The Tradition

Jerry Douglas was one of the most insightful people whom I interviewed for Discovering Tony Rice, Tony’s oral biography. He was perceptive about Tony because he is insightful about himself. We see that what Jerry has to say about his old friend also says much about himself.  I spoke with Jerry on July 12, 2022…

Q: I’ve heard it said that the 1959 Folkways album Mountain Music Bluegrass Style was the first bluegrass album ever recorded.  I guess that means a set of songs and tunes recorded specifically to be released in album format.  Does that sound right to you?  I recall purchasing albums by the Stanley Brothers, Bill Monroe,…

Ensuring A Bright Future For Bluegrass Photo By Angela Norton Nancy Cardwell Webster is no stranger to readers of Bluegrass Unlimited. The award-winning  Missouri native has written dozens of articles for BU through the years, including this edition’s cover story featuring resophonic guitar master, Jerry Douglas.  A prolific wordsmith, Nancy wrote her first story for…

40 Years Late…and Right On Time This is a noteworthy year in the history of bluegrass music because it is the year that we lost the last of our first-generation heroes.  While a few of those bluegrass trailblazers, like the most recent to leave us—Bobby Osborne and Jesse McReynolds—lived past their 90th birthday, there were…

Wilma Lee Cooper, Sam Bush and David Grisman Interviews with Todd Phillips, Zeb Snyder and Old Newspaper Clippings Bring Their Stories to Life Sam Bush Just a couple of years ago, in 2020, Sam Bush was first inducted into the IBMA Hall of Fame as a member of the New Grass Revival. On September 28,…

Bluegrass Hall of Fame member Carlton Haney has received (and deserved) much acclaim for his production of a bluegrass festival in 1965 at Cantrell’s Horse Farm in Fincastle, Virginia, universally hailed as the first multi-day bluegrass festival and the model for all that followed. The only problem with this much-repeated narrative is that “Bluegrass Spectaculars,”…