2008.12.16
Notes on the late Odell McGuire, old-time music revivalist and noted geologist
Odell McGuire | Photo courtesy Washington and Lee University
McGuire died last Dec. 8. He was 81. Sadly, I was not familiar with him. But plenty were, I was able to reach a few of them -- in particular musician James Leva, and McGuire's ex-wife and permanent friend Mata McGuire -- for a story I wrote yesterday (which will be in Wednesday's paper). What I learned from them impressed me deeply, and made me wish I had known the guy.
We welcome old-time music lovers, even geography buffs, to post any thoughts and memories you have about McGuire.
I'll start us with some stuff from McGuire himself, his protege and friend Scott Ainslie -- a talented and respected blues/roots performer and teacher -- and our own pages, from 10 years back.
As I was into the reporting yesterday, I found this Web site, Field Recorders' Collective -- with an entry from McGuire himself about the Lexington old-time revival.
Scott Ainslie -- a respected and talented blues/roots performer and teacher -- was a young geology student at Washington & Lee University in 1970 when McGuire came late into geology lab one day. Here's an account from the wayback machine, aka The Roanoke Times archive, in a story by former Roanoke Times reporter Madelyn Rosenburg:
> "When he finally walks in, he's covered with mud," recalled Scott Ainslie, then a college freshman, now a blues guitarist in North Carolina. "He's bespattered. And it's all dry, from the uppers of his hiking boots, all the way up to where he had had a hat on."
> McGuire slammed his books on the counter, and looked at his class.
> "And he says `I've just come from Ivydale, West Virginia, where I was at a fiddlers' convention all weekend. It rained and it flooded and I spent all day throwing people's cars up a muddy incline. I've driven all the way back across West Virginia on no sleep and I've just gotten out of the car to teach you this lab. If I fall over in mid-sentence, I expect you to file out quietly. I will flunk any student that wakes me.'
> "For me," Ainslie said, "That was the beginning of old-time music in Lexington."
I wasn't able to reach Ainslie until after deadline yesterday. He e-mailed me a cut-and-pasted copy of something he wrote a friend the day after McGuire died:
> I was traveling the day Odell passed. I finally got home to three
> messages on the cell phone and two on the home land line. It became
> obvious before I heard the last message that Odell had probably
> passed.
>
> He had a fall and broke his pelvis and smashed himself up pretty good
> in early November. I stopped by to see him in mid-November and spent a
> couple of hours on a Saturday night and again on Sunday before I hit
> the road. We talked about all manner of things, poems he was in the
> midst of, music (I played him some tunes), and I watched him smile
> deeply, close his eyes and lean into the music.
> Healing and breaking my heart all at once, as I think of it now.
>
> We loved each other and told each other so.
>
> He was a ferocious man who seemed to never misplace a fact or forget
> an event. How he kept his talons so sharp, I don't know, but he held
> the world like a hawk holds a mouse and there were days I didn't think
> I'd survive him, in every sense you can imagine. But now, sadly, I
> have.
>
> I picked up the banjo last night, as many who knew him may have, and
> after raising a glass of whiskey to him, tuned it up. When I hit that
> thing, tears started to stream down my cheeks. He gave me much of the
> substance of my life: he carried me to the mountain, literally,
> spiritually, figuratively. If somehow we could take Odell out of me,
> seeing me now, you wouldn't recognize me.
[...] of his former students to recall stories of their days in his classes. A blog in the Roanoke Times, CutnScratch with music reporter Tad Dickens, had a nice piece on Odell Tuesday. Dickens quotes liberally from [...]
Pingback by Tributes to Odell McGuire « Washington and Lee University News — December 17, 2008 @ 8:31 am
I was terrified of lab science, thanks to some horrendous failures in high school, and waited until my senior year at W&L to schedule my required lab course, in geology. I had it all planned out: take the course pass-fail from Professor Sam Kozak (the rumor mill was that he was a merciful teacher), but it turned out that he was on leave that term, and I discovered Odell in front of the classroom that first day of class. I was doubly terrified: not only was it a lab course, but I played bluegrass guitar, poorly, and Odell was an icon of old-time music, giving the impression that he did not suffer fools lightly, academically or musically. I gulped, he lectured and taught, I learned, and easily passed. I saw that there was a twinkle in his eye because he clearly knew a ton about his subject and he taught it in an infectious manner... he inspired me to learn, to learn better than I thought I was capable of learning. I wonder occasionally if I had taken geology with Odell in my freshman year whether or not I would have become a geology major, such was the power of his presence and teaching.
Comment by Burr Datz — December 17, 2008 @ 10:07 am
Saw him all beat up looking at Kroger just before Thankskgiving and we exchanged pleasantries.
I never sat in a classroom with Odell, but I learned from him nevertheless. As W&L's neophyte registrar in the mid '80s, I was certainly representative of bureaucracy for which he had little use and experienced a bit of the ferocity Ainslie referenced. But Odell had a wicked grin and a wry sense of humor, which I appreciated every time. And his peripatetic interests were always illuminating: writing about the Rockbridge militia's encounter with the Red Coats, inventing the "infamous" Slidewhistle mousetrap (written up at http://rockbridgeadvocate.com/mousex.htm , though his own web illustrations have been lost in cyberspace), creating music and relationships, etc.
I'll miss him.
Comment by Scott Dittman — December 17, 2008 @ 1:34 pm