Articles

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine October 1970, Volume 5, Number 4 Having never seen J. D. Crowe and the Kentucky Mountain Boys in person, I was looking forward to their appearance at Carlton Haney’s Labor Day Weekend Festival. When they mounted the stage, I was not disappointed. In addition to their considerable instrumental and vocal…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited MagazineJune, 1985. Volume 19, Number 12 The photograph John Hartford considers his favorite tells a lot about the man. It depicts him standing between two of the biggest influences on his life, Earl Scruggs and his fifth grade teacher, Miss Ruth Ferris. You also need to know about his modesty. Listen:…

Tim Stafford On his latest solo CD, Tim Stafford artfully carries the listener from the redolent smells of greasepaint, bison sweat and saddle leather inside the big top tent of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show to the gruesome and much publicized serial murders in Victorian London’s Whitechapel District (which oddly are overlapping eras) in a…

Willie Marschner Patuxent Records The wizardry of this 13-year-old fiddler and mandolin player from Fairfax, Virginia is nothing short of astounding. Granted, he’s already spent quite a few years learning his chops in the Marschner family band, along with his father Pearse (also a multi-instrumentalist) and his bass-playing mom Catherine. Even so, he’s obviously a…

Carnegie Tradition Raincoe Music DSR202002 Bluegrass music is no doubt in an era of stretching forward and sideways with musicians carving out new spaces, just like the founders in the 1940s.  However, the new album by Carnegie Tradition reaches backward to revisit those earlier days when the music was making its way with A Tribute…

By Andy Novara With the publication of his new book, Bill Monroe: Solo Transcriptions 1936-1996, Andy Novara has added a wonderful and valuable new reference book for students of Bill Monroe’s mandolin style. The mandolinist in a band called Riverbend, Novara is a skilled Monroe stylist. He clearly adores and has bonded with Monroe’s unique…