Bluegrass Music Research Articles

Review Essay: Am I Blue?: Black Music & White Male Self-Construction

Review Essay: <i>Am I Blue?: Black Music &amp; White Male Self-Construction</i>

She's A Country Girl All Right

Classically trained vocalist, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and 2017 MacArthur “Genius” Fellow Rhiannon Giddens has in recent years enjoyed increased visibility in the contemporary country music world. In 2016, she was a featured singer on Eric Church's top-ten country hit, “Kill a Word,” and she won the Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo and Bluegrass that same year. Giddens also had a recurring role as social worker Hanna Lee “Hallie” Jordan on the long-running musical drama Nashville in 2017 and 2018. While Giddens now enjoys a certain degree of acceptance in the country music world, she has not always felt included in the various largely white, contemporary American roots scenes. As such, she continues to speak out to audiences and the press about the erasure of African Americans from histories of string music, bluegrass, country, and other styles and forms of American roots music. Using Giddens's 2017 International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) keynote, and the Carolina Chocolate Drops' music video for the song “Country Girl” from 2012's Leaving Eden, I demonstrate that Giddens effectively reclaims American old-time string music and country culture as black, subverting historically inaccurate racialized notions of country music authenticity.

Banjo Romantika: American Bluegrass Music and the Czech Imagination

Banjo Romantika: American Bluegrass Music and the Czech Imagination

Banjo Romantika: American Bluegrass Music and the Czech Imagination

Banjo Romantika: American Bluegrass Music and the Czech Imagination

Pretty Good for a Girl: Women in Bluegrass by Murphy Hicks Henry (review)

Good for a Girl: Women in Bluegrass. By Murphy Hicks Henry. (Music in American Life.) Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013. [xi, 469 p. ISBN 9780252032868 (hardcover), $90; ISBN 9780252079177 (pa- perback), $29.95.] Photographs, sources, bibliography, interviews, index.Serious scholarship in bluegrass, as in popular music generally, does not have a long history; with a few exceptions, most of the major studies have been published since the 1980s. Two foundational histories still essential to contemporary bluegrass researchers are Robert Cantwell's 1984 Bluegrass Breakdown: The Making of the Old Southern Sound and Neil V. Rosenberg's 1985 Bluegrass: A History (revised edition 2005), respectively the twenty-third and twenty- fourth publications in the indispensable se- ries Music in American Life, issued by the University of Illinois Press. As a pair, these studies provided, and continue to provide, bluegrass scholars and fans with a compre- hensive scholarly history of that American- made-but now globally significant-genre, from its roots through the 1970s and early 1980s. Because Cantwell and Rosenberg take such different approaches-the for- mer is a critical, intellectual history of blue- grass while the latter is a straightforward chronological narrative-the two books complement each other and have been most profitably read together. Ending with the long 1970s, a fifteen-year period which saw the greatest diffusion and popular ac- ceptance of bluegrass throughout the United States and the world, these two monographs provided readers with a sys- tematic account of the genre's roots and early history, providing a sound platform for further scholarship.Just under thirty years later, and with 150 intervening volumes in the Music in American Life series (a dozen of them about bluegrass), the University of Illinois Press has published Murphy Hicks Henry's Good for a Girl: Women in Bluegrass, a study that seeks to act as a significant cor- rective to what its author sees as the wide- spread view that bluegrass is a genre domi- nated by men: Pretty Good for a Girl sets out to add some balance to the bluegrass texts by presenting the histories of musical women (p. 6). Henry, a well-known profes- sional banjo player, bluegrass performer, critic, and pedagogue, is certainly qualified to offer such a corrective. Often, books such as these are born in outrage. According to Henry . . this book might not have sprouted wings at all if I hadn't been at the International Bluegrass Music Association Awards (IBMA) show in September 1993. My banjo-picking daugh- ter, Casey, fifteen, and I sat in the audience and watched as a band of young male musi- cians, the Bluegrass Youth All-Stars, was re- ferred to by one of the hosts as the 'future of bluegrass music.' I was livid (p. 1). Challenging this attitude led Henry to cre- ate a database on the subject, edit a quar- terly newsletter (Women in Bluegrass, 1994- 2003), complete an M.A. degree in interdis- ciplinary women's studies (George Mason University, 1999), and eventually, to pub- lish the work at hand.As a book, Good for a Girl has more in common with Rosenberg than Cantwell; that is to say, it is not a theoretical/critical approach to the subject, but a chronologi- cal history, consisting of forty-four short bi- ographies, arranged by decade, and tied to- gether by introductory sections for each time period. Readable, clear, and entertain- ing, most of the biographies average six-and-a-half pages, while nine of them average twelve-and-a-half pages. Not sur- prisingly these tend to be famous acts such as the Stonemans, Alison Krauss, Rhonda Vincent, and the Dixie Chicks. The major exception is the dual biography of Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard at twenty-two pages, seemingly, the heart of the work. Although well-researched, it is not what I would call academic, even though the au- thor has such credentials. Based largely on secondary sources-magazine and journal articles from the popular press, published biographies and histories, and liner notes from recordings and DVDs-the added value here is the information gleaned from the large number of interviews and author- instigated e-mail correspondence that at- tempts to fill in the gaps. …

