos / Little Maggie / Shuckin' The Corn / Pony Express / Old Joe Clark / Eight More Miles To Louisville / Farewell Blues / Earl's Breakdown / End Of A Dream / Buffalo Gals / Reuben's Train / Riding The Waves / Fire On The Mountain / Eighth Of January / Bugle Call Rag / Hard, Ain't It Hard / Mountain Dew / Rawhide |
| 2008 | CD WOUNDED BIRD CD 2720 (US) |
|
RURAL FREE DELIVERY - Eric WEISSBERG & DELIVERANCE - Uncle Pen / Hard Hearted / Thanks For Bein' You And Lovin' Me / Somewhere In Time / Concrete Canyone Boogie / Ride In The Country / Scalded Cat / Blessed Is The Man / Lend Me Your Heart / Opening Day / 'Til The End Of The World Rolls Around |
| 2011 | CD ? (US) |
 |
Legacy Live - A Celebration Of The Music Of Robert De Courmier - Counterpoint And Eric Weissberg - Raise A Ruckus / Who Killed Cock Robin? / If I Had A Ribbon Bow / Ox Driver's Song / All The Pogroms All The Wars / Johnny Has Gone For A Soldier / Room For A Soldier / Banjo Medley / The Duel / Dance Gal, Gimme The Banjo / Sing Everyone, Sing Me / FOUR SONNETS TO ORPHEUS : No.19: Wandelt Sich Rasch Auch Die Welt / No.21: Frühling Ist Widergekommen / No.22: Wir Sind Die Treibenden / No.24: Sollen Wir Unsere Uralte Freundschaft / Sweet Betsy From Pike / Wailie Wailie (The Water Is Wide) / LEGACY : Reminder / The Formula / Harlequinade (Act III) / Legacy |
© Rocky Productions 29/02/2020
