The Archives

The Country Gazette

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine November 1972, Volume 7, Number 5 With few established roots in the hierarchy of bluegrass music, The Country Gazette have entered the scene with the commercial clout to make a difference. Byron Berline never had much time to absorb the fiddle styles of any one person whether it be Chubby…

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50 Years Ago in Bluegrass Music

Fifty years ago bluegrass music was roughly 25 years old and hitting its full stride.  Multi-day bluegrass festivals were gaining in popularity around the country, the first-generation bands were still performing and in their prime, and the second-generation bands were developing strong reputations.  During 1971, Tony Rice joined J.D. Crowe, Doyle Lawson joined the Country…

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High Country

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine June 1972, Volume 6, Number 12 The place looks like a composite of all those little Nashville recording studios you read about in Look or Newsweek, once a garage or spare bedroom and now a down home hit factory where the new sound of today’s country music is put down….

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Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys

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…

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Fresh Impressions of Bean Blossom

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…

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Cliff Waldron and the New Shades of Grass

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…

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