Pretty Good for a Girl: Women in Bluegrass by Murphy Hicks Henry (review)

Reviewed by: Pretty Good for a Girl: Women in Bluegrass by Murphy Hicks Henry Ashley Sorrell Pretty Good for a Girl: Women in Bluegrass. By Murphy Hicks Henry. (Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2013. Pp. ix, 469.) After Vivian Williams played the fiddle in two shows for Bill Monroe in the 1960s, the “father” of bluegrass music proclaimed, “I have never heard a lady fiddler who could beat Vivian and a lot of men fiddlers can’t beat her” (138). Despite this observation from an idolized bluegrass musician, no woman has ever won the coveted International Bluegrass Music Association’s fiddle player of the year award. In Pretty Good for a Girl, professional banjo player and writer, Murphy Hicks Henry, addresses why talented female bluegrass musicians like Williams have been largely invisible in this male-dominated genre. The book is breathtaking in its scope: Henry documents women’s contributions to bluegrass music from the 1940s to present day. The contributions of early pioneers, such as Wilma Lee Cooper and Gloria Bell, paved the way for popular musicians and bands, such as Allison Kraus and the Dixie Chicks. Henry argues that despite the historical involvement of women in bluegrass [End Page 98] music, they remain invisible not only to American society, but also to other women who followed down the paths forged by early pioneers. The book is divided by decade and includes short biographies and musical accomplishments of female bluegrass musicians who have impacted the genre. To narrow her project to a manageable scope, Henry looks only at women who made recordings and not singer-songwriters. This methodology, however, still allows the author to document more than seventy women who have contributed to bluegrass music. Henry analyzes how women’s role in the genre was transformed through the decades. Beginning in the 1940s, female pioneers like Bessie Lee Mauldin, bass player for Monroe, served as supporting roles for all-male or family bands. For these women, supportive roles were the norm, but these positions in the “back of the band” opened up greater opportunities for later generations (53). Piecemeal gains were made through the 1960s as women took on the historically male roles of band leaders and album headliners, but, according to Henry, the 1970s was the watershed decade for women bluegrass musicians. All-female bands in the 1970s, such as the Buffalo Gals, allowed women to enter the genre and take on instrumental, singing, and album-leading roles. Women continued on this tide of progress through the 1980s and 1990s when musicians such as Krauss and Rhonda Vincent solidified women’s contribution to bluegrass music. Pretty Good for a Girl illustrates the challenges as well as the successes that women encountered when entering the world of bluegrass music. Henry argues that the bluegrass community held traditional family and religious values, which served as barriers to women’s role in bluegrass bands. In this culture, women were still expected to put marriage and children above career. Henry explains the challenges many women faced balancing their careers as mothers and wives with tour and recording schedules. The author relies on a variety of published sources and oral histories to document women who impacted bluegrass music. Henry uses bluegrass music newsletters to analyze how popular media received women’s contributions. More significant is her incorporation of oral histories that provide valuable insight into how women perceived their roles as bluegrass musicians. Some may question if Henry is too close to her subject as a banjo player and teacher involved in the bluegrass scene; nonetheless, her knowledge of the genre and its variations contributes to the success of the book. Pretty Good for a Girl breaks new ground as a cultural history of women in bluegrass music. Henry also makes an important contribution to women’s studies with her analysis of how women made their own way into what has historically been considered a male-dominated genre. By making known women’s [End Page 99] contributions to bluegrass, Henry succeeded in striking down the myth that bluegrass music is man’s music. Thanks to Henry, scholars can no longer talk about Bill Monroe and Earl Scruggs without mentioning the women...

