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If you take an ailing bass fiddle into Bob Beerman’s shop for repairs, you feel as if you are entering an operating room. The instrument is gently laid upon a table in the back room then one employee examines the patient while another hovers with a clipboard jotting down its diagnosis. Beerman is the veteran…

Joe Mullins & The Radio Ramblers were clearly taking a shot that there’s still a place for a good old fashioned, traditional bluegrass album. They hit the bullseye. In a time when bluegrass is growing and experimenting and crossing over into other genres, this group of consummate professionals has stuck with what they know best…

Ben Eldridge was the banjo player for the iconic Washington, D.C. area band the Seldom Scene for 45 years.  During that period of time he proved himself to be one of the most innovative and unique banjo players in the history of bluegrass music.  The Seldom Scene drew from a very wide range of musical…

It was 1987 and Pieter Groenveld of Strictly Country records had brought his recording equipment to a concert in Holland, in order to capture the event featuring three of bluegrass music’s pioneers—Bill Clifton, Red Rector and Art Stamper. Bluegrass Hall of Famer, Bill Clifton, from Maryland, was instrumental in spreading bluegrass and folk music not…

And the Free-Strings Curriculum Several weeks ago I received a press release from Turnberry Records announcing their launch of a new “Education Division.”  The release explained that the first launch of the new division was called “Free Strings—Join The Jam.”  They stated that in initiating this curriculum they were partnering with fiddler Annie Savage, veteran performer…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine March 1982, Volume 16, Number 9 They call him “The Old Man of the Mountains.” At the spry age of forty-two, that makes Raymond Fairchild a rather youthful “old man.” No matter. The mountains can age you before your time and Raymond has lived far enough back in the Smoky…