Bluegrass

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When Vassar Clements formed a band called Hillbilly Jazz in 1975, Bill Monroe’s former fiddler pulled the cover off the hidden connection between country music and jazz. The two genres had more in common than most people thought. After all, Jimmie Rodgers recorded with Louis Armstrong early in their careers; jazz legend Charlie Christian debuted on Bob Wills’ radio show; Les Paul (then known as Rhubarb Red) was a country ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen
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Before the Second World War, it was possible to live in certain areas of the USA in almost complete isolation. In the time of The Carter Family, many rural residents never travelled more than 80 km (50 miles) from their birthplace. But that began to change. The First World War, the Great Depression and the Second World War took young men out of their small towns and sent them around the ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen
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(Banjo, pedal steel guitar, b. 1939) Keith grew up in Boston, but he fell in love with bluegrass and mastered the Scruggs roll so well that he could play fast, fluid fiddle tunes on the banjo. He founded a duo with college roommate Jim Rooney (vocals, guitar, b. 1938) and in 1963 joined Bill Monroe. Keith went on to become a much-in-demand session musician and new-acoustic-music pioneer, recording with Judy Collins, ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen
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Few genres are as closely identified with one person as bluegrass is with Bill Monroe (vocals, mandolin, 1911–96). Monroe not only defined the style’s instrumentation, style and repertoire, he also hired most of its major figures and gave the music its name – taken from his group, The Blue Grass Boys. Kentucky Roots Raised on his father’s 650-acre farm in western Kentucky, Bill Monroe was a shy boy, thanks to his poor ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen
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In his short life, California guitarist-mandolinist Clarence White (1944–73) conceived innovations that would inspire country and rock guitarists from both a stylistic and technical perspective long after his death. He brought bluegrass picking to the forefront of rock, turning acoustic guitar into a solo instrument. He developed a device for electric guitar that let traditional guitarists sound like pedal-steel players. As a member of The Byrds from 1968 to 1973, ...

Source: Rock Guitar Heroes, consultant editor Rusty Cutchin
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(Vocals, guitar, b. 1939) Del McCoury dominated bluegrass music between 1994 and 2004, winning the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Entertainer Of The Year award eight times. His band included two of his sons – mandolinist Ronnie and banjoist Rob – trained almost from birth to play with the hard, driving rhythm and to sing in the high, lonesome wail of their father. Del learned those traits from his brief stint with ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen
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(Vocals, guitar, b. 1923) Arthel ‘Doc’ Watson was a blind, 37-year farm worker who was playing old-time country and rockabilly on weekends when folklorist Ralph Rinzler came across him in the North Carolina mountains in 1960. Recognizing Watson as one of the most dazzling guitar virtuosos of his generation, Rinzler soon convinced him to perform and record as a solo acoustic guitarist. Since the early 1960s, he has toured and recorded ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen
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(Vocals, mandolin, b. 1944) Doyle Lawson established a reputation as a terrific mandolinist in the style of his hero Bill Monroe during stints with J. D. Crowe And The New South (1966–71) and The Country Gentlemen (1972–79). But when the eastern Tennesseean started his own band, Doyle Lawson And Quicksilver, in 1979, he took bluegrass in a new direction. Lawson applied the moving, counterpoint harmonies of his favourite gospel quartets to ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen
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(Singer-songwriter, b. 1947) Possessing the voice of an angel, Harris is one of the most adventurous country artists of the past four decades. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, she released a folk album in 1969; but it was her duets with Gram Parsons in the early 1970s that set her on the road. Fine solo sets with Parsons’ backing musicians, including the legendary James Burton (guitar) and Glen D. Hardin (piano) followed. In ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock, general editor Michael Heatley
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Lester Flatt (1914–79) was relieved when Dave ‘Stringbean’ Akeman left Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys in 1945, for Flatt felt the group was better off without a banjo, which had been hindering their efforts to play faster and cleaner than anyone had before. But Monroe agreed to audition a 21-year-old banjoist from western North Carolina, and Earl Scruggs (b. 1924) played the old fiddle tune ‘Sally Goodin’ with the Carolina ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen
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(Vocals, guitar, b. 1935) Bluegrass was an all-boys club when Hazel Dickens came along from the coalfields of West Virginia with a ‘high, lonesome’ soprano that grabbed the attention of anyone who tried to ignore her. Her singing was powerful enough, but she also developed into a terrific writer of songs about coalmining tragedies and mistreated women, which were recorded by the likes of Dolly Parton and Lynn Morris. Styles & Forms ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen
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(Vocals, guitar, 1922–2003) In an era when every other singer was trying to sound like Bill Monroe or Carter Stanley, Hylo Brown sounded like no one else. An Ohio defence plant worker who moonlighted at hillbilly bars during the Second World War, Kentucky’s Frank Brown Jr. became renowned for a vocal range that went from a warm baritone to a dizzying falsetto, and a local dj dubbed him Hylo Brown. He ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen
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(Banjo, guitar, vocals, b. 1937) James Dee Crowe was just a 19-year-old kid from Kentucky when he was hired by Jimmy Martin in 1956. By 1966 he had developed a banjo style that combined Earl Scruggs’ tumbling roll with Martin’s bouncy pulse. The line-up of Crowe, Bobby Slone, Tony Rice, Ricky Skaggs and Jerry Douglas made only one album, 1975’s J. D. Crowe And The New South, but it was an ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen
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A leading figure on America’s West Coast music scene, Jerry Garcia was born in San Francisco in 1942. His father was a retired professional musician, his mother a pianist. The musically inclined Jerry began taking piano lessons as a child. The emergence of Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran inspired him to learn guitar at 15, his first instrument being a Danelectro. He took an arts course at San Francisco ...

Source: Rock Guitar Heroes, consultant editor Rusty Cutchin
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(Vocal/instrumental duo, 1945–80s) In much the same way that Earl Scruggs revolutionized the banjo with his three-finger roll, Jesse McReynolds (vocals, mandolin, b. 1927) transformed the mandolin with his pioneering cross-picking and split-string innovations. Like Scruggs, he was lucky to have a partner with an appealing tenor voice to make it easier for the public to embrace these instrumental innovations. His brother ​Jim (vocals, guitar, 1927–2002) sang lead and Jesse harmonized ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen
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