Foster’s Songs in Old-Time String Band and Bluegrass Music

Research Article| October 01 2012 Foster’s Songs in Old-Time String Band and Bluegrass Music Joe Weed Joe Weed Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google American Music (2012) 30 (3): 389–396. https://doi.org/10.5406/americanmusic.30.3.0389 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Joe Weed; Foster’s Songs in Old-Time String Band and Bluegrass Music. American Music 1 January 2012; 30 (3): 389–396. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/americanmusic.30.3.0389 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressAmerican Music Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2012 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2012 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Time on the Crooked Road: Isochrony, Meter, and Disruption in Old-Time Country and Bluegrass Music

T Virginia Heritage Music Trail, otherwise known as “The Crooked Road,” is a site of cultural preservation and promotion that links important centers of traditional music for the region. Winding through the southwestern part of the state, the trail connects Galax, for example, where the historic Old Fiddlers’ Convention continues to draw some of area’s best old-time and bluegrass musicians, and Bristol, where Ralph Peer recorded country music’s formative “Bristol sessions” in 1927. Traveling between museums, record stores, live performance stages, and informal jam sessions, visitors to the trail engage with the music of Ralph Stanley, the Carter Family, Dock Boggs, and others who have played a defining role in bluegrass and old-time music. It is significant that the Crooked Road has come to symbolize the musical heritage of the region and, in part, the genres of old-time and bluegrass themselves, since the suggestion is that like the trail, the music winds through unique and satisfyingly unpredictable turns. Lacking the standardized homogeneity and commercial influence of a modern interstate, the geographical idiosyncrasies of the local roads comprising the trail can represent distinct points of cultural pride for local residents and authentic sites of discovery for tourists. The organizers of the Virginia Heritage Music Trail chose the name because of this geographical/ musical metaphor: on the one hand, Highway 58, through which much of the trail passes, has long had the title of the “Crooked Road” as its nickname. On the other hand, as Brandi Hart (one of the project coordinators) remarked, a fiddler can “take the crooked road” by “playing a backstep on the instrument” (personal communication, July 2007). This article’s goal is to investigate and provide an explanatory basis for the type of musical phenomenon referenced by this remark. The term “crooked

