Butch Baldassari

Jerome Henry "Butch" Baldassari (December 11, 1952 – January 10, 2009) was an American mandolinist, recording artist, composer, and music teacher.

Biography Early life Baldassari played guitar in rock bands as a teen with his brother Buster, but converted to mandolin in 1972 at the Philadelphia Folk Festival when he saw Andy Statman with David Bromberg and Barry Mitterhoff with the Bottle Hill Boys.

Weary Hearts While completing postgraduate work at the University of Nevada, Baldassari joined the bluegrass band Weary Hearts. Besides Baldassari, the band included Mike Bub (bass), Ron Block (banjo, guitar), and Chris Jones (guitar). In 1988, they won the Best Bluegrass Band Award by the Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music in America (SPBGMA). Their musical repertoire included bluegrass, classical, Celtic, and jazz, and they revived the 19th-century mandolin orchestra concept: 11 musicians incorporating mandocello, mandola, guitar and bass. Their 1997 album Sales Tax Toddle was nominated for a Grammy. Other musicians involved with the project included Stuart Duncan and Bobby Hicks (fiddle), Scott Vestal (banjo), and Byron House (bass).

SoundArt Recordings label Baldassari established the SoundArt Recordings record label in the late 1990s. SoundArt specializes in acoustic mandolin music and instruction, ranging from classical to bluegrass.

Music education Starting in 1986, Baldassari taught at Vanderbilt University's Blair School of Music for several years, achieving the rank of adjunct professor of mandolin.

Pa's Fiddle Project Baldassari and Professor of Musicology Dale Cockrell co-produced the Pa's Fiddle Project, a projected 10 CD series that will record and collect the 127 songs Pa Ingalls played in the "Little House" books by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Baldassari was involved in the production of the first two CDs in the series: Arkansas Traveler and Happy Land: Musical Tributes to Laura Ingalls Wilder. He also performed on The Pa's Fiddle Primer CD which accompanies the PBS TV special Pa's Fiddle: The Music of America.

Happy Land: Musical Tributes to Laura Ingalls Wilder is part of the We the People National Endowment for the Humanities collection, which is distributed to 2,000 public, school, and military libraries in the United States and overseas.

Blue Moon Over Kentucky On October 26, 2002, Baldassari and the Owensboro Symphony Orchestra premiered "Blue Moon Over Kentucky", his orchestrated tribute to the instrumental music of Bill Monroe, and incorporated standards such as "Roanoke" and "Rawhide."

Death In May 2007, Baldassari was diagnosed as having an inoperable brain tumor and died Saturday, January 10, 2009, in Nashville at age 56. He was survived by his mother, wife, and son.

Music instruction videos 1996: You Can Play Bluegrass Mandolin Vol. 1 DVD (Homespun) 1996: You Can Play Bluegrass Mandolin Vol. 2 DVD (Homespun) 1997: Thirty Fiddle Tunes for the Mandolin CD (Homespun) 2003: Mandolin Tunes for Practice and Repertoire book/ CD (Homespun) 2004: Butch Baldassari's Bluegrass Mandolin Workshop DVD (Homespun) 2008: Mandolin Hymns CD (Homespun) 2008: Appalachian Mandolin & Dulcimer book/ CD (Homespun) with David Schnaufer 2013: Mandolin Jam Along book/ CD (Homespun) with Matt Flinner

Music books 1995: Evergreen: Mandolin Music for Christmas (Mel Bay) 2001: New Classics for Bluegrass Mandolin (Mel Bay) 2015: Cantabile: Duets for Mandolin and Guitar (Mel Bay) with John Mock