Blue notes

Mike Auldridge, who died on December 29 just a day short of his 74th birthday, is a sad loss to the cross-genre acoustic roots music generally referred to as "Americana".

A master of the resonator guitar - played Hawaiian style with a steel bar - Auldridge was most closely associated with progressive bluegrass as performed by The Seldom Scene, the group he co- founded in 1971. However, he was also renowned for taking his instrument into jazz territory, and in using it to play contemporary pop tunes.

The resonator guitar - often called "the Dobro", after the Dobro Manufacturing Co founded by the inventor of the instrument, John Dopyera, and his brothers - has been around since 1927. Before Auldridge took it up, it was associated more or less exclusively with blues and country music.

Auldridge was an admirer of Josh Graves, who introduced the Dobro to bluegrass while playing with Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs. On that foundation, Auldridge built a far more sophisticated technique, and developed a radically different tone that was more expressive and versatile. As far as he was concerned, the Dobro was appropriate for any kind of music.

Auldridge's 1970s albums included jazz standards, folk tunes and pop hits alongside original compositions, and blues and bluegrass standards. He went further into jazz in the 1980s with the Eight String Swing album, on which he played a custom-built instrument with two extra strings.

Among the tunes on that collection were his interpretations of Juan Tizol's Caravan, most closely associated with Duke Ellington, and Edgar Sampson's Stompin' at the Savoy, which was a hit for Chick Webb and Benny Goodman.