Articles

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…

After Buzz Busby’s band, minus Bill Emerson, was in a tragic car crash on the 29th of June, 1957, Busby was in a coma for about a day and a half.  When he awoke, Bill Emerson went to visit him in the hospital and Buzz requested that Bill put together a band to cover their…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine February 1967, Volume 1, Number 8 “You know, the best music that bluegrass musicians ever played or recorded seems to have been when they were starvin’ to death.” This comment was made to me by my good friend the late Don Owens of WAKL/WAVA, in Arlington, Virginia once while we…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine November 1986, Volume 21, Number 5 In bluegrass, those who have given their lives to the music often become casualties of the music, forgotten and buried when they fall from the top, while the crowds turn to some sharp, hot new group. Often the casualties of the music are those…

William Hundley “Bill” Emerson, Jr. was born in Washington, D.C. on January 22nd, 1938.  He was raised in Bethesda, Maryland.  His father, William Hundley Emerson, Sr. (1898-1963) was married to the former Texas native Netty Louise Price (1911-1997) and owned a Buick dealership on 17th and M Street in Washington, D.C. called Emerson & Orme. …