That is sad. He was mentioned several times on stage this past weekend at the festival I went to, mostly by members of the bluegrass band Hot Rize.
To give you an idea what a strange and small and connected world this is . . . I found out at the festival that one of my guitar teachers, Pete Jacobson, passed on about a year ago. If I found the right obit on Google (it's hard to tell) on March 30th.
The connection: Pete was very briefly in a band, in about 1964, with a bunch of musicians, many of whom went on to be well-known, including David Grisman, who did some playing with Doc Watson. Look up the youtube of the 2 of them playing Sweet Georgia Brown.
Others in that band (The Even Dozen Jug Band) included Maria D'Amato who later became Maria Muldaur, John Sebastian, Joshua Rifkin, Stefan Grossman and Steve Katz. Pete studied guitar with Reverend Gary Davis, among others. He taught me the version of Maple Leaf Rag I play on guitar. He says he got it when he mentioned to Joshua Rifkin he'd like to be able to play it on guitar. Rifkin asked him how the guitar was tuned, what the range was, and how many frets his fingers could span comfortably, then wrote out this amazing guitar arrangement, without having any idea how to play a guitar. It included all four parts. Up until then, any guitar players I know of that played Maple Leaf at all pretty much left the last 2 parts alone. Oh, and Rifkin's arrangement can be played accompanying a piano, but IIRC the guitar has to be tuned down a half step.
Pete never got to be quite that famous, but he was one of the best guitar players I ever heard, and occasionally played concerts locally under the stage name Flannel Grimes.
I wish I'd had a chance to thank Pete, and my other teachers, for the cool stuff they taught me that's made me a slightly-above-mediocre guitar player all these years.
