Butch Thompson re: Ted Unseth

Leigh Kamman MPR Phone Interview:

“He’s a really admirable guy and you’ve got to admire him, particularly for sticking to his guns all these years and championing the kind of music that he does stand for around here.  It’s wonderful, he’s very talented.  I don’t know if people are aware of how much talent and ability it takes just get the music together in the first place, before you even sit down and try to play it.  Ted will sit down with an old record and transcribe it, note-for-note—every instrument—and have all the parts ready for the musicians to read.  Then, as often as not, he’s got to make an adaptation of that arrangement because his band doesn’t have the same instrumentation, doesn’t have as many people; has different instrumentation.  He’s got to adapt some of the parts for other instruments and still make it sound like what he wants it to sound like, which is that old recording—this is very difficult and it takes a lot of ability.  And he’s a fantastic transcriber, as I found out in the past couple of weeks looking through the parts that he’s got—he’s great.”