SEARCH RESULTS FOR: bluegrass
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the innocent farm girl, but they wanted those lyrics delivered with modern, sophisticated harmonies and with a ‘high, lonesome’ ache that implied that past was slipping away. Bluegrass answered all these needs. It began as Bill Monroe’s new twist on the old string-band sound, but it was so effective at meeting a great need that it soon ...

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

Johnny Cash, their preferred medium was not poetry or the novel but rather country songs. For them, alternative country was inevitable. In parallel fashion, most of the bluegrass musicians born before 1950 clung to the format created by Bill Monroe because it represented – much like the church it so often celebrated – a rock of stability in ...

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

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 ...

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

younger acts looked to Earle and his generation as role models. Feeling Alright Earle’s first move after prison was to ease back into the spotlight with an acoustic string-band album. Bluegrass had been a purification rite for progressive-country musicians – a way to flush out trendy distractions and to reconnect with essential roots – ever since Emmylou Harris had made Roses ...

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

in the 1980s, the new group summed up the genre’s long history of improvising genius by choosing the name Cowboy Jazz. And when Bill Monroe transformed string-band music into bluegrass in the 1940s, he was unleashing a new kind of solo in much the same way that Louis Armstrong had when he transformed ragtime and Dixieland into modern jazz. ...

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

topped the country and pop charts and sold more than four million copies. The group revived the late 1930s and early 1940s sound when old-time string-band music was morphing into bluegrass, but did so with a modern, whoop-it-up energy. One could hail the band’s popularity as a triumph for tradition and authenticity – except for the fact that The ...

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

More Miles Than Money and 2001’s A Man Under The Influence. His return in 2006 with The Boxing Mirror was universally welcomed. Styles & Forms | Alt. Country & The Bluegrass Revival Personalities | Robbie Fulks | Alt. Country & The Bluegrass Revival ...

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

In 1995, Alison Krauss (vocals, fiddle, b. 1971) achieved a level of success no other bluegrass act had ever matched. Her 1995 retrospective album, Now That I’ve Found You: A Collection, went double platinum, and she won the CMA Awards for Single, Female Vocalist, Vocal Event and Emerging Artist as well as the ...

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

(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. ...

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

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 ...

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

Oranges never sold many records, but they made two terrific albums (1990’s Corn River and 1994’s The Crying Tree) thanks to some smart songwriting, a savvy mix of bluegrass and British folk-rock and the contrast between fizzy male vocals and melancholy female vocals. The band was founded by Jimmy Ryan (vocals, mandolin, b. 1959), guitarist Mark Spencer ...

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

Julie recorded four Christian-pop albums and finally moved to Nashville in 1993 to record their remarkable run of secular alt.-country albums. Styles & Forms | Alt. Country & The Bluegrass Revival Personalities | The Nashville Bluegrass Band | Alt. Country & The Bluegrass Revival ...

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

the twangiest of Alvin’s projects was the part-time band The Knitters, which also featured John Doe and Exene Cervenka of X. Styles & Forms | Alt. Country & The Bluegrass Revival Personalities | Blood Oranges | Alt. Country & The Bluegrass Revival ...

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

(Mandolin, b. 1945) Grisman was a city kid from New York who fell so deeply in love with the bluegrass music of Bill Monroe that he devoted himself to mastering his repertoire and his instrument, the mandolin. Grisman produced a record by his bluegrass heroes Frank Wakefield and Red Allen in 1963 and joined their band in 1966. But ...

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

(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 ...

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