(Vocal/instrumental group, 1974–97) When Kentucky’s Don Parmley (banjo, vocals, b. 1933) found himself in Los Angeles in the early 1960s, he subbed for Earl Scruggs on The Beverly Hillbillies. In 1974, he formed The Bluegrass Cardinals with his son David Parmley (vocals, guitar, b. 1943) and mandolinist Randy Graham. The two youngsters were such ...
Unlike practically any other strain of indigenous American music, bluegrass can be traced back to a particular time and a particular group of men: Kentucky-born mandolin player/bandleader Bill Monroe and a select handful of musicians he gathered in his band, The Bluegrass Boys. Monroe and the celebrated 1940s vintage line-up of The Bluegrass Boys first transformed traditional acoustic guitar-fiddle-bass-fiddle ...
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 ...
The temptation is to think of bluegrass as an ancient music, for its repertoire and instrumentation stretch back into the shadowy mists of the nineteenth century. But in many ways bluegrass was a radical innovation, a music of the modern world, a sound invented just a decade before rock’n’roll. It was a new/old music, and that central ...
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 ...
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 ...
Even when he was sober, Jimmy Martin (vocals, guitar, 1927–2005) was willing to tell anyone who would listen why he was the ‘king of bluegrass’. After all, didn’t Bill Monroe’s sound change dramatically when Martin joined The Blue Grass Boys in 1949 ? Didn’t Martin create a brand new honky-tonk/bluegrass hybrid on his great Decca recordings of ...
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 ...
Bill Monroe invented the ‘high, lonesome’ sound of bluegrass vocals, but The Stanley Brothers perfected it. Ralph and Carter Stanley refined those vocals into close, three-part harmonies that were unprecedented at the time and which have had a lasting influence ever since. If Bill Monroe And The Blue Grass Boys set the standard for bluegrass picking, The ...
(Vocals, guitar, 1930–93) After three years of pioneering three-part ‘high-lead’ harmonies with The Osborne Brothers, Red Allen split with his Ohio pals, convinced he could be a bluegrass star in his own right. He and another Dayton friend, mandolinist Frank Wakefield, moved to Washington in 1960 and recorded with musicians such as Chubby Wise and ...
(Fiddle, b. 1926) Bill Monroe often introduced Kenny Baker onstage as ‘the greatest fiddler in bluegrass music’. It was no exaggeration, for Baker, a third-generation fiddler from Kentucky, was capable of blistering breaks, elegant, long-bow phrases and swinging syncopation. He joined Monroe in 1956 and played with him off and on for more than 30 ...
(Guitar, vocals, b. 1938) Blake grew up as a traditional bluegrass musician in Georgia, but in 1963 he moved to Nashville, where he joined The Johnny Cash Show and recorded with Bob Dylan and Kris Kristofferson. His combination of virtuoso skills, a traditional background and collaborations with innovators led to dozens of albums under his own ...
(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 ...
(Fiddle, 1928–2005) Vassar Clements was just 14 years old when he joined Bill Monroe And The Bluegrass Boys in 1949. His virtuosic fiddling won him jobs with Jim And Jesse in 1958 and Jimmy Martin in 1967, but it was Clements’ emergence as a key figure on 1972’s Will The Circle Be Unbroken album that led him to the ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1959–1990s) After a few tentative starts, The Country Gentlemen settled on their classic line-up in 1959: Charlie Waller (vocals, guitar, 1935–2004), John Duffey (mandolin, vocals, 1934–96), Eddie Adcock (banjo, vocals, b. 1938) and Tom Gray (bass, b. 1941). They were all great bluegrass pickers, but Duffey’s urban brand of ...
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