Winfield Winners, is a book full of transcriptions of recorded versions of tunes that helped some great flatpickers win the flatpicking contest at Winfield. These are contest arrangements, which I happen to like because of their complexity and surprises, but some folks find them tiresome. Some of the arrangements are better than others as well, with a few leaving you with a “guess you had to be there” feeling.

The bad news about the book is that the transcriptions are just terrible, as though a non-guitar player did them. In fact, as with Mark O’Connor’s Dixie Breakdown, it sometimes seems that the better the phrase, the worse the transcription, so you miss all the really cool stuff. I dunno, maybe it’s just me. The good news about the book is that it comes ... Read More