The Tradition

Fiddling Gopher Addis (or, More on Don Reno Sidemen) In last month’s column, we fielded a query concerning two musicians who worked with Don Reno and Red Smiley in the early 1950s: Chuck and Jay Haney. The Haneys had the distinction of appearing on Reno & Smiley’s first recording session together, on January 15, 1952…

The histories of old-time country music are pretty clear on the subject: everything important happened in the southeastern part of the U.S. Except it didn’t. The music was everywhere. In fact, one the most popular and celebrated old-time stringbands of the late 1920s and early 1930s came out of California.  This band toured widely on…

Adam Granger is a guitar player from Norman, Oklahoma who lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.  He learned banjo from fellow Normanite Alan Munde in 1968.  He was a columnist for Flatpicking Guitar Magazine, and is the author of Granger’s Fiddle Tunes for Guitar, published by Mel Bay.  Adam played and wrote humor for A Prairie…

Photos and article by Jim Carrier Long after Jim Rooney is gone, the sounds of bluegrass that he recorded will remind us of the beauty of acoustic stringed instruments played with taste and subtlety.   Not famous as a performer — although he was one, certainly — Rooney’s lasting contribution to bluegrass music is embedded…

Hartford is 24 Years Gone, Yet His Music and Personality Still Influences New Generations I got to know John Hartford a little bit through the sheer luck of geography.  As a native of Huntington, West Virginia, located on the banks of the mighty Ohio River, my family would eventually move to Cincinnati when I was…

Q – I have a question for you about Don Reno’s two cousins “Chuck” and “Jay” Haney. Are they still living? If not, any idea when they passed away? Apparently, there’s not much mentioned about them in bluegrass, at least not that I’m aware of . . . besides being on the early recordings of…