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Music and Dance
Ballads, shape note singing, bluegrass, gospel, country, old-timey, families and artists, dulcimer and fiddle, square dancing and clogging
Adams, Nancy. 2016. “The West Virginia Music Hall of Fame: Class of 2015.” Goldenseal: West Virginia Traditional Life 42, no. 1 (Spring): 29-36. Inductees: Ed Haley, Buddy Starcher, Harry Vann “Piano Man” Walls, John Ellison, Bob Thompson, and Russ Hicks.
Andrade, Roy. 2015. “Birthplace of Country Music Museum” [Bristol, Va.]. Old-Time Herald 14, no 2. http://www.oldtimeherald.org/archive/back_issues/volume-14/14-2/index.html.
Andrade, Roy. 2015. “Scott Boatright: Make Them Sad and Then Make Them Happy” [Tenn.; guitar, banjo; 1920s-30s]. Old-Time Herald 13, no 12. http://www.oldtimeherald.org/archive/back_issues/volume-13/13-12/index.html.
Annual Instrument Issue. 2013. Bluegrass Unlimited 47, no. 9 (March): 26-52. Four feature articles: “Ken Hooper: Guitarmaking Where Excellence Is Only the Starting Point,” by David McCarty | “Gibson Banjo Catalog Reprints/Gibson Banjo Information,” by Tom Morgan | “Gerald Anderson: Virginia Mountain Guitar and Mandolin Maker,” by Robert C. Buckingham | “R.Q. Jones: Putting the “Q” in Quintessential Dobro,” by Lee Kotick.
Appalachia South Folklife Center Turns 50 [photo essay; Pipestem, W. Va.]. 2015. Goldenseal: West Virginia Traditional Life 41, no. 3 (Fall): 42-53. Three days of music, dance, and art celebrated the center, “a focal point for the folk revival movement in Appalachia during the 1960s and ‘70s.” Sidebar on Don West (1906-1992) who, with wife Connie, founded the center in 1965. West also co-founded the Highlander Folk Center in Tennessee.
Appalachian Music Special Edition. 2015. Appalachian Journal 42, no. 3-4 (Spring-Summer): 144-446. Guest editors, Mark Freed and Trevor McKenzie. Roundtables, essays, poetry, interviews, photos, a musical drama, film and book reviews. “Our goal for this special edition...is to provide a look at the broad spectrum of Appalachian musical sounds, styles, artists, and perspectives, and offer conversation starters for both the common core and contemporary score.”
Bidgood, Lee. 2013. “Sounding Place: Performing Appalachia in a Small Czech Town.” Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine 28, no. 2 (Winter): 61-63. Highlights of ETSU’s Old Time Pride Band’s thirteen day trip which included an old-time music workshop and a performance at a bluegrass festival.
Bidgood, Lee. 2014. “Finding Country Music and Community in the Tri-Cities” [Kingsport and Johnson City, Tenn.; and Bristol, Tenn./Va.]. Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine 29, no. 2 (Winter): 6-7. Multimedia electronic scrapbook curated for a Reece Museum kiosk at ETSU.
Boner, Daniel. 2014. “Right in the Middle of It: A Great Musical Migration.” Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine 29, no. 2 (Winter): 60-61. Profile of “one of the last musicians from the...generation of South Jersey musical patriarchs.” Ivan Sexton migrated from Floyd County, Ky., and played with many greats at the Chicken Coop in Bridgeton, Cumberland Co., N.J. Author Dan Boner is director of Bluegrass, Old Time, and Country Music Studies at ETSU.
Brunk, Robert S. 2016. “Guided by Voices: Finding Grace through Shape-Note Singing.” Virginia Quarterly Review92, no. 1 (Winter): 130-139.
Bryant, Don. 2014. “Mac Wiseman” [profile]. Bluegrass Unlimited 49, no. 3 (September): 24-27. Guitarist, singer, b. 1925.
