The Archives

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine October 1989, Volume 24, Number4 Whereas bluegrass band leaders and some musicians have long had an enduring quality about them—Bill Monroe being only the most obvious— continuity of personnel in bands is much less common. One quite atypical group in bluegrass music that has long endured with a consistent quality…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine February 1977, Volume 11, Number 8 Although bluegrass music has produced a number of great fiddlers and old-time fiddle players have influenced the art, the name of Chubby Wise must rank as one of the most significant. If one accepts the idea that bluegrass originated with Bill Monroe’s band of…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine January 1979, Volume 13, Number 7 We were sitting in the nearly deserted back section of Chet’s bar in Columbus, Ohio, on a mild June night in 1965, having come early to get one of the few “good” seats in the place. The musicians had not yet begun to arrive…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine November 1988, Volume 23, Number 5 “It’s sad but true that there are so few entertainers among some really superb musicians and singers in bluegrass music today. When people like Lester Flatt, Don Reno, Scotty Stoneman, Charlie Moore, ‘Cousin Jake’ Tullock and ‘Stringbean’ Akeman left us it was almost like…

Hazel Dickens—Only A Woman Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine February 1982, Volume 16, Number 8 Author’s Note: I had been a fan of Hazel Dickens, her singing, her songs, and her seeming politics for a decade before I actually met her in late 1978 when she came to a concert by my band (true-to-form supporting…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine July 1974, Volume 9, Number 1 In some far-flung corners of the world a controversy rages over who was the world’s first chromatic banjo player, but in Nashville, Bobby Thompson—one of those in the dead center of the controversy—pays little heed to it. He’s too busy as Nashville’s top studio…