“Opus 38” is a David Grisman composition, one of the numbered pieces collected in the first volume of his Dawg Works series, which gathers his compositions in the order he wrote them and covers 1963 to 1975. Its earliest documented recording is from 1966: the LP Early Dawg, issued by Sugar Hill in 1980, lists it among the tracks taped in Grisman’s New York apartment, where Artie Rose played guitar.
The version released first was made on 9 January 1976 for The David Grisman Rounder Album (Rounder 0069). The players on that track are Grisman on mandolin and mando-cello, Tony Rice on guitar, Vassar Clements on violectra and Todd Phillips on bass. It is an instrumental running 3:37.
Grisman kept it in his repertoire. DGQ-20, the 1996 set of previously unreleased quintet recordings, puts it on the third disc, covering 1989 to 1996; he played it with the quintet at the Sunset Center in Carmel, California, on 14 August 2004, in a lineup with Enrique Coria on guitar, Matt Eakle on flute, Jim Kerwin on bass and Joe Craven; and he and Tony Rice played it as a duo on Dawg and ’T’: Live at Acoustic Stage, released in 2017. The CMH label’s tribute album Dawg Tales (2001) includes it, and Jim Heffernan recorded it for his 1985 album Dobro.