Cantwell, David. 2016. “Ralph Stanley’s Inimitable Voice” [1927-2016]. New Yorker, 26 June. 1,726 words. http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/ralph-stanleys-inimitable-voice.
Cardwell, Nancy. 2013. “Dixie Hall: Gifted Songwriter, Organizer, and Patron Saint of Bluegrass: Fifty Years in the Music Business.” Bluegrass Unlimited 48, no. 5 (November): 14-17.
Cardwell, Nancy. 2015. “Dixie Hall” [d. Jan. 16]. Bluegrass Unlimited 49, no. 9 (March): 20-21. Married to Tom T. Hall for 46 years, more than 500 of Dixie’s songs have been recorded by artists.
Carlson, Elizabeth. 2016. North Carolina String Music Masters: Old-Time and Bluegrass Legends. Charleston, S.C.: History Press. 175 pp. Contents: Foreword, by Paul Brown | Introduction: What’s the Difference Between Old-Time and Bluegrass? | Charlie Poole: Vision | Tommy Jarrell: Community | Joe Thompson: Staying Power | Doc Watson: Courage | Earl Scruggs: Local Roots of the Banjo Master | David Holt: The Healing Power of Music | Rhiannon Giddens: Carolina Chocolate Drop | Conclusion: Get Involved | Selected Bibliography.
Cash, Johnny. 2014. Recollections by J. R. Cash: Childhood Memories of Johnny Cash. Edited by Tara Cash Schwoebel [Cash’s youngest daughter]. Jonesboro: Arkansas State University. 112 pp. “I gave this book to my father in 1995 and asked him to fill in the answers to the questions about his childhood. On my birthday the following year, I received the completed book as a gift. Dad was a natural historian.”
Cash, Johnny. 2015. “You Have to Call Me the Way You See Me.” Interview by Kurt Loder. Southern Cultures 21, no. 3 (Fall): 5-17. “On August 20, 2003, MTV News correspondent Kurt Loder sat down with Johnny Cash at his home near Nashville for what would be Cash’s final press interview .... just three weeks after this interview was taped, Johnny Cash passed away at Baptist Hospital in Nashville.”
Chaney, Ryan. 2013. “Straightening the Crooked Road.” Ethnography 14, no. 4 (December): 387-411. Examines The Crooked Road: Virginia’s Heritage Music Trail as a regional economic engine.
Cohen, Ronald D., and Rachel Clare Donaldson. 2014. Roots of the Revival: American and British Folk Music in the 1950s. Music in American Life series. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 182 pp. Contents: Background in the United States and Great Britain to 1950 | The Weavers and the resurgence of folk music, 1950-1953 | Blacklisting and folk developments, 1953-1954 | Popular folk music comes of age, 1955-1956 | Further developments, 1957-1958 | The decade ends, 1959-1960.
Cohen, Ronald D. 2014. “Bill Malone, Alan Lomax, and the Origins of Country Music.” Journal of American Folklore 127, no. 504 (Spring): 126-139.
Conger, Bill. 2013. “Paul Brewster: Eighteen Thunderous Years with Ricky Scaggs” [tenor and rhythm guitarist]. Bluegrass Unlimited 47, no. 12 (June): 28-30.
Conger, Bill. 2013. “Ricky Scaggs Stays True to Himself with Music to My Ears” [2012]. Bluegrass Unlimited 47, no. 12 (June): 24-26.
Conger, Bill. 2014. “Bobby Osborne: Half A Century on the Grand Ole Opry.” Bluegrass Unlimited 49, no. 5 (November): 22-24. Mandolin player, born 1931, and member of the Osborne Brothers band with brother Sonny.
Conger, Bill. 2015. “Dale Ann Bradley: Pocket Full of Keys.” Bluegrass Unlimited 50, no. 2 (August): 24-26. Five-time IBMA Female Vocalist of the Year winner, from Pineville, Ky.
Conger, Bill. 2015. “Jesse McReynolds: Still Going Strong after 68 Years in Bluegrass.” Bluegrass Unlimited 50, no. 6 (December): 30-32.