Barnstorming, Baseball, and Bluegrass Music

Barnstorming, Baseball, and Bluegrass Music David K. Jackson (bio) I'd have liked to be a baseball player. I love baseball. But you have to have good eyes to play baseball and my eyes never was good. I could hit good and could've been a good player. Bill Monroe In 1963, sportswriter Furman Bisher recalled that "There was a time in this country when every village and crossroad had a baseball team. Some were 'town' teams. Some were 'pickup.'"1 Despite official opposition, barnstorming among major league ballplayers reached its apex during the first half of the twentieth century.2 Robert Cole and Thomas Barthel have each documented the mixed character of baseball barnstorming and shown that often those ballplayers engaged local amateur and semiprofessional teams.3 Musicians and other entertainers also barnstormed during those years, and one group of country musicians in the 1940s and early 1950s featured a baseball team who played local competition. Bisher reminisced of the rural south, but baseball was popular throughout the country, and local teams were everywhere: many were sandlot groups, some were associated with businesses and industries, and others were composed of accomplished semiprofessionals. The small town of Rosine, Kentucky-where Bill Monroe (1911-96), destined to become known as the "Father of Bluegrass Music," grew up-was no exception. Its team, the Red Legs, survived from the early 1900s until the late 1940s.4 Although poor eyesight precluded his playing the game as a youth, from the mid-1940s into the early 1950s, Monroe used baseball as a promotional device for his developing musical career. [End Page 103] Music, Baseball, and the Practice of Barnstorming Although political candidates are sometimes said to barnstorm, the term usually suggests traveling entertainment troupes. Many associate barnstorming with baseball, but different entertainers delivered their wares to the public this way, and they had done so from at least the early 1800s. Barthel's assertion that "Barnstorming is a phenomenon peculiar to baseball and to American sports," is overly restrictive, and the criteria he uses for his Major League Baseball-centric definition of the practice are shaped to support the data he presents.5 This suspect framework does not diminish the value of those data or his core contention that baseball barnstorming was pursued principally for economic reasons and secondarily for enjoyment, but barnstorming was never the sole province of major leaguers, and the same motives applied to other touring entertainers.6 Musician Bill Monroe barnstormed to deliver his music to the public, and for several years, he complemented shows with baseball games. His teams played local competition wherever they toured. He was a barnstormer musically, and he was a baseball barnstormer. His experiment was singular in that it occurred, evidently without precedent, in the field of county music. But it was not without precedent in the music industry. Many Big Band leaders of the late 1930s and early 1940s, including Cab Calloway, Tommy Dorsey, Lionel Hampton, Louis Armstrong, and Harry James, employed ballplayers to supplement their tours. They played against local teams and against each other in what became known as "The Big Band League." But these groups served more as diversions than as a commercial strategy.7 Aside from the musical genre and the explicit financial motive, what set Monroe's union of baseball and music apart from the Big Bands was having his musicians play ball.8 In later years, this changed, as he hired men strictly to play baseball. Barnstorming was a generalized method of disseminating entertainment. Baseball barnstorming-except in the Negro Leagues, where the practice was virtually an institution-typically occurred only when a team's regular season was completed. But players and teams not associated with organized baseball-for example, the House of David teams-often traveled throughout the year. If anything, with respect to the long and diverse tradition of barnstorming, Major League Baseball was an aberration, rather than the norm. Among country musicians, touring had long been a way to entertain, to gain a reputation, to refine skills, and to earn an income. Performers like Monroe, who became established stars with Nashville's Grand Ole Opry, participated in traveling summer tent shows. These tours accord with...

Bill Monroe: The Father of Bluegrass Music (review)

