Music - H. Douglas Pratt

Music has been a very important part of my life since I was a boy. It all started when I was in the third grade, and received a plastic Arthur Godfrey ukulele for Christmas. It had a push-button device for playing chords, but that soon broke. My mother learned to play the three chords necessary to play ‘Way Down Upon the Swannee River’ and taught them to me. She never learned another tune on the uke, but I will be forever grateful for her insight in showing me that it could be done. I went through a series of better ukuleles, and when I was in the sixth grade, my mother, a public elementary school teacher, came through again when she brought home an autoharp for my sister and me to try out. I was immediately fascinated with it, but the big surprise came when my father came home that day and said ‘You know your Mam-Maw used to play one of them things’ (I remember the exact words) and described how she plucked the strings and played melodies. (Maw-Maw was our pet name for my paternal grandmother, Julia Foy Pratt.) She had never had an autoharp during my lifetime, and had never talked about it, but when we gave her one for Christmas that year, she sat right down and played a tune as if she had been playing all along. From that day on, I was an autoharp player. I learned what Maw-Maw had to teach me, and then picked up more techniques from TV. A big eye-opener was seeing Maybelle Carter play on the Saturday afternoon Flatt & Scruggs show, holding the autoharp vertically, ‘Appalachian style’. I never convinced Maw-Maw, who played in the traditional lap style with a sound rather like that of Pop Stoneman, to play that way but I never went back to lap style myself. When I got to college at the height of the ‘folk scare’, I was influenced by the autoharp recordings of Mike Seeger, and was fascinated by the peculiar left-handed style of Kilby Snow, whom I met at the Union Grove Fiddlers’ Convention. Those were the only serious influences on my playing for the next four decades, and I developed a unique style of playing that was strongly affected by picking styles I learned first on other instruments (see below) and the fact that I rarely played by myself but preferred to play in ensemble settings. That environment led to my development of a ‘resonator back’ to enhance the volume of the autoharp. (Click here to view my article for Autoharp Quarterly about the resonator back.)

In the meantime, I had also been playing other stringed instruments. In the sixth grade, I moved from baritone ukulele to guitar and later was fortunate to have a neighbor, Eula Baucom, who taught me flat-pick style and lots of little runs and frills to dress up my playing. My first semester at Davidson College, I discovered Joan Baez and eventually learned to finger-pick every song on her first two albums. My banjo-playing friend from down the hall, Rob Whitton, and I together figured out and mastered the “double-thumb” picking style I still use today on both autoharp and dobro. I had been fascinated by the dobro (resophonic steel guitar) from those Flatt & Scruggs TV shows featuring Josh Graves who was an early master of the instrument. I finally bought a cheap knock-off of a dobro and started to learn. It was a tough slog, because not many people played the instrument at the time and I had few mentors, but eventually I learned well enough to keep it from sounding like a cat fight, and graduated to a better instrument. As with autoharp, I was, to steal a phrase from my friend Michael Poole, ‘raised in the wilderness by wolves’ and developed a distinctive dobro style. I love playing bluegrass, and the dobro gets me past the Bluegrass Police so that I can occasionally do some bluegrass on the autoharp.

In 2003, I met Ann Norris, 2002 International Autoharp Champion at the Walnut Valley Festival, at a dulcimer festival in Port Allen, LA, just across the river from Baton Rouge where I was living then. She encouraged me to enter the contest, which I did later that year. The experience opened up an entirely new world of autoharp for me. On my first try, I made the contest finals, but did not place 1, 2, or 3 to win a prize autoharp. The next year, I was “loaded for bear”, played well (I thought), and failed to make the finals! In 2005 I had just moved to North Carolina and was unable to attend the Walnut Valley Festival, but in 2006 I returned, having learned much about playing in contests, and won!

One of the rules of the Walnut Valley Festival is that a winner may not enter for the next 5 years, so I will not again be eligible until 2012. In the meantime, I have been in pursuit of an even more prestigious contest held at the Mountain Laurel Autoharp Gathering (MLAG) held every June in Newport, PA. I have placed third there twice, and this year (2011) made the finals but did not place. I’ll win that one eventually. But I did not come away empty-handed this year, because I applied for and won the first Cohen-Grappel Grant to support the production of a first CD featuring autoharp. I expect to have the CD ready for release at the next gathering in 2012. In the meantime, I can offer a short snippet of my playing at the Galax Old Fiddlers Convention last year at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4vyI018eEY . I plan to put some more things on YouTube as soon as I can.

I play as often as I can in local jams, but do not currently have a regular band (contact me if you would like to have a tenor-singing autoharp/dobro player). I am co-host of a bluegrass jam that gathers every second and fourth Monday of the month at the Busy Bee Café in downtown Raleigh, NC. The jam is sponsored by the Piedmont Council on Traditional Music (PineCone). I am also active in the Triangle Autoharp Circle, which meets on the first or second Saturday every month. If you are interested in that group, email olson4912@yahoo.com or me.

Doug Pratt currently plays a 21-chord chromatic autoharp handcrafted by Warren Fisher of Selinsgrove, PA; and a 1975 Dobro® dobro (resophonic steel guitar).

Mountain Laurel Autoharp Gathering
These selections are from the Mountain Laurel Autoharp Gathering Contest. Remember that it is a contest, with all the nervousness that entails, and not a studio performance. All the glitches and mistakes are recorded for posterity! Many consider this to be the most prestigious autoharp contest. I have come in third twice, and made the finals in 2011, but winning this one is one of my long-term goals.

The

Wedding March (Mendelssohn)
Charmaine
Old Piano Roll Blues
Muskrat Ramble
Up the Lazy River
Over the Waves (Sobre las Olas)
Heartaches
Are You from Dixie?
Bye Bye Blues
Mississippi Rag
The Entertainer

The Curators
When I won the International Autoharp Championship in 2006, I was invited to participate in our annual First Night Raleigh event on New Year’s Eve. So I put together a band of friends, my sister Julie Blackwell, and colleagues, and called it The Curators. We performed in the auditorium of the Museum of Natural Sciences, with sound by John Gerwin and recording by Manny Krevat. It’s a live performance,warts and all, and the recording mike was too close to Manny’s guitar, but these selections will give you an idea of how we sounded. The band consisted of Doug Pratt (Autoharp, Dobro, Guitar, Vocals), Julie Blackwell (Vocals), Tom Garren (Banjo), Manny Krevat (Guitar), Larry Sleeper (Bass), Michael Poole (Autoharp), Bob Blinn (Guitar), and John Gerwin (Guitar).

Wabash Blues (dobro)
Colored Aristocracy
Southern Filibuster (Tut Taylor)
When You’re Smiling
Some Day Soon (Ian Tyson)
Victory Rag
I Still Miss Someone (Johnny Cash)
Kansas City Kitty (dobro)
Gold Watch and Chain (A. P. Carter)
Keep on the Sunny Side (A. P. Carter)

Strike the Harp
This song was my submission for the CD “Strike the Harp”, a collection of Christmas music by participants in the Cyberpluckers Listserv. This MP3 is my original entry, which was edited for length on the CD. Click here for more information about the CD.

It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Walnut Valley Festival International Autoharp Championship
Click below to view the video of Doug's award-winning performance at the 2006 Walnut Valley Festival International Autoharp Championship.