Articles

Coming off winning a Grammy for his stunning 2019 release Home, plus an IBMA “Entertainer of the Year” award in Raleigh last October, Billy Strings, in many ways, defines bluegrass music in the 21st Century for a multitude of fans. The subject of an in-depth portrait in The New York Times that plumbed the depths…

In 1998, throat-worn and road weary, the divine Miss Emm needed a musical break from touring with her thrilling, yet vocally taxing, fully electric Hot Band. Looking for not just relief for her physical voice, but also for her muse, Harris turned to longtime friend John Starling, and the good doctor penned the perfect prescription….

Norman Blake, who has recorded and collaborated with everyone from Bob Dylan and Joan Baez to Johnny Cash and Tony Rice, is a devoted keeper of the keys to the heritage and history of American popular music. Blake’s latest record—which he recorded in a single afternoon in a Fort Payne, Alabama studio—contains of couple of…

Maddie Denton may be one of the best fiddle players you’ve heard, but not heard of.  That might change with the release of her debut album, Playin’ in this Town.  A veteran of the fiddle competition circuit, Denton has won 14 state titles in five states since 2008. She also handles fiddle duties for the…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine July, 1970.   Volume 5, Number 1 (This article was compiled from an interview with Charles Bailey in Wilmington, Delaware and a letter written by Danny Bailey, Knoxville, Tennessee.) If you should ever sit down and compose a list of musicians undeserving of neglect, Charles and Danny Bailey could not…

By the fall of 1958, Bill Emerson was ready to exit the Country Gentlemen, a band that he helped found and would become one of the most iconic bands in bluegrass music.  Emerson would return to the Country Gentlemen just over a decade later, but in the late 1950s the speculation is that the Country…