Conger, Bill. 2016. “The House That Ron Block Built.” Bluegrass Unlimited 50, no. 10 (April): 34-36. Profile of award winning banjoist, guitarist, vocalist Block.
Cox, Annette. 2015. “The Saga of Ella May Wiggins.” Southern Cultures 21, no. 3 (Fall): 111-115. “The most famous of Ella May Wiggins’s twenty-plus strike songs is the blues ballad ‘The Mill Mother’s Song’.... During the 1929 strike at Gastonia’s Loray Mill, Wiggins became the campaign’s ‘poet laureate’ through the ballads she composed using melodies from contemporary hillbilly music. Her murder by a mill thug made her a martyr for the cause and led proletarian novelist Mary Heaton Vorse to transform her into a heroic figure. Folk music collector Margaret Larkin took her songs north where they became inspiration for Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger.”
Cox, John Harrington, ed. [1925] 2013. Folk-Songs of the South: Collected Under the Auspices of the West Virginia Folk-Lore Society [186 ballads, 26 folk tunes]. New introduction by Alan Jabbour. West Virginia Classics series, no. 4. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press. 600 pp. Originally published: Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Dauphin, Chuck. 2013. “‘Chasing Nashville’ TV Series to Follow Aspiring Stars from Appalachia.” Billboard, 18 September. 528 words. “...unscripted singing show....will follow the hopes and dreams” of girls from W. Va., N.C., and Ky. The show airs October 22 on the Lifetime network. http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/the-615/5695584/chasing-nashville-tv-series-to-follow-aspiring-stars-from.
Dean, Vicki. 2014. “Del McCoury.” Bluegrass Unlimited 48, no. 10 (April): 26-29. Profile and career overview of McCoury (b. 1939), guitarist, vocalist and leader of the Del McCoury Band.
Donaldson, Rachel Clare. 2014. “I Hear America Singing”: Folk Music and National Identity. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 225 pp. Contents: INTRODUCTION. Tuning up | Theoretical influences | The medley -- HEARING THE PEOPLE. The rise of folk festivals | The New Deal revivalists | Regionalism, pluralism, and race | The left side of the revival -- THE PEOPLE’S WAR. Making America safe for democracy | Festivals join the fight | Singing-and teaching-democracy -- ILLUSION AND DISILLUSIONMENT. Radical revivalists, unite! | A time to gain | A time to lose -- KEEPING THE TORCH LIT. Negotiating the cultural and political terrain | Sharpening the political edge | The cultural rebellion | The personal, the educational, and the political | Setting the stage -- THE BOOM. Commercialism and the revival | “Neo ethnics” | Neo almanacs? -- A BUST AND A BEGINNING. The turn | The end | The beginning – APPENDIX: A note on resources for recorded music – BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Dubois, Laurent. 2016. The Banjo: Americas African Instrument. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 364 pp. Contents: Sounding Africa | The first African instrument | Three leaves | The sound of freedom | The banjo meets blackface | Rings like silver, shines like gold | Black banjo | Sounding America.
Duniphan, Steve. 2014. “Mitch Jayne: A Remembrance” [1928-2010]. Bluegrass Unlimited 49, no. 2 (August): 38-40. Bassist and storyteller Jayne co-wrote many of The Dillards’ standard classics with Rodney Dillard.
DuPré, Michelle, Daniel S. Levy, Rosanne Cash, and June Carter Cash. 2013. Johnny Cash: An Illustrated Biography [“with rare and never-before-seen photographs”]. With reminiscences by Rosanne Cash and June Carter Cash. LIFE Unseen series. New York: LIFE Books. 190 pp.
Edwards, Matt. 2013. “Chester McMillian: Old Time Musician and Educator” [fiddler]. North Carolina Folklore Journal 60, no. 1 & 2 (Fall-Summer): 17-20. Brown-Hudson Folklore winner.
Erbsen, Wayne. 2003. Rural Roots of Bluegrass: Songs, Stories & History. Asheville, N.C.: Native Ground Music. 180 pp.
