Author: Gary B. Reid
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 025209672X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 313
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Book Description
The Music of the Stanley Brothers brings together forty years of passionate research by scholar and record label owner Gary B. Reid. A leading authority on Carter and Ralph Stanley, Reid augments his own vast knowledge of their music with interviews, documents ranging from books to folios sold by the brothers at shows, and the words of Ralph Stanley, former band members, guest musicians, session producers, songwriters, and bluegrass experts. The result is a reference that illuminates the Stanleys' art and history. It is all here: dates and locations; the roster of players on well-known and obscure sessions alike; master/matrix and catalog/release numbers, with reissue information; a full discography sorting out the Stanleys' complex recording history; the stories behind the music; and exquisitely informed biographical notes that place events in the context of the brothers' careers and lives. Monumental and indispensable, The Music of the Stanley Brothers provides fans and scholars alike with a guide for immersion in the long career and breathtaking repertoire of two legendary American musicians.
Author: David W. Johnson
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1617036463
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 327
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Book Description
The first biography of two integral bluegrass innovators and touchstones of old-time country music authenticity
Author: David W. Johnson
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 162674243X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 454
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Book Description
Carter and Ralph Stanley—the Stanley Brothers—are comparable to Bill Monroe and Flatt & Scruggs as important members of the earliest generation of bluegrass musicians. In this first biography of the brothers, author David W. Johnson documents that Carter (1925–1966) and Ralph (b. 1927) were equally important contributors to the tradition of old-time country music. Together from 1946 to 1966, the Stanley Brothers began their careers performing in the schoolhouses of southwestern Virginia and expanded their popularity to the concert halls of Europe. In order to re-create this post–World War II journey through the changing landscape of American music, the author interviewed Ralph Stanley, the family of Carter Stanley, former members of the Clinch Mountain Boys, and dozens of musicians and friends who knew the Stanley Brothers as musicians and men. The late Mike Seeger allowed Johnson to use his invaluable 1966 interviews with the brothers. Notable old-time country and bluegrass musicians such as George Shuffler, Lester Woodie, Larry Sparks, and the late Wade Mainer shared their recollections of Carter and Ralph. Lonesome Melodies begins and ends in the mountains of southwestern Virginia. Carter and Ralph were born there and had an early publicity photograph taken at the Cumberland Gap. In December 1966, pallbearers walked up Smith Ridge to bring Carter to his final resting place. In the intervening years, the brothers performed thousands of in-person and radio shows, recorded hundreds of songs and tunes for half a dozen record labels and tried to keep pace with changing times while remaining true to the spirit of old-time country music. As a result of their accomplishments, they have become a standard of musical authenticity.
Author: Ralph Stanley
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101148780
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 400
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Book Description
A giant of American music opens the book on his wrenching professional and personal journeys, paying tribute to the vanishing Appalachian culture that gave him his voice. He was there at the beginning of bluegrass. Yet his music, forged in the remote hills and hollows of Southwest Virginia, has even deeper roots. In Man of Constant Sorrow, Dr. Ralph Stanley gives a surprisingly candid look back on his long and incredible career as the patriarch of old-time mountain music. Marked by Dr. Ralph Stanley?s banjo picking, his brother Carter?s guitar playing, and their haunting and distinctive harmonies, the Stanley Brothers began their career in 1946 and blessed the world of bluegrass with hundreds of classic songs, including ?White Dove,? ?Rank Stranger,? and what has become Dr. Ralph?s signature song, ?Man of Constant Sorrow.? Carter died in 1966 after years of alcohol abuse, but Dr. Ralph Stanley carried on and is still at the top of his game, playing to audiences across the country today at age eighty-one. Rarely giving interviews, he now grants fans the book they have been waiting for, filled with frank recollections, from his boyhood of dire poverty in the Appalachian coalfields to his early musical success with his brother, to years of hard traveling on the road with the Clinch Mountain Boys, to the recent, jubilant revival of a sound he helped create. The story of how a musical art now popular around the world was crafted by two brothers from a dying mountain culture, Man of Constant Sorrow captures a life harmonized with equal measures of tragedy and triumph.
Author: Thomas A. Adler
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252078101
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 290
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Book Description
Bean Blossom, Indiana is home to the annual Bean Blossom Bluegrass Festival, founded in 1967 by Bill Monroe, the father of bluegrass. Here, Adler discusses the development of bluegrass music, the many personalities involved in the bluegrass music scene, the interplay of local, regional, and national interests, and more.
