By Mark Bennett
GRAYSVILLE — A mystic power dwells inside eight strings, 13 inches of wood, steel, brass and mother of pearl.
That force drove Dave Bagdade, then a teenager, to sell his baseball card collection so he could buy his first mandolin. Solly Burton sold eggs and 4-H pigs from his family’s farm to purchase his first good mandolin. Louie Popejoy, a musical legend in the Wabash Valley, spent 30 years mastering the tiny instrument.
“If a player’s good, they can make some sweet sounds with it,” Popejoy said.
Bagdade fell for its brightly pitched tone after reading a magazine review of an album by 1960s mandolin pioneer David Grisman. “I went out and bought the record, and it literally changed my life,” he recalled.
Now Bagdade, 44, plays mandolin for numerous bands of several different genres, including Terre Haute-based bluegrassers Diamond Hill Station.
It transformed Burton, too.
He’s an easy-going 17-year-old, perfectly content tending to the hogs, chickens, ducks and grain crops on the rural Sullivan County farm where he lives with his parents, Barney and Susan Burton. Home-schooled since seventh grade, Solly takes courses across the Wabash River in Robinson, Ill., but insists with an infectious smile, “I like to stay home.”
That’s getting harder to do, because so many people like to hear him play his mandolin. Fortunately for them, that feeling is mutual. Burton’s fascination with the instrument led him to Winfield, Kan., where he won the National Mandolin Contest last year among musicians of all ages, and to Nashville, Tenn., where he recorded an album, fittingly titled “Back Home Again.” Last weekend, the Burtons drove to Princeton so Solly could perform on a radio show. He’s played at the Boot City Opry, churches, weddings and holiday events. On the bluegrass festival circuit, he’s immediately recognized.
“We’ll go places, and people will say, ‘There’s Solly,’” Susan said, “and we don’t know who they are. Somebody said it’s like Cher — they don’t need a last name. It’s just Solly.”
As he listened to his mother recount that story, Burton quietly plucked his Weber mandolin. That Montana-made instrument was his prize for winning the national title at Winfield last year. Some of his fellow entrants were as old as 68. “I didn’t think I’d make the finals because the other guys in the contest were so good,” Burton said.
Obviously, the judges thought otherwise.
His skill reveals itself immediately. A mandolin seems at home in his young hands. On the back cover of Burton’s album, Danny Roberts — mandolinist for the Grammy-nominated bluegrass band The Grascals — writes, “Great tone, nice clean picking, cool arrangements. Solly has all the tools.”
And versatility. While Burton insists he’s uninterested in commercial rock, pop and country music, he buzzes like a bee from bluegrass to jazz, gospel, blues and Texas swing styles. He even handles the nuances of Django, a gypsy sound made popular in the 1930s and ’40s by Belgian guitarist Django Reinhardt. “I just liked it because it was a whole different sound. It had that choppy sound,” he said, demonstrating as he spoke. “It’s a really dynamic sound.”
Sitting on the couch in the Burton’s front room, Solly played “Sleigh Ride” first in its straight, cheery Christmas version and then as a jazzy holiday tune. “It’s more improvisational,” he explained.