Everhart, Chad. 2013. “Valle Crucis Mobile Performance Stage: A Transformative Response to a Changing Landscape” [N.C.; floodplain]. Journal of Appalachian Studies 19, no. 1-2 (Spring-Fall): 108-123.
Feather, Carl E. 2013. “Jamboree at Dunmore Schoolhouse.” Goldenseal: West Virginia Traditional Life 39, no. 4 (Winter): 64-65. Bluegrass and dancing, third Saturday of each month, at the Dunmore Community Center-- former two-room schoolhouse, Pocahontas County.
Ferguson, Robert Hunt. 2014. “Samantha Biddix Bumgarner” [Sylva, Jackson Co.]. In North Carolina Women: Their Lives and Times, ed. M. Gillespie and S. McMillen, 383-396. Athens: University of Georgia Press. “Though [Pete] Seeger often credited Bascom Lamar Lunsford’s festival [Mountain Dance and Folk Festival, Asheville] with inspiring him to learn the five-string banjo, it was the woman in the rocking chair, colloquially known to adoring crowds as “Aunt Samantha,” who first captivated Seeger” in 1936.
Foley, Michael Stewart. 2014. “A Politics of Empathy: Johnny Cash, the Vietnam War, and the ‘Walking Contradiction’ Myth Dismantled.” Popular Music & Society 37, no. 3 (July): 338-359. “...in the late 1960s and early 1970s, his political views on Native Americans, prison reform, and the Vietnam War, especially, were remarkably consistent.”
Foster, Bill. 2016. “Bluegrass Unlimited, July 1966– Vol. 1 No. 1: A Review.” Bluegrass Unlimited 51, no. 1 (July): 30-31. See also: “The Bluegrass World celebrates Fifty Years of Bluegrass Unlimited,” by Derek Halsey, 34-41.
Freed, Mark. 2015. “‘Living the American Dream’ in Appalachia: Interviews with the Krüger Brothers.” Appalachian Journal 42, no. 3-4 (Spring-Summer): 322-343. Swiss-German immigrants, The Kruger Brothers, comprise brothers Uwe (guitar) and Jens (banjo), with Joel Lansberg (bass).
Freed, Mark, ed. 2015. “Roundtable Discussion of Appalachian Music — Discussing the Top Ten.” Appalachian Journal 42, no. 3-4 (Spring-Summer): 150-230. Introduction by Mark Freed with APPALACHIAN MUSIC PLAYLISTS and RESPONSES by: Roy Andrade, Thomas Burton, Cecelia Conway, Meredith Doster, Barbara R. Duncan, John Fleenor, Kevin Fore, Trish Fore, Mark Freed, Fred J. Hay, David Holt, Loyal Jones, Si Kahn, Rich Kirby, William E. Lightfoot, Trevoe McKenzie, Tim O’Brien, Ted Olson, Ron Pen, Susan Pepper, Gary Poe, Kinney Rorrer, Tony Russell, Kilby Spencer, Deborah Thompson, and Dave Wood.
Freeman, Dori. 2016. Multimedia Feature, Still: The Journal, no. 20 (Winter). Profile of southwest Virginia singer/songwriter Freeman by Silas House, and an audio clip (2:54 min.) from her new self-titled album. http://www.stilljournal.net/multimedia-dorifreeman.php.
Friskics-Warren, Bill. 2016. “Ralph Stanley, Whose Mountain Music Gave Rise to Bluegrass, Is Dead at 89.” New York Times, 24 June, 14(B). 1,241 words. “Ralph Stanley, the singer, banjo player and guardian of unvarnished mountain music who was also a pivotal figure in the recent revival of interest in bluegrass, died on Thursday .... Though widely regarded as one of the founding fathers of bluegrass...he did not believe his music was representative of the genre .... ’Old-time mountain style, that’s what I like to call it’.” http://nyti.ms/28RpLMM.