Author: DIX BRUCE
Publisher: Mel Bay Publications
ISBN: 1610658795
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
A collection of over 200 great Bluegrass, Old Time, Country and Gospel standards. Melodies are presented with standard notation and tablature along with lyrics and chords.Learn to play songs written and recorded by the giants of traditional American music: Bill Monroe, the Stanley Brothers, Flatt & Scruggs, Ralph Stanley, the Osborne Brothers, Jimmy Martin, Doc Watson and many more. Also included: Step-by-Step instruction on how to transpose any song to any key!The two CDs include recordings of EVERY song in the book.
Author: John Wright
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252064784
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 308
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Book Description
John Wright's collection of interviews and stories about Ralph Stanley puts readers around a campfire at a bluegrass festival while old-timers weave yarns far into the night. Told by those who create, produce, stage, love, and virtually live for old-time mountain music, these tales come from the longtime coworkers, sidemen, promoters, friends, and others in the orbit of the music legend. The storytellers include a scholar who knew Stanley from the early days, the housewife who ran the Stanley Brothers Fan Club, and a souvenir seller for whom the discovery of Stanley's music was almost a religious experience. Wright also uses these invaluable oral histories as a foundation to describe and evaluate Stanley's long career with the Clinch Mountain Boys and the development of his music after the death of his brother Carter. An appendix covers Ralph's prolific recording activity through the mid-1990s, including a breathtaking forty-five albums compromising more than 550 songs and tunes.
Author: Paul Stanley
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062114069
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 360
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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES and INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER In Face the Music, Paul Stanley—the co-founder and famous “Starchild” frontman of KISS—reveals for the first time the incredible highs and equally incredible lows in his life both inside and outside the band. Face the Music is the shocking, funny, smart, inspirational story of one of rock’s most enduring icons and the group he helped create, define, and immortalize. Stanley mixes compelling personal revelations and gripping, gritty war stories that will surprise even the most steadfast member of the KISS Army. He takes us back to his childhood in the 1950s and ’60s, a traumatic time made more painful thanks to a physical deformity. Born with a condition called microtia, he grew up partially deaf, with only one ear. But this instilled in him an inner drive to succeed in the most unlikely of pursuits: music. With never-before-seen photos and images throughout, Stanley’s memoir is a fully realized and unflinching portrait of a rock star, a chronicle of the stories behind the famous anthems, the many brawls and betrayals, and all the drama and pyrotechnics on and off the stage. Raw and confessional, Stanley offers candid insights into his personal relationships, and the turbulent dynamics with his bandmates over the past four decades. And no one comes out unscathed—including Stanley himself. “People say I was brave to write such a revealing book, but I wrote it because I needed to personally reflect on my own life. I know everyone will see themselves somewhere in this book, and where my story might take them is why I’m sharing it.” —Paul Stanley
Author: Neil V. Rosenberg
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 025205623X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 456
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Book Description
Spanning over 1,000 separate performances, The Music of Bill Monroe presents a complete chronological list of all of Bill Monroe’s commercially released sound and visual recordings. Each chapter begins with a narrative describing Monroe’s life and career at that point, bringing in producers, sidemen, and others as they become part of the story. The narratives read like a “who’s who” of bluegrass, connecting Monroe to the music’s larger history and containing many fascinating stories. The second part of each chapter presents the discography. Information here includes the session’s place, date, time, and producer; master/matrix numbers, song/tune titles, composer credits, personnel, instruments, and vocals; and catalog/release numbers and reissue data. The only complete bio-discography of this American musical icon, The Music of Bill Monroe is the starting point for any study of Monroe’s contributions as a composer, interpreter, and performer.
Author: John Cohen
Publisher: powerHouse Books
ISBN: 9781576879269
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Speed Bumps on a Dirt Roadis a living document of country music's founding fathers and mothers. John Cohen photographed musicians, at home, backstage at public events, from the wings at fiddlers' conventions, out in country music parks, and in the studio for live radio show performances and recording sessions. Back in 1961 it was still possible to know a few of America's original country musicians from the '20s and '30s. Renowned and celebrated musician and artist John Cohen came of age at the confluence of old time and early bluegrass music, the historic intersection of traditional and folk music. Cohen traveled the country playing music, recording, and documenting what was to be a generation of musicians who would influence American music and culture for decades to come. Traveling between the Union Grove fiddlers' convention to the Grand Ole Opry to a coal celebration in Hazard, Kentucky, Cohen made historic photographs of performers like Bill Monroe and Doc Watson, the country's very first all-bluegrass show, and a bluegrass bar in Baltimore, among much more.Speed Bumps on a Dirt Roadpresents old time music as the root of country music. Includes photographs of: Flatt & Scruggs, fiddler "Eck" Robertsonin Amarillo, Texas, Doc Watson, bluegrass fiddler "Tex" Logan, the Stanley Brothers at Sunset Park, Sara and Maybelle of the Carter Family, and Cousin Emmy, Alice & Hazel, and a dulcimer in a parking lot.
