Emory Lester – A Master of the Bluegrass Mandolin – Album “Reminiscing Today”

On David Grismans Acoustic Oasis site there is a free download of a song every day. From each album available at Acoustic Oasis you can downlod two or more free songs.

Recently I have downloaded some songs from Emory Lesters album Reminiscing Today that impressed me very much. I had not kown Emory Lester before, although he is one of the importand mandolin players since many years. So I started to look for information about Emory Lester, and I have found some interesting information and videos.

There are two great interviews, one by the Mandolin Magazine and another one by the Mandozine. There you can read that Emory Lester gave his CD Pale Rider to Chris Thile in 1993, and that Chris Thile liked this CD so much that he played Pale Rider very successfull for a mandolin competition.

I, like many who are close to Chris, am extremely proud of where he is and what he’s done with the mandolin. I met Chris in 1993, at the Vancouver Folk Festival. He was just a little thing then, and he was out there playing with Richard Greene. I heard him and was obviously floored. My ‘Pale Rider’ CD was brand new, and I gave him one. Not long after this, I received several letters from Chris, saying how much he loved the CD, and that song ‘Pale Rider’, and how he had learned it, and played it to win the Mandolin Championship out there!

In the interviews you can also read about the instruments played by Emory Lester. He played the last F5 mandolin built by Monteleone for some time. Later Bruce Weber built a new mandolin with the same specifications as this Monteleone mandolin:

black face F-5 with a round neck, a radiused fingerboard and medium fretwire

Emory Lester prefers blackface mandolins.

The luthier Dale Ludewig builds an Emory Lester Model, which you can view on his homepage.

Videos

June Apple

Emory Lester plays June Apple, accompanied by Ned Luberecki, (on a Rosta Capek banjo): Mark Cosgrove and Steve Kaufman on guitars, Andrew Coliins on mando and Sharon Gilchrist on bass. From Week Two of the Kaufman Acoustic Kamp. Apologies for the sloppy camera work, but the tune is so good I couldn’t leave it out.