Reviewed by: Bill Monroe: The Father of Bluegrass Music Randall Zwally Bill Monroe: The Father of Bluegrass Music. DVD. Directed by Steve Gebhardt. [Oaks, PA]: MVD Visual, 2008, 1993. MVDV4577. $19.95. In 1939, a twenty-eight-year-old mandolin player from Kentucky formed a band that developed a new kind of music that was based on a blend of rural song styles. The band's name also helped christen the music with its new moniker. Bill Monroe and his Bluegrass Boys made history and strongly influenced a new generation of performers. [End Page 565] That is the focus of the newly re-released DVD, Bill Monroe: The Father of Bluegrass Music. There is no narrator for this documentary. But the story is told effectively by musicians speaking about Monroe's life and a few of them making music with him in order to reveal the heart of his musical character. Bluegrass legend Ricky Skaggs and the late folk musician John Hartford coax Monroe into relating the essence of his life's work by playing fiddle/mandolin duets with the then eighty-year-old Kentuckian. Each of those songs had been a key performance piece for Monroe. After each duet the younger musicians ask the seasoned performer important questions about what was happening in Monroe's career when he helped to make that piece a popular favorite. The technique is effective. Monroe, bit by bit, reveals the highlights of his impressive life. Through this process the father of bluegrass music also relates stories about those who influenced him like his fiddle playing Uncle Pen Vandiver and the black delta blues guitarist Arnold Schultz. Interspersed between these performance sessions are commentaries by luminaries of the current world of music who either performed with Monroe or were profoundly influenced by his music. Performers such as Roy Acuff, Emmylou Harris, Lester Flatt, Jerry Garcia, and many others weigh in with their accolades and fascinating stories. Important historical film clips show Monroe performing at various points in his career. Noticeably and sadly missing, however, is any commentary by Monroe's most famous banjo player, Earl Scruggs. Almost as famous as Monroe himself is his 1923 F-5 model Gibson mandolin. When Monroe's home was vandalized in 1985 the mandolin was smashed into over 200 pieces. George Gruhn (who is one of the nation's most highly respected experts on vintage fretted instruments) describes how the instrument was lovingly and meticulously restored to playing condition. This segment alone is worth the price of the DVD. This is a quality documentary. Filmed in 1993 and aired on PBS, it was first released as a DVD in 1999. It then went out of print and was just re-released this year. Some of the editing is a little abrupt. Some of the vintage film clips, of course, have less than desirable audio and video quality. The intonation and mountain harmonies may be a little hard on the ears of those unfamiliar with this type of music. However, this is a well-made, thoughtfully produced film that documents the birth and influence of a very unique style of music. If those with interest in the rural and ethnic music of North America patronize your library, this is a DVD that is certainly worthy of being included in your collection. Randall Zwally Messiah College Copyright © 2009 Music Library Association, Inc.

Bringing the Family Tradition in Bluegrass Music to the Music Classroom

National Standard 9, “understanding music in relation to history and culture,” forms the basis for this article about family traditions found in bluegrass music. With historical information about the roots of bluegrass music in the Old Time tradition, the author provides helpful links and instructional strategies to help general music students identify important components and concepts found in bluegrass music. The Digital Library of Appalachia is introduced to provide sound archives available to all teachers, and a sample lesson plan is included. Also included is a suggested listening repertoire, along with recommendations for use in the general music classroom.

Bluegrass Journey (review)

