Lonesome Melodies

Lonesome Melodies PDF Author: David W. Johnson
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 162674243X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 478

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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.

Earl Scruggs and the 5-String Banjo

Earl Scruggs and the 5-String Banjo PDF Author: Earl Scruggs
Publisher: Hal Leonard
ISBN: 1476859337
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 534

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Book Description
(Banjo). The best-selling banjo method in the world! Earl Scruggs's legendary method has helped thousands of banjo players get their start. The "Revised and Enhanced Edition" features more songs, updated lessons, and many other improvements. It includes everything you need to know to start playing banjo, including: a history of the 5-string banjo, getting acquainted with the banjo, Scruggs tuners, how to read music, chords, how to read tablature, right-hand rolls and left-hand techniques, banjo tunings, exercises in picking, over 40 songs, how to build a banjo, autobiographical notes, and much more! Includes audio of Earl Scruggs playing and explaining over 60 examples!

Earl Scruggs

Earl Scruggs PDF Author: Gordon Castelnero
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442268662
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
As Earl Scruggs picked his banjo with machine gun precision at his 1945 debut at the Ryman Auditorium, he set in motion a successful career and enduring legacy that would eclipse anything the humble farm boy from North Carolina could have imagined. Scruggs’s revolutionary three-finger roll patterns electrified audiences and transformed the banjo into a mainstream solo instrument pursued by innumerable musicians. In Earl Scruggs: Banjo Icon, Gordon Castelnero and David L. Russell chronicle the life and legacy of the man who single-handedly reinvigorated the five-string banjo and left an indelible mark on bluegrass and folk music. After his tenure with the father of bluegrass music, Bill Monroe, Scruggs formed (with Lester Flatt) the Foggy Mountain Boys, also known as Flatt and Scruggs; the Earl Scruggs Revue with his sons; and finally his Family & Friends band. Scruggs released more than forty albums and reached millions of fans through performances on The Beverly Hillbillies and his music’s inclusion in the 1967 movie Bonnie and Clyde. Over his long career, Scruggs received numerous accolades and collaborated with stars such as Billy Joel, Elton John, Sting, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Vince Gill, Travis Tritt, the Byrds, and Steve Martin. Through interwoven interviews with the Scruggs family and more than sixty notable musicians and entertainers, Castelnero and Russell reveal that, despite the fame Scruggs achieved, he never lost his humility and integrity. This biography testifies to Scruggs’s enduring influence and sheds light on the history of bluegrass for musicians, students, and anyone entranced by Scruggs’s unmistakable sound.

Earl Scruggs and Foggy Mountain Breakdown

Earl Scruggs and Foggy Mountain Breakdown PDF Author: Thomas Goldsmith
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252051823
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
Recorded in 1949, "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" changed the face of American music. Earl Scruggs's instrumental essentially transformed the folk culture that came before it while helping to energize bluegrass's entry into the mainstream in the 1960s. The song has become a gateway to bluegrass for musicians and fans alike as well as a happily inescapable track in film and television. Thomas Goldsmith explores the origins and influence of "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" against the backdrop of Scruggs's legendary career. Interviews with Scruggs, his wife Louise, disciple Bela Fleck, and sidemen like Curly Seckler, Mac Wiseman, and Jerry Douglas shed light on topics like Scruggs's musical evolution and his working relationship with Bill Monroe. As Goldsmith shows, the captivating sound of "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" helped bring back the banjo from obscurity and distinguished the low-key Scruggs as a principal figure in American acoustic music.Passionate and long overdue, Earl Scruggs and Foggy Mountain Breakdown takes readers on an ear-opening journey into two minutes and forty-three seconds of heaven.

String Bands in the North Carolina Piedmont

String Bands in the North Carolina Piedmont PDF Author: Bob Carlin
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 078648036X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
String band music is most commonly associated with the mountains of North Carolina and other rural areas of the Blue Ridge and Appalachian mountains, but it was just as abundant in Piedmont region of North Carolina, albeit with different influences and stylistic conventions. This work focuses exclusively on the history and culture of the area, the music's development and the changes within traditional communities of the Piedmont. It begins with a discussion of the settlement of the Piedmont in the mid-1700s and early references to secular folk music, including the attitudes the various ethnic and religious groups had on music and dance, the introduction of the fiddle and the banjo, and outside influences such as minstrel shows, Hawaiian music and classical banjo. It then goes on to cover African-Americans and string band music; the societal functions of square dances held at private homes and community centers; the ways in which musicians learned to play the music and bought their instruments; fiddler's conventions and their history as community fundraisers; the recording industry and Piedmont musicians who cut recordings, including Ernest Thompson and the North Carolina Cooper Boys; Bascom Lamar Lunsford and the Carolina Folk Festival; the influence of live radio stations, including WPTF in Raleigh, WGWR in Asheboro, WSJS in Winston-Salem, WBIG in Greensboro and WBT in Charlotte; the first generation of locally-bred country entertainers, including Charlie Monroe's Kentucky Partners, Gurney Thomas and Glenn Thompson; and bluegrass and musical change following World War II.

