The Archives

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine May 1971, Volume 5, Number 11 Part I: THE CLINCH MOUNTAIN BOYS This is about Curly Ray Cline, Roy Lee Centers, Jack Cooke, and maybe me. Over the last twenty-five years there have been many Clinch Mt. Boys, but this is the present band and thus representative of the Stanley…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine August 1971, Volume 6, Number 2 About the Cover: Bill Monroe and Lester Flatt were reunited on the stage of Bean Blossom, Indiana this year, as a climax to the largest bluegrass festival ever held. It had been twenty-three years since Lester Flatt had left the Blue Grass Boys to…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine May 1974, Volume 8, Number 11 “I never was much of a believer in astrology until last winter, when I read horoscope and it said I was going to have a good spring. Well, now it’s spring, and things are going so good, I guess there’s something to be said…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited MagazineMay 1974, Volume 8, Number 11 In the early years of bluegrass, a large number of combinations rather quickly took up the style being popularized by Bill Monroe and his band. While it is true that most of the elements of the bluegrass style had been around for several years and…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited MagazineSeptember 1980, Volume 15, Number 3 Your first reaction is a sinking feeling. It’s a little akin to emerging from a crowded bus station with the sudden awareness of empty space in the hip pocket customarily occupied by your wallet. Berline, Crary and Hickman tune their instruments—fiddle, guitar and banjo respectively—and…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited MagazineMay 1975, Volume 9, Number 11 If you happened to catch the first Smothers Brothers Show as I did, no doubt you remember a certain segment where a quiet, somewhat lanky banjo picker awaited patiently in the shadows until, at last, the proper cue was given, the stage lights turned up,…