“THE BASH” – Dixie Dregs (1979)
Steve Morse is a repository for more diverse guitar music than virtually any other player on the planet. With influences ranging from Johann Sebastian Bach to blues legend Albert Lee, there is virtually no genre of music Morse has not incorporated into his playing and his composition. Though known to many fans as the long-serving guitar player in Deep Purple, his first proper band was the Dixie Dregs, the most eclectic of fusion bands the ‘70s had to offer.
The Dregs grew out of Morse’s time at the University of Miami, where he soaked up the jazz influences of classmates Pat Metheny, Jaco Pastorius, and Hiram Bullock. The Dregs threw disparate elements into a pot – classical, rock, bluegrass, jazz – and what came out was often magical. Though Morse was their primary composer, all five members in 1979 were credited on “The Bash,” a tour de force recorded live at the 1978 Montreux Jazz Festival.
Actually, as bass player Andy West explained, it was really a couple of old country standards that all five members just threw together so that they could jam for a while. While bass, drum, and keyboards provide a steady, driving rhythm, Morse and fiddler Allen Sloan battle it out over the course of about four minutes of the fastest, most virtuoso string work you are likely to hear. They trade off long runs and short blasts until they are playing together at the end.
The Dixie Dregs produced an awful lot of outstanding fusions of rock and country and jazz, but they were never having more fun than on “The Bash.”
Here's my no-risk guarantee. If you don’t absolutely love any of these tracks - even the Crack the Sky number - let me know, and I will exchange it – no cost to you – for an equally glorious, equally forgotten banger from the ‘70s. There was a multitude of riches. Disco and yacht rock notwithstanding.