Fulks, Danny. 2014. “Cowboy Copas: From the Hills of Adams County, Ohio, to the Grand Ole Opry.” Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine 29, no. 2 (Winter): 36-38. Traces the life and career of country singer Cowboy Copas (1913-1963) who died in a plane crash with Patsy Cline and Hawkshaw Hawkins.
Furgiuele, Hannah, and Brandon Johnson. 2015. “Roger Howell: Musician, Luthier, and Teacher.” North Carolina Folklore Journal 62, no. 2 (Summer-Fall): 18-24. Madison Co., N.C.
Fussell, Fred, with Steve Kruger. 2013. Blue Ridge Music Trails of North Carolina: A Guide to Music Sites, Artists, and Traditions of the Mountains and Foothills. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 281 pp., plus CD with more than 20 songs. Organized by region and county with in-depth profiles of 16 musicians, and 39 sidebars on significant places, people, and events. CD CONTENTS. The grey eagle / Trevor and Travis Stuart -- Swannanoa tunnel / Bascom Lamar Lunsford -- I’ve endured / Ola Belle Reed -- Rainbow sign / The Buckstankle Boys -- John Henry / Etta Baker -- Cotton mill blues / The New North Carolina Ramblers -- Drunkard’s dream / Dorothy Hess -- Restoration / Christian Harmony Singers at Saint John's Church -- Ground Hog / The Watson Family -- Georgia Belles / Manco Sneed -- Snowbird nation / Manco Sneed -- Otto Wood / Elkville String Band -- A soldier traveling from the North / Donna Ray Norton -- Honeybabe / Lesley Riddle -- My cabin in Caroline / Flatt and Scruggs -- Sawmill man / Glenn Bolick -- Down in the valley / George Shuffler and Laura Boosinger -- Tom Dooley / Frank Proffitt -- Black cat bone / Pop Ferguson -- Rockingham Cindy / Tommy Jarrell and Fred Cockerham -- Trail of Tears song / Welch Family Singers -- Come take a trip on my airship / Christine Horton -- Carolina in the Fall / Krüger Brothers -- Peace behind the bridge / Etta Baker -- Frankie Silver’s confession / Bobby McMillon -- Some closing remarks / H.P. Van Hoy.
Gamble, Mort. 2013. “JoAnn Davis: Singer, Author, Survivor.” Goldenseal: West Virginia Traditional Life 39, no. 3 (Fall): 34-39. Davis was a professional singer entertainer for more than 30 years, much of that on WWVA’s Jamboree USA country music radio broadcast in Wheeling.
Gerrard, Alice. 2016. “Penny and the Troubadour.” Bluegrass Unlimited 50, no. 12 (June): 28-31. Profile of Penny Parsons and her relationship with bluegrass legend Curly Seckler (b. 1919), the subject of her biography, Foggy Mountain Troubadour: The Life and Music of Curly Seckler (University of Illinois Press, 2016).
Gleaves, Sam. 2015. Multimedia Feature, Still: The Journal, no. 19 (Fall). Profile of traditional singer/songwriter and banjo player Gleaves, with two video clips of him singing: “Ain’t We Brothers” from his debut record of the same title (4:05 min.); and “Stay All Night – Sam Gleaves & Friends” (2:25 min.). http://www.stilljournal.net/multimedia-samgleaves.php.
Goodwin, Dennis. 2014. “Everetts Family Music Venue in Suwanee, Georgia.” Bluegrass Unlimited 48, no. 8 (February): 28-31. Gwinnett County; Everett Brothers Bluegrass Music Barn.
Green, Judy Lee. 2013. “Appalachian Dancers Perform Worldwide.” Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine 28, no. 2 (Winter): 27-29. Special issue, “Global Appalachia.” Cripple Creek Cloggers [Tenn.].
Green, Judy Lee. 2014. “Blacktops and Cheating Songs” [Tenn.; 1940s-50s]. Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine 29, no. 2 (Winter): 34-35. The author’s mother, Levida, “dreamed of going to Texas and seeing real cowboys.”
