Articles

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine February 1977, Volume 11, Number 8 Although bluegrass music has produced a number of great fiddlers and old-time fiddle players have influenced the art, the name of Chubby Wise must rank as one of the most significant. If one accepts the idea that bluegrass originated with Bill Monroe’s band of…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine January 1979, Volume 13, Number 7 We were sitting in the nearly deserted back section of Chet’s bar in Columbus, Ohio, on a mild June night in 1965, having come early to get one of the few “good” seats in the place. The musicians had not yet begun to arrive…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine November 1988, Volume 23, Number 5 “It’s sad but true that there are so few entertainers among some really superb musicians and singers in bluegrass music today. When people like Lester Flatt, Don Reno, Scotty Stoneman, Charlie Moore, ‘Cousin Jake’ Tullock and ‘Stringbean’ Akeman left us it was almost like…

Although Bill Emerson decided to stop performing on stage in 2016—after a career that lasted over sixty years—he was not done recording in the studio.  In 2015, Bill had contributed to Epilogue: A Tribute to John Duffey (produced by Akira Otsuka and Ronnie Freeland) by performing on the cut of “If I Were A Carpenter.” …

Hazel Dickens—Only A Woman Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine February 1982, Volume 16, Number 8 Author’s Note: I had been a fan of Hazel Dickens, her singing, her songs, and her seeming politics for a decade before I actually met her in late 1978 when she came to a concert by my band (true-to-form supporting…

In the early part of the new century, Bill Emerson was not as active in musical pursuits as he had been since he first picked up a banjo in the mid-1950s.  When he did decide to get back to recording and performing music, he called on Wayne Taylor, Pat White, and Joe Wheatley—all from the…