The Tradition

Circa 1855 sheet music for “Listen to the Mocking Bird”

Notes & Queries – October 2022

Queries Q: I’m producing a new CD album of my band, The Bluegrass Ramble, here in Japan. The new album will be a live 2-CD set with 36 songs and will celebrate the Bluegrass Ramble’s 200th show in October 2022. We are now in the process of designing the package. I am having trouble finding…

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Keith Whitley

The Bluegrass Years This year—2022—is going to be a huge year for Keith Whitley fans. We will watch as Keith receives one of the highest honors a country music singer can achieve—induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame. I have been following and studying Keith’s career since I became interested in bluegrass in 1985….

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Tom Mindte with his first mandolin (age 8)

Tom Mindte

Bluegrass Musician And Recording Impresario I have known Tom Mindte since the mid-1970s when he was a frequent patron of Shakey’s Pizza Parlor in Rockville, MD. My band, Appalachian Reign, played there on Saturday nights and he was one of our biggest fans. Tom grew up in a household that loved music. His Dad, Vance,…

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The Outdoor Plumbing Company, ca. 1982. From left to right: Jim McCown, Ada McCown (seated), Danny McCown, and Andy McCown.

Notes & Queries – September 2022

Queries Q: We’re having a little controversy in our bluegrass community regarding the definition of the title of the fiddle tune “June Appal.” Is it simply a misspelled reference to certain apples that will bloom early or is it a reference, somewhat in abbreviation, to the word Appalachia? Or is it something else? Hope you…

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Notes & Queries – August

Queries Q: I’ve always liked the song “Swinging A Nine Pound Hammer,” which I first heard from the singing of Mac Martin (from a 1970 album). I later heard live versions by Ralph Stanley (his first issue of the song was from 1983 on the Live At Old Home Place LP). I’ve long wondered where…

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Music In American Life Series

I’ll have to confess that the first record album that I owned was not a bluegrass album.  I was a suburban kid listening to rock radio in the 1960s and my first album was Paul Revere and the Raiders Spirit of ’67.  When I got the album, I not only listened to the music over…

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