Tut Taylor

Robert Arthur "Tut" Taylor Sr. (November 20, 1923 – April 9, 2015) was an American bluegrass musician.

Taylor played banjo and mandolin as a child, and began playing dobro at age 14, learning to use the instrument with a distinctive flat-picking style. Taylor was a member of The Folkswingers in the 1960s, who released three albums; he recorded his debut solo effort in 1964. Later in the 1960s, he played with the Dixie Gentlemen and in John Hartford's Aereo-Plain band.

Taylor became a local Nashville, Tennessee fixture. In 1970, he co-founded the instrument shop GTR there, soon after releasing another solo album. He also co-founded the Old Time Pickin' Parlor, a Nashville venue noted for performances of old-time music, as well as Tut Taylor's General Store.^[1]

In a March, 1992 interview, Neil Young reported having bought Hank Williams' Martin D-28 Guitar from Tut Taylor.^[2]

At the Grammy Awards of 1995, he was awarded the Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album for his work on The Great Dobro Sessions with Jerry Douglas.^[3]

Taylor recorded hundreds of reels of tape documenting and preserving bluegrass music, from "kitchen recordings" to live concerts, as well as serving as a recording engineer for studio albums. He donated about 500 reels to the Steam Powered Preservation Society, which has digitized many of them and made them available for streaming or downloading.^[4]

Taylor died on April 9, 2015.^[5]

• 12-String Dobro World Pacific 1816, 1963
• Dobro Country (with Clarence & Roland White), World Pacific, 1964
• Blues & Bluegrass With Dixie Gentlemen, Tune 1001, 1966
• Aereo-Plain, Warner Bros, 1971, Reissued by Rounder, 1997
• Friar Tut, Rounder 0011, 1972
• No Name Album, Flying Fish HDS704, 1974
• The HDS Sessions, HDS 701, 1975
• The Old Post Office, Flying Fish 008, 1975
• Norman Blake/Tut Taylor/Sam Bush/Butch Robins/Vassar Clements/David Holland/Jethro Burns (1976)
• Dobrolic Plectral Society, Takoma C1050, 1976
• The Great Dobro Sessions, Sugar Hill, 1994
• Flat Pickin' The Kitchen, Tutlee TL1001, 1997
• Flash Flood, Tutlee TL1002, 1998
• Steam Powered Aereo-Takes, Rounder, ROUN0480, 2002
• Tut and Clarence Flatpicking, Tutlee TL1003, 2003
• Shacktown Road (2007) (with Norman Blake and Nancy Blake)
• Oozing the Blues - Barker and Taylor, 2008 (with Steve Barker and Lorrie Barker)

• Tut Taylor official web site. Accessed February 2009.
• Tut Taylor Interview NAMM Oral History Library (2013)