"Ooby Dooby" a flatpicker's way

No way I am not going to say this sooner or later, so I might as well go ahead and say it right now. I am the father of the New England Flatpicking Guitar Champion of the United States of America. I don't know why it wasn't in The New York Times. Tyler only mentioned it to me yesterday in an email about something else.

"Flatpicking" is a kind of guitar playing involving an acoustic guitar, a plastic guitar pick, and individual notes played at high speed. The term might refer to the pick, which is flat, but it might also derive from the playing itself, as in, "That boy can flat pick that thing." Tyler can pick more notes in three seconds than I have picked altogether, and I started when I was 15.

But that wasn't why he emailed us. The New England news was a "btw" in a seven-line email. He mainly needed to say he couldn't be here for a breast cancer fundraiser we are hosting in September. He said he was proud of us for doing the fundraiser. He also said he saw Parrish and Branan at a gig in Salt Lake City, played at the Grand Targhee Bluegrass festival, told me he was glad I was recuperating okay, and he couldn't come in Sept. because that was the weekend of the National Flatpicking Championships. "Much to catch up on," he said, "but I gotta go catch a flight to Missoula right now." The boy (he's 32 years old) lives the kind of life where you have to be a flatpicking email champion too in order to stay in touch.

Then at the end he said: "Have you seen my Ooby Dooby?" Below that was this link to YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6-mriYnBoY

"Ooby Dooby" was one of Roy Orbison's minor hits in the 1950s. I thought it should have been a major hit, but that's demographics for you. It was one of the 45s I always played whenever I got the "little records" out of the closet, so Tyler knew how I felt about it from shortly after birth. It has grown in popularity since Roy's death because it is one of the few songs that rock bands play because there is no way ordinary humans like Bono and Paul McCartney are going to try to sing "Pretty Woman" the way Orbison could. Even "Ooby Dooby" has its vocal demands. Tyler in his email warned me about this. "Not quite Roy quality," he said, "but the guitar breaks are pretty good."

Pretty good? Did I tell you Tyler was nominated for the Mother Teresa Humility Championship? Karen and I watched the video three times and then I emailed him back: "To have Roy Orbison's voice, you gotta be born Roy Orbison. But you know your way around the breaks as good or better than he did."

Actually I only put the "as good" in there because I'm a father and fathers aren't supposed to just gush openly. Toward the end of the second break, Tyler puts a high-speed riff in there that could only be played by the New England and possibly soon to be National flatpicking champion. Tyler will always prefer bluegrass, but put a Fender Stratocaster in his hands and the boy becomes a born rock-and-roller.