Reviewed by: Bluegrass Journey Kevin E. Mooney Bluegrass Journey. DVD. Directed by Ruth Oxenberg and Rob Schumer. With the Del McCoury Band, Tim O’Brien, Jerry Douglas, Peter Rowan, Tony Rice, Nickel Creek, Rhonda Vincent, the Lonesome River Band, Old Crow Medicine Show. Germantown, NY: Blue Stores Films, 2004. BSF 001. $24.99. Bluegrass Journey explores both the music and culture of contemporary bluegrass with its crosscurrents of traditionalism and innovation, while also capturing the enthusiastic participation of its fans. In an effort to define contemporary bluegrass through documentary film, producers/directors Ruth Oxenberg and Rob Schumer present onstage, offstage, backstage, and audience perspectives of bluegrass music and culture. Oxenberg is a former ABC News producer, who in 1996 had produced a feature story on bluegrass for ABC Nightly News with Peter Jennings. Schumer, Oxenberg's husband, is an eye surgeon and research scientist who comes to this project with no prior film production experience. Nancy Kennedy edited and co-directed the film. This eighty-six minute documentary focuses (perhaps excessively) on the music performances and audience members at the 2000 Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival on the Rothvoss Farm in Ancramdale, New York. Indeed, eleven of the fifteen scenes include footage from this festival. Additional segments covering the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) convention in Louisville, Kentucky, "the big daddy of bluegrass festivals," and two songs performed by Tim O'Brien and the Crossing at Blue Cats (Knoxville, TN), provide both continuity and diversity to this project. O'Brien is the primary voiceover, and other talking heads include Ronnie McCoury, Peter Rowan, and Pete Wernick. With the exception of brief archival footage of an eight-year-old Chris Thile and some photographs of Bill Monroe, most of the footage was filmed in 2000. Bluegrass fans will like the long list of performers and ensembles more often than not shown in complete performances, including Tim O'Brien, Jerry Douglas, the Del McCoury Band, Chris Thile, Bob Paisley and the Southern Grass, the Peter Rowan Texas Trio, Tony Rice, Pete Wernick, and numerous amateurs performing informally on the festival grounds and in the lobby and hotel rooms of the IBMA convention. Emphasizing bluegrass culture today, the filmmakers present only a brief history of the genre. Indeed, there is little film coverage or discussion of the early years of bluegrass, [End Page 184] and the liner notes, which could have fleshed out this history, are limited to two lists of featured music and performers. (Unfortunately, there are several errors in the order, which are duplicated in the closing credits of the film.) While the talking heads and voiceovers mention repeatedly the significance of Bill Monroe in the history of bluegrass, Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs are also part of that history but are not mentioned. Arguably due to its emphasis on contemporary bluegrass music as well as such a heavy focus on a single music festival, several key players in the bluegrass story are left out. For example, not covered are Alison Krause, Ricky Skaggs, and Ralph Stanley, to name only a few. Bluegrass experts will arguably find fault with these limitations; nevertheless, viewers with less experience of the genre will likely be inspired by both the quality and diversity of contemporary bluegrass music as well as the infectious enthusiasm of the fans, both successfully captured in this documentary. Kevin E. Mooney University of Texas, Austin Copyright © 2006 the Music Library Association, Inc.

The Bill Monroe reader

Tell 'em I'm a farmer with a mandolin and a high tenor voice, Bill Monroe said. Known as the Father of Bluegrass Music, Monroe pioneered a whole new category of music and inspired generations of musicians and fans. Yet from his founding of the original bluegrass band through six decades of performing he remained an enigmatic figure, a compelling mixture of fierce intensity, homespun modesty, and musical integrity. Determined to play the mandolin in a way it had never been played before, Monroe distinguished himself in the mid-1930s with the Monroe Brothers, then began forming his own band, the Blue Grass Boys, in 1938. By the mid-1940s other bands were copying his and a new style, bluegrass music, was born. While country music moved toward electrification, Monroe maintained his acoustic ensemble and developed his high, lonesome sound, performing nearly up to his death in 1996. In this eclectic, richly illustrated reader, former Blue Grass Boy Tom Ewing gathers the most significant and illuminating of the many articles that have been written about Monroe. Through the writings of nearly sixty observers, interviewers, admirers, folklorists, and other scholars, along with Ewing's astute commentary, The Bill Monroe Reader offers a multifaceted view of one of the most influential country musicians of the twentieth century. Lively, heartfelt, and informative, The Bill Monroe Reader is a fitting tribute to the man and the musician who transformed the traditional music of western Kentucky into an international sensation.

High Lonesome: The Story of Bluegrass Music (review)

