Articles

Old Music Gets A New Life Discovering music that you have never heard before can be exciting if it is music that lifts your spirit, resonates with your heart and sinks deep into your bones.  For fans of traditional bluegrass and early country music, finding this kind of music today can sometimes be difficult.  Sure, there…

A Treasure of Southern West Virginia I live three doors down from Duffy, and on quiet mornings when I walk the dog past his house, I often hear him playing the sweetest banjo music. It drifts through the porch boards and out into the street, unhurried and warm, the kind of sound that makes you slow your…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine January 1988, Volume 22, Number 7 The parking lot of a shopping center in Carney, Maryland, is neither the choice site to spend a damp Saturday afternoon nor the best place to interview an emerging force in bluegrass music. It doesn’t appear to be a great venue for the sparsely…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine May 1977, Volume 11, Number 11 Northern Bluegrass — A Tangle of Roots and Contradictions The whole idea of Northern bluegrass sounds like a contradiction in terms. Bluegrass is the essence of the rural music of the traditional South. It seems impossible that Northerners, especially those from city and college…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine April 1987, Volume 21, Number 10 It’s 1963 in Washington Square Park, downtown Manhattan, on a Sunday afternoon. A young man of seventeen carrying a banjo case is inching his way forward through a crowded circle of bystanders toward its center where several bluegrass musicians are jamming near a fountain….

Photos by Raymond Huffmaster Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine April 1989, Volume 23, Number 10 Bluegrass music as played by Bill Monroe is like no other sound on earth—and setting it on tape is like no other recording session. The sounds of bagpipes, blues, mountain churches and running brooks are echoed in Monroe’s tunes—it’s not…