The sad news of Tony Rice’s passing on Christmas Day has prompted many well deserved and insightful tributes to his extraordinary skills as a guitar innovator and singer. It’s safe to say that Tony Rice’s influence is heard in nearly … Read More
Happy New Year. Let’s hope for better things for all of us in 2021. This week’s post was suggested by a reader who directed my attention to a video on You Tube’s Fiddle Channel. The Fiddle Channel is the creation … Read More
My last post explored some of the reasons that Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys became the most popular bluegrass band in the history of the music. Their extraordinary talent and that of the Foggy Mountain Boys, … Read More
When Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs left Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys in 1948, neither of them could have foreseen that their partnership would become the most successful band in bluegrass history. My next two blog posts will … Read More
Blog Post #10 discussed The Anthology of American Folk Music, consisting of 84 recordings of folk, old time, blues, Cajun, and gospel music originally released in the 1920s and early 1930s. These recordings were collected and annotated by disc collector … Read More
As I mentioned last week, in 1972, Mike Auldridge released his first solo dobro recording, “Dobro,” and his new band, the Seldom Scene, released its first recording, Act I. Those recordings, and the ones that quickly followed, announced that a … Read More
The subject of my next two posts is Mike Auldridge, best known as the long-time dobroist with the Seldom Scene. (The term “Dobro” is a trademark now owned by Gibson. The generic name is “resonator guitar.” During his career Mike … Read More
Andy Bing’s Bluegrass Blog – Week 10 Blog posts for weeks seven and nine mentioned in passing the Anthology of American Folk Music, which was issued on six LPs on Folkways in 1952. This week’s post is devoted to the … Read More
The week seven blog post discussed the 1965 documentary “Bluegrass Roots,” which focused on the old time and folk roots of bluegrass. A lot of us, this writer included, first heard bluegrass during the “folk revival” of the late 1950s … Read More
The Stanley Brothers And The Beginnings of a Genre The mid-1940s edition of Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys, featuring banjoist Earl Scruggs and guitarist Lester Flatt, is generally thought of as the “original” bluegrass band. It was “original” … Read More