Reviews417 High Lonesome: The Story of Bluegrass Music. Written, directed, and produced by Rachel Liebling, VHS video format, 95 minutes, color. A Northside Films production, 1991. Distributed on videotape by Shanachie Entertainment (P.O. Box 208, Newton, NJ 07860), 1994. Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, CMH Records (P.O. Box 39439, Los Angeles, CA 90039), CD-8007. Reviewed by Todd Moye, a graduate student in history at the University ofTexas at Austin. Bluegrass, more than any other form of American music, has always been less about lost lovers and more about dead or far-away mamas. High Lonesome: The Story ofBluegrass Music, a recent film written, directed, and produced by Rachel Liebling, captures this dynamic with art and poignancy as it traces the rich history of this uniquely diverse and vibrant, particularly southern music. In this documentary the songs tell the story—and to great effect—although Liebling does rely heavily on sequences of black-and-white archival still photographs as a narrative device. (Surely there was a different way of making documentaries before Ken Burns's style became so popular, but this reviewer is hard-pressed to remember what it looked like.) Liebling pieces together hundreds of photographs, a few live interviews, several minutes of concert footage, and an impressive number of bluegrass songs to tell the story of this music and its performers. Her rich narrative centers on the legendary figure of Bill Monroe, who died on 9 September 1996 at the age of eighty-four. Monroe is known as "The Father of Bluegrass" and, by extrapolation, "The Grandfather of Country Music." No title has ever been more well-deserved than the former, but after even a brief perusal of what passes today for country and western music, one may well wonder whether or not the grand and sentimental old mandolin player would consider this latter appellation a compliment. Even so, High Lonesome depicts Monroe as a patriarch (in the best sense of that word) whose musical vision was almost single-handedly responsible for the creation and continuation of bluegrass. This documentary could just as easily be subtitled A Walk Through the Twentieth Century with Bill Monroe. Liebling captures the bittersweet nature of Monroe's memories of his childhood in the hills of ultra-rural Kentucky, where he learned the music of his Scotch-Irish ancestors. With a clever touch, Liebling emphasizes the region's Scotch-Irish roots by piping in Monroe's haunting version of "Danny Boy" over archival images of Appalachia. Rachel Liebling is especially wise to explore the relationship between an African American railroad worker named Arnold Schultz and Pendleton Vandiver, a fiddler relative of Monroe's and the subject of one of his early hits, "Uncle Pen." In the early decades of this century railroads and timber industries began to cut through the Appalachians, opening up many areas to new cultural influences for the first time literally in centuries. Comparatively worldly railroad workers like Schultz introduced the area's traditional mountain musicians to the wide world of the blues and beyond. Vandiver, who had grown up playing fiddle music much like that played by his ancestors in the highlands of the American South and Great Britain for hundreds of years, learned blues phrasing and composition from the guitarist Schultz, and Bill Monroe learned from his Uncle Pen. While African American railroad workers, traveling minstrels, and, increasingly, radio performers opened up worlds of musical possibility to rural whites, mail-order catalogs offering mass-produced exotic instruments that even coal miners and tenant farmers could afford began to appear. How must the world view of, say, Galax, Virginia, have changed 418Southern Cultures when the first Hawaiian steel guitar—or, for that matter, the first syncopated rhythms inspired by African Americans—showed up at a picking session or a camp meeting? Bluegrass is a distinctly southern music, even though much of its history has been made outside of the South proper. Not all demographers would consider Kentucky and West Virginia part of the South, and much of bluegrass's early popularity in the 1930s and 1940s depended on midwestern metropolitan radio stations that played the new music for émigrés of Appalachia who needed to know "how the...

Traveling the High Way Home: Ralph Stanley and the World of Traditional Bluegrass Music

Traveling the High Way Home: Ralph Stanley and the World of Traditional Bluegrass Music

Traveling the High Way Home. Ralph Stanley and the World of Traditional Bluegrass Music

This portrait describes and evaluates Ralph Stanley's more than 40-year career with his Clinch Mountain Boys. Wright also reveals how Stanley's life and music developed after the death of his brother, Carter. An appendix covers Stanley's prolific recording activity, including 45 albums over a 20-year period. 23 photos.

Traveling the High Way Home: Ralph Stanley and the World of Traditional Bluegrass Music.

Traveling the High Way Home: Ralph Stanley and the World of Traditional Bluegrass Music.

Traveling the High Way Home: Ralph Stanley and the World of Traditional Bluegrass Music

Traveling the High Way Home: Ralph Stanley and the World of Traditional Bluegrass Music

99 Years is Almost For Life: Punishment for Violent Crime in Bluegrass Music

99 Years is Almost For Life: Punishment for Violent Crime in Bluegrass Music

Hillbilly, Country, and Bluegrass Music

Hillbilly, Country, and Bluegrass Music