Day the Second: after my high school buddy, Matthew Wilhite, nominated me, I'm looking back at the albums that left the biggest mark on my life and my personal style.
Flash back to 1995. I had just embarked on the adventure of a lifetime--marriage to Jennifer George Dittes--and we had moved out to Superior, Arizona, far away from home, and we fashioned a remarkable life there: Jenny working at a regional health plan and me teaching English at Superior High School. Surrounded by a loving church and a fantastic community, we fit right in.
But there were things I missed. My first autumn in Superior, I remarked to my students how much I missed seeing the trees turn colors. A student (Brandon T as I remember it) told me, "Don't worry, Mr. Dittes, there's a tree up in Globe that's turning colors!" As I remember it, Globe was about 20 miles drive away.
I remember going to WalMart and seeing country music videos on the TVs in the electronics department. I was astonished by all the green I saw--grass, trees with leaves, weeds--before realizing that it was Tennessee I was seeing through desert-thirsty eyes.
Bluegrass arrived in my life at that time, led by Alison Krauss's remarkable collection, "Now That I've Found You." It was amazing. Krauss's pure soprano brought in a smooth pop echo without drowning out the pluck of the mandolin or the steel guitar in her band, Union Station. All the time I had lived in Tennessee, I had seldom listened to bluegrass. Now it was all I wanted to hear.
The big hit off the album was Krauss's remake of "When You Say Nothing at All," a smooth, mainstream look at a Keith Whitley song that had briefly charted on country radio. Her recording of "In the Palm of Your Hand" with the Cox family opened for me new ways to look at beloved old hymns. Bluegrass made the music feel real. The mandolin plucked as naturally as raindrops falling on a lake.
In the summer of 1996, I spent a month at a German-language course in Schwäbisch Gmünd. The Americans there were encouraged to teach a dance to the other students. I chose Krauss's "Oh Atlanta," and a Czech partner and I two-stepped the night away as others joined in. That summer I began arranging hymns to fit my newfound bluegrass sensibilities, spinning off versions of "When the Roll is Called Up Yonder" and "In the Sweet By and By" that I still enjoy playing to this day.
A year later, in the spring of 1997, the album's cover song, "Baby, Now that I've Found You," took on a new meaning for Jenny and me. As Jenny prepared to go to the hospital to have our first child, I compiled a soundtrack to ease her through labor. Krauss's album was well represented, and that "Baby..." of the title song turned about to be the lovely Ellie Dittes, born on May 22.
Eventually I learned enough about bluegrass to understand that there were no pianos in bluegrass bands. About ten years ago I picked up the mandolin and began plucking away at church. This instrument brings me a lot of joy, and it opens me to be able to play beloved bluegrass and folk songs wherever I wish to.
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