Eric Weissberg
Instrumentalist propelled to fame in 1972 by the haunting Duelling Banjos in the film Deliverance
ERIC WEISSBERG, who has died aged 80, was a well-regarded but littleknown session musician working on the New York folk scene when Joe Boyd, head of music at Warner Brothers Films, called to ask if he would be interested in playing banjo on a new soundtrack.
The film was Deliverance, a violent thriller, directed by John Boorman and starring Jon Voight and Burt Reynolds, about four businessmen who embark on a canoe trip in a remote area of Georgia and fall foul of some vicious locals. The script involved an unsettling early scene in which a guitarist and banjo player swap melodic lines with increasing intensity; Weissberg and Steve Mandell were brought in to dub the music for Billy Redden and Ronny Cox, the young actors in the film.
They were asked to adapt Feudin’ Banjos,a 1955 tune written by Arthur “Guitar Boogie” Smith, which had had some exposure when recorded in more sophisticated form on television by the Dillards on The Andy Griffith Show. Weissberg and Mandell rehearsed various arrangements, stripping the music back to its rawest state, before travelling to Atlanta to record it, and then waited for the film to come out.
In fact the track – renamed Duelling Banjos – was already on its way to being a hit after a local DJ got hold of a pressing and played it before the film was released. It swiftly came to be seen as a milestone track, introducing bluegrass music to mainstream America, in addition to providing a masterclass for aspiring banjo players. It reached No 2 in the US charts – kept off the top by Roberta Flack’s Killing Me Softly With His Song – and sold more than 500,000 copies, winning Weissberg and Mandell a Grammy.
Warners quickly capitalised on its success by reissuing an album, New Dimensions & Bluegrass, which Weissberg had recorded a decade earlier with Marshall Brickman and Clarence White. They replaced two of the original tracks with Duelling Banjos and the single’s B-side, End of a Dream, renaming the album Duelling Banjos: From the Original Motion Picture Deliverance.
They did this without consulting Weissberg, who was upset as he had composed one of the removed tracks and, as the album topped the US charts for three weeks, rued the additional royalties he could have earned. One track from the original album, Shuckin’ The Corn, was later sampled by the Beastie Boys.
The film caused a controversy among banjo aficionados who insisted the instruments seen on screen would have created an entirely different sound to the music actually played by Weissberg on his Gibson banjo, and that the actors’ fingers were all in the wrong places. The song also became the subject of a court case as the original writer Arthur Smith received no credit and sued Warners, ultimately winning a substantial settlement, with ongoing royalties as well as accreditation.
A humble man, Weissberg took the unexpected avalanche of fame in his stride. Born in Brooklyn on August 16 1939, he was the son of Will and Cecile Weissberg, a photographer and pianist respectively, and grew up listening to jazz. He studied at New York High School of Music & Art and the Juilliard School of Music, where he learnt classical music and mainly played bass. But he was inspired by Pete Seeger after seeing him perform at summer camp, and Seeger gave him his first banjo lessons.
He went on to join a crowd of young musicians playing on Sundays in Washington Square in the city and got to see and meet some of the great folk artists of the day, including Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly and Cisco Houston.
His passion for bluegrass was fostered by listening to the great banjo finger picker Earl Scruggs, known as one of the fathers of bluegrass for his work with Lester Flatt and
Bill Monroe. Briefly a member of the Greenbriar Boys, Weissberg joined the Tarriers, initially as a stand-up bass player, who had a small hit with The Banana Boat Song before the release of Harry Belafonte’s familiar version.
His exceptional flair for melody was soon recognised, however, and he took on a more prominent role as a singer, also playing fiddle, guitar, mandolin and five-string banjo and, after a year’s service with the National Guard, he relaunched the Tarriers, who went on to accompany Judy Collins on tours of Russia and Poland.
His natural versatility resulted in great demand for session work and, by the time he got the Deliverance call he had played on albums by Judy Collins, the Clancy Brothers, Doc Watson, John Denver, Loudon Wainwright and Barbra Streisand.
After the film he signed a solo deal with Warners and formed his own backing band, Deliverance, releasing one album, Rural Free Delivery, in 1973, which met with only limited success. With Weissberg on guitar, the band also recorded with Bob Dylan on his 1975 album Blood On The Tracks
– although Dylan subsequently changed most of the arrangements, and Weissberg only featured on one of the finished tracks, Meet Me In The Morning.
But his reputation as a session musician remained intact and he played guitar, banjo and dobro for artists as diverse as Talking Heads, Billy Joel, Bette Midler, Richard Thompson and Nanci Griffith, and toured with Art Garfunkel and Tom Paxton.
Eric Weissberg is survived by his wife Juliet.
Eric Weissberg, born August 16 1939, died March 22 2020