The Tradition

Notes More Mockingbird Walt Crider, the historian for the Seven Mountains Bluegrass Association, wrote: “As a follow up to the ‘Listen to the Mockingbird’ song story (October “Notes & Queries”), I was visiting the Gettysburg National Civil War Museum when I heard ‘Listen to the Mockingbird’ coming from one of the displays. It was about…

A giant of music, in 1945 and for all time Earl Eugene Scruggs was born Jan. 6, 1924 in Flint Hill, North Carolina, in farm country in the Piedmont region. Early in his life there, he came up with a new, rolling, sometimes blazing-fast banjo style that has kept his name out front through the…

Queries Q: “In the early 1990s, I was a young man living in Richmond, Indiana, near the Ohio state line. Bluegrass music was nowhere on my radar until, by accident, I stumbled on the Oak Street Ramble broadcast on WMUB. The host, Jan McLaughlin, did an excellent job discussing the history and performers while introducing…

I’ve Just Seen the Rock of Ages Cold chills. That’s what I get when I hear the eerie voice of Ralph Stanley. You can say that I’ve been a true-blue Stanley Brothers nut since I first heard them in 1962. Just thumbing through my collection of LPs, I count 58 Stanley Brothers or Ralph Stanley…

Peter Rowan, Norman Blake and Paul “Moon” Mullins When the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) announces its list of new Hall of Fame inductees every year ahead of the annual Awards Show in Raleigh, North Carolina, the names always garner attention, discussion and respect. In the year of 2022, the Hall of Fame inductee class…

Harboring The Legacy Photo by Megan Sweeting Briar Fork was in many ways your typical holler in eastern Kentucky, a rural road off State Route 32, four miles from Sandy Hook, near the Little Sandy River. Elliott County has some of the prettiest scenery in the state. It’s not exactly in the bluegrass region that…