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Bluegrass & Bourbon

Dierks Bentley Embraces Two Western Kentucky Traditions Photos by Zach Belcher Owensboro (Kentucky’s fourth largest city) is known as the culinary and cultural hub of western Kentucky due in large part to its extraordinary three B’s—Bluegrass, Bourbon and Barbecue.  As the birthplace of the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) and the home of the Bluegrass…

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Ben Eldridge

Bluegrass Music Loses Another Banjo Legend Photo by Dan Miller Benjamin Rolfe “Ben” Eldridge (August 15, 1938 – April 14, 2024) was a co-founder of the Seldom Scene and served as the group’s banjoist and longest-tenured member; he logged a total of 44 years with the band from 1971 until 2015. As an instrumentalist in what…

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Chubby Collier with Mac Wiseman, ca. fall 1952. Left to right: Chubby Collier, Mac Wiseman, Jim Williams and Wayne Brown. Photo originally printed in the February 1970 issue of Bluegrass Unlimited. // Photo courtesy of Pete Kuykendall.

Notes & Queries – June 2024

Q: Chubby Collier played some awesome hardcore fiddle on several Charlie Bailey songs that I like extremely well. I believe he was from far southwest Virginia. I wonder if he recorded on more songs; I can’t think of any. Can you come up with anything about him? I’d love to learn as much as I…

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Tomie Thompson featured with Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys in DeRidder, Louisiana, ca. 1946. Front row, left to right: Tomie Thompson, Earl Scruggs and Howard Watts (Cedric Rainwater); back row, left to right: Jimmy Kish, Bill Monroe, Chubby Wise and Lester Flatt

Remembering Earl Scruggs at 100

Photos Courtesy of the Earl Scruggs Center Collection [Editor’s Note:  In our January, 2024 issue we ran an article about the new Earl Scruggs exhibit at the Earl Scruggs Center in Shelby, North Carolina.  Part of that exhibit includes information from a 17,000 word document that Earl had written about his life.  In our previous…

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Todd Phillips — A Musician’s Musician

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine October 1997, Volume 32, Number 4 “What is amazing is that Todd Phillips never ceases to amaze me! — Tom Rozum (Laurie Lewis and Grant Street) It seems, for the average audience member and for many trade magazines, that all of the attention is focused on the lead singers, or…

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Laurie Lewis—Shining Star of Bluegrass Music’s New Golden Era

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine March 1997, Volume 31, Number 9 Bluegrass music is enjoying a new golden era. The artists riding the crest of today’s wave are creating and inventing their own music just as the original giants of the music did. One of the shining stars of modern bluegrass and acoustic music is…

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