Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 10, 1994 TAG: 9403110002
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The year was 1974. Winston was a struggling musician who had released one piano album of his own, but still needed his delivery job. He was in Tower Records, which he visited religiously after every pay day, combing the import bins.
He always searched for something exotic, something native to a different culture. He was 25. He had lived most of his life in Montana and Florida, and he wanted to open his musical horizon.
Hawaiian music wasn't exactly what he was looking for. "I would just by-pass the H bin, usually. I'd look at Haiti, but not Hawaii," Winston explained in a recent telephone interview to promote his concert tonight at the Roanoke Civic Center auditorium.
"Then I saw this big, thick thing."
It was in the H bin, under Hawaii. It was like today's boxed sets, only it wasn't a commercial collection of records. It was more like something put out by a museum or a folklife institute to preserve a certain musical style.
Winston, intrigued, bought it. "I was on my way," he said.
On the records, he found native Hawaiian music. He discovered Gabby Pahinui, sort of the Bill Monroe of traditional slack-key guitar music in Hawaii. "I just said, `Wow! This is what I've been waiting for.' I never quite got it from anything else."
Winston, now 45, still has trouble labeling slack key, which remains relatively unknown outside Hawaii. It's both whimsical and joyous, he said. It's like American blues, but it isn't. "Like blues, it can be understood instantly," he explained. It has the same raw emotion.
Only it's more melodic. "Some people call it country music, Hawaiian-style."
He isn't sure that applies, either. "It's not folk, country or blues, it's somewhere in the middle of that triangle somewhere."
It is easier to hear the difference than explain, he finally said.
The main distinction is that with slack key, some of the guitar strings are loosened from the standard tuning to create a variety of oddball tunings. Typically, slack-key guitarists play in a finger-picking style and normally within a band context. The tradition dates back in Hawaii to the 1830s.
Slack-key guitar music did not immediately consume Winston, however. In fact, it didn't really register a blip on his musical career. Through a string of instrumental albums, starting with "Autumn" in 1980 and ending with "Summer" in 1991, he has been known mostly for his mellow, new-age piano playing.
Even he said there hasn't been much slack key influence on the rest of his music. It's like playing basketball with a football. Slack key and piano don't mix. "I just don't hear it that way at all," he said.
Yet, since 1974, Winston has harbored a desire to record some of the more pioneering slack-key guitarists. His idea was to record them solo and unaccompanied, rather than in the group setting. But he didn't have an outlet for making these recordings.
That changed in 1983 when Winston founded his own record label, Dancing Cat Records, in Santa Cruz, Calif., where he lives. He spent three years finding the slack-key guitarists he most wanted to record and selling them on his idea to feature them solo.
They were mostly agreeable. Of the 13 he wanted to record, he found 10. He said most of them are weekend musicians. "Very few slack-key guitarists do it for a living."
In 1986, Winston began recording, traveling to Hawaii three or four times a year. His philosophy was: "Let's get everything." Then he would worry about releasing them as albums. The first two records in the "Masters of the Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar" series will finally be issued next month. They will feature Sonny Chillingsworth and Ray Kani, two of the older players in the tradition.
Winston felt it was important to finish the recordings first, even if that meant delaying the album releases. He said each of them plays in different styles that aren't exactly duplicated by anyone else.
"They're all traditions unto themselves."
They can play the same songs, for example, and each version will sound almost like complete different songs. If any of them died, or couldn't record, then their style would by lost, he said.
Meanwhile, all along, Winston has been practicing the slack-key style himself. Although he is known primarily as a pianist, Winston actually started out playing guitar, and he said that now he enjoys playing guitar more.
He doesn't consider himself a slack-key master. "It takes having it be part of your life."
"I come from Montana, so it's gonna be different."
George Winston in concert tonight, 7:30, Roanoke Civic Center. Admission, $16.50, plus nonperishable food to benefit TAP SWVa. Second Harvest Food Bank. 343-8100.
by CNB