Dobro Master Jerry Douglas Presents 'Southern Filibuster: A Tribute To Tut Taylor'

Simply put, there isn't a Dobro player alive who doesn't owe Tut Taylor. Taylor is a towering figure in the world of acoustic music, championed for his flat-picking mastery by generations of fellow musicians and connoisseurs of rural American music. Prolific and versatile, Taylor's licks have graced recordings by hundreds of country and bluegrass artists including Roy Acuff, Bill Monroe, Norman Blake, Clarence White, Porter Wagoner, Vassar Clements and Leon Russell, and his solo albums have been studied by countless admirers, some of whom playfully refer to him as King Tut.


One of those lifelong devotees is Jerry Douglas, perhaps the most celebrated Dobro player in the world for more than 30 years.

"Tut's tenacious playing style, his phrasing and his way of making simple things interesting," as Douglas puts it, have had a seismic impact on Douglas over the years, and their 1994 co-production The Great Dobro Sessions won a GRAMMY Award for "Bluegrass Album of the Year." But now, with the release of Southern Filibuster: A Tribute to Tut Taylor (E1 Music: July 13, 2010), Douglas takes his esteem for the Dobro doyen to another level entirely.

For this labor of love, Douglas assembled 14 of the world's greatest Dobro players to interpret compositions penned by Taylor. He also enlisted Nashville's finest backing musicians for the recording including Ronnie McCoury (mandolin), Jason Carter (fiddle), Tim O'Brien (mandolin), Russ Barenberg (guitar), Barry Bales (bass), Fred Carpenter (fiddle), Stuart Duncan (fiddle), Chris Jones (guitar), Mike Compton (mandolin), Dennis Crouch (bass), Bryan Sutton (guitar), and Mike Bub (bass). All of the proceeds from Southern Filibuster go directly to Taylor. And even best of all, they didn't tell Taylor about the project until it was a wrap, giving him one of the nicest surprises of his 86 years. Read more.