Articles

During week three of Bluegrass 45’s tour of the United States in 1971 they performed at their third bluegrass festival.  The first was Bill Monroe’s Bean Blossom, the second was the Country Gentleman’s Indian Ranch festival, and this week found them at Carlton Haney’s festival in Berryville, Virginia. As is evident in Akira Otsuka’s journal…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine June 1972, Volume 6, Number 12 The place looks like a composite of all those little Nashville recording studios you read about in Look or Newsweek, once a garage or spare bedroom and now a down home hit factory where the new sound of today’s country music is put down….

Week 2:  6/24 – 6/30 1971-6-24 Thursday Woke up at 8 am – that’s early. Watched “Beverly Hillbillies” rerun. Then DC sightseeing.  First Post office, then the White House, to the top of Washington Monument.  Unfortunately, it was not clear, but we can see the White House and Potomac River right below us.  Had a…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine May 1971, Volume 5, Number 11 Part I: THE CLINCH MOUNTAIN BOYS This is about Curly Ray Cline, Roy Lee Centers, Jack Cooke, and maybe me. Over the last twenty-five years there have been many Clinch Mt. Boys, but this is the present band and thus representative of the Stanley…

Fifty years ago this week the Japanese bluegrass band Bluegrass 45 arrived in the United States to begin a tour that was arranged by Dick Freeland of Rebel Records.  In the past two articles in this series we introduced the band and explained how they came to meet Dick Freeland during his trip to Japan…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine August 1971, Volume 6, Number 2 About the Cover: Bill Monroe and Lester Flatt were reunited on the stage of Bean Blossom, Indiana this year, as a climax to the largest bluegrass festival ever held. It had been twenty-three years since Lester Flatt had left the Blue Grass Boys to…