A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor

Special Guests
Saturday, October 16, 1999

Since making their debut in 1984, the Nashville Bluegrass Band has become one of the most popular and widely respected bluegrass outfits working today. The band has appeared in a variety of U.S. venues, including a sold-out concert at Carnegie Hall and a series of performances from Nashville's Grand Ole Opry. The group was the first of its genre to play in mainland China, and they continue to appear before international audiences in Europe, the Middle East, South America, and Asia. They have performed with Lyle Lovett and Mary Chapin Carpenter, provided the entertainment at Wynonna's wedding reception, and sang back-up for Johnny Cash on the Dead Man Walking soundtrack. They have appeared on NBC's The Today Show and TNN's Music City Tonight, in addition to the airplay their music videos receive. Their latest CD, American Beauty (Sugar Hill), is the long-awaited follow-up to their 1995 Grammy Award-winning recording, Unleashed (Sugar Hill) and features Bob Dylan's Livin' the Blues. Members of the band are: Alan O'Bryant (banjo), Pat Enright (guitar), Roland White (mandolin), Stuart Duncan (fiddle), Gene Libbea, (acoustic bass).

Butch Thompson is well­remembered for his 12­year run as the house pianist on A Prairie Home Companion, dating back to the show's second broadcast in July 1974. In 1978, The Butch Thompson Trio was formed for the show and was the house band until 1986. Thompson's interest in jazz began during his childhood in Marine-on-St. Croix, Minnesota, where he discovered the piano at age three. As a teenager, he led his first band (Shirt Thompson and his Sleeves), and played his first professional engagements on both piano and clarinet. In 1962, he joined the Hall Brothers New Orleans Jazz Band on clarinet and began a series of pilgrimages to New Orleans, where he studied with clarinetist George Lewis and became one of the few non-Orleanians to guest occasionally at Preservation Hall. By the early '70s, his recordings on both instruments were noticed abroad, and he toured Europe and Australia. Thompson's first recording, Butch Thompson Plays Jelly Roll Morton Piano Solos, has been re-issued as a Biograph CD, and he has released nine CDs in his solo series, Thompson Plays Joplin (Daring/Rounder Records). As a soloist, Thompson has long been regarded as a leading traditional jazz musician. More recently, he has put together an eight-piece group called the New Orleans Jazz Originals.

Duke Heitger started playing the trumpet professionally at the age of twelve with his father's band in Toledo, Ohio. He moved to New Orleans in 1991 to work with Jacques Gauthe, and has since played at jazz festivals across the U.S., as well as in Europe and New Zealand. He currently leads the Steamboat Stompers jazz trio, which plays daily on the steamboat Natchez. With them, he released Duke Heitger's Steamboat Stompers. He was featured on the Squirrel Nut Zippers' platinum CD Hot, and on recordings with Banu Gibson. His new CD, Swing is Our Business (Fantasy), is scheduled for release later this year.

Rebecca Kilgore was exposed to swing jazz as a child via her father's record collection. Although she explored folk music as a teenager, in 1981, her admiration for vocalists of the '30s and '40s led her to join a Portland, Oregon swing combo called Wholly Cats (named for the Benny Goodman tune). She took the opportunity to develop her guitar-playing and singing skills and now performs regularly in the Portland area with her own trio, as well as with a variety of other groups. She recently made her debut with the Oregon Symphony under conductor Norman Leydon, and can be heard on recordings with Dave Frishberg, Dan Barrett, and Butch Thompson.