Bluegrass

Bluegrass PDF Author: Neil V. Rosenberg
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252072451
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 516

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Book Description
The twentieth anniversary paperback edition, updated with a new preface Winner of the International Bluegrass Music Association Distinguished Achievement Award and of the Country Music People Critics' Choice Award for Favorite Country Book of the Year Beginning with the musical cultures of the American South in the 1920s and 1930s, Bluegrass: A History traces the genre through its pivotal developments during the era of Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys in the forties. It describes early bluegrass's role in postwar country music, its trials following the appearance of rock and roll, its embracing by the folk music revival, and the invention of bluegrass festivals in the mid_sixties. Neil V. Rosenberg details the transformation of this genre into a self-sustaining musical industry in the seventies and eighties is detailed and, in a supplementary preface written especially for this new edition, he surveys developments in the bluegrass world during the last twenty years. Featuring an amazingly extensive bibliography, discography, notes, and index, this book is one of the most complete and thoroughly researched books on bluegrass ever written.

Bluegrass Bluesman

Bluegrass Bluesman PDF Author: Josh Graves
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252094735
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 179

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Book Description
A pivotal member of the hugely successful bluegrass band Flatt and Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys, Dobro pioneer Josh Graves (1927-2006) was a living link between bluegrass music and the blues. In Bluegrass Bluesman, this influential performer shares the story of his lifelong career in music. In lively anecdotes, Graves describes his upbringing in East Tennessee and the climate in which bluegrass music emerged during the 1940s. Deeply influenced by the blues, he adapted Earl Scruggs's revolutionary banjo style to the Dobro resonator slide guitar and gave the Foggy Mountain Boys their distinctive sound. Graves' accounts of daily life on the road through the 1950s and 1960s reveal the band's dedication to musical excellence, Scruggs' leadership, and an often grueling life on the road. He also comments on his later career when he played in Lester Flatt's Nashville Grass and the Earl Scruggs Revue and collaborated with the likes of Boz Scaggs, Charlie McCoy, Kenny Baker, Eddie Adcock, Jesse McReynolds, Marty Stuart, Jerry Douglas, Alison Krauss, and his three musical sons. A colorful storyteller, Graves brings to life the world of an American troubadour and the mountain culture that he never left behind. Born in Tellico Plains, Tennessee, Josh Graves (1927-2006) is universally acknowledged as the father of the bluegrass Dobro. In 1997 he was inducted into the Bluegrass Hall of Fame.

The Ultimate Banjo Songbook

The Ultimate Banjo Songbook PDF Author: Janet Davis
Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation
ISBN: 1476868905
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
(Banjo). A great collection of banjo classics that comes with audio examples of the licks. Songs include: Alabama Jubilee * Bye Bye Love * Duelin' Banjos * The Entertainer * Foggy Mountain Breakdown * Great Balls of Fire * Lady of Spain * Rawhide * (Ghost) Riders in the Sky (A Cowboy Legend) * Rocky Top * San Antonio Rose * Tennessee Waltz * UFO-TOFU * You Are My Sunshine * and more.

Melodic Banjo

Melodic Banjo PDF Author: Tony Trischka
Publisher: Oak Publications
ISBN: 1783235047
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 129

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Book Description
Tony Trischka presents his groundbreaking guide to the melodic (chromatic) Banjo style, made famous by the great Bill Keith. The technique allows the Banjo player to create complex note-for-note renditions of Bluegrass fiddle tunes, as well as ornamenting solos with melodic fragments and motives. Along with a full step-by-step guide to developing the skills of the melodic style, this book also featuresBill Keith's personal explanation of how he developed his formidable technique, in his own words and music.37 tunes in tablature, including a section of fiddle tunes.Interviews with the stars of te melodic style including Bobby Thompson, Eric Weissberg, Ben Eldridge and Alan Munde.

Lonesome Melodies

Lonesome Melodies PDF Author: David W. Johnson
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 162674243X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 478

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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.

What Earl Scruggs Heard

What Earl Scruggs Heard PDF Author: Bob Carlin
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 147668667X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
When the story of banjo superstar Earl Scruggs is told, the rich musical environment that produced him is often ignored. During his lifetime Scruggs spun a creation myth around his playing, convincing many that he was the sole originator of a three-finger, up-picking, banjo style. For the first time, this book tells the full story of the music and musicians of the western Carolinas that influenced Earl Scruggs. Based on more than 15 years of in-depth research, this book includes the story of country music recording pioneers Parker and Woolbright, Fisher Hendley and Martin Melody Boys; rare images of area music makers; and the history and development of fiddlers' conventions and radio barn dances. Together, these stories are woven into the biographies of Earl's mentors to reveal the musical atmosphere in which they developed the "three-finger picking" style that so enchanted a young Earl Scruggs.