Haines, Kathryn Miller. 2014. “Stephen Foster: The Making of Pittsburgh’s Renowned Musical Export.” Western Pennsylvania History 97, no. 3 (Fall): 34-47. Nineteenth-century industrial Pittsburgh “shaped the content of his work and...emerged again and again in Foster’s music.”
Hall, Kristin M. 2016. “Documentary, Album Explore Loretta Lynn’s Appalachian Roots” [83 years old]. AP Entertainment [wire story], 11 March. 747 words. “American Masters” documentary on PBS and album titled “Full Circle” both debut March 4. http://apne.ws/1QGCnTT.
Halsey, Derek. 2013. “The Mountaineer Opry House Celebrates Its Fortieth Anniversary” [Milton, W. Va.]. Bluegrass Unlimited 47, no. 7 (January): 44-46.
Halsey, Derek. 2014. “George Shuffler, April 11, 1925–April 7, 2014” [guitarist]. Bluegrass Unlimited 48, no. 12 (June): 26-31. “The ‘Third Stanley Brother’ leaves this world an appreciated man.”
Halsey, Derek. 2014. “MerleFest: Carrying On the Legacy of Doc Watson.” Bluegrass Unlimited 48, no. 7 (January): 28-32.
Halsey, Derek. 2015. “Norman Blake: Carrying on the Tradition as the Last Man Standing.” Bluegrass Unlimited 50, no. 1 (July): 26-28. North Georgia guitarist Blake has played on a number of landmark albums with artists including John Hartford (Aero-Plain), Johnny Cash, and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (Will the Circle Be Unbroken).
Halsey, Derek. 2015. “Sammy Adkins and the Sandy Hook Mountain Boys: Keeping The Stanley Brothers Sound Alive in Eastern Kentucky.” Bluegrass Unlimited 49, no. 11 (May): 48-49.
Help for the Old-Time Herald. 2016. Bluegrass Unlimited 51, no. 1 (July): 26. “Alice Gerrard started the Old-Time Herald magazine in 1987 as a publication like Bluegrass Unlimited but, she says, specifically for old-time and traditional country music fans as ‘a platform, a source to serve the community’.” (See: http://www.oldtimeherald.org/)
Henry, Murphy Hicks. 2013. “Bessie Lee Mauldin” [1920-1983]. Bluegrass Unlimited 48, no. 2 (August): 36-37. Bill Monroe’s bass player and “sweetheart.” Women who saw her perform in “this overwhelmingly male musical genre....could see that there was a space for them singing and playing–– in a bluegrass band.”
Henry, Murphy Hicks. 2015. “Pasty Stoneman (May 27, 1925–July 23, 2015).” Bluegrass Unlimited 50, no. 3 (September): 12. “Patsy, Donna, and Roni Stoneman were the last surviving children of Ernest ‘Pop’ and Hattie Stoneman [The Stoneman Family; southwest Va.]. Now Patsy is gone .... She kept Pop’s memory alive by singing his songs...and playing the autoharp.”
Herrin, Roberta. 2014. “Be Still. Hear. Know.” Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine 29, no. 2 (Winter): 2. Introductory essay to special issue on “Appalachian Music.”
Hight, Jewly. 2015. “The Music of a Struggle: Sam Gleaves’ Traditional Revolution” [rural gay identity]. The Record: Music News from NPR, 12 November. NPR radio. Transcript, 2,707 words; with sound clip of Gleaves’ song, “Ain’t We Brothers” (3:55 min.), from his new album of the same title. http://n.pr/1O4fMlQ.
Hilburn, Robert. 2013. Johnny Cash: The Life [biography]. New York: Little, Brown. 679 pp. “...the unvarnished truth about Cash, whose personal life was far more troubled and his artistry much more profound than even his most devoted fans have realized.”
Hill, Becky. 2015. “The More You Dance, The Better You Feel.” Goldenseal: West Virginia Traditional Life 41, no. 3 (Fall): 10-17. The Mountain Dance Trail, established by Gerry Milnes to preserve old-time-square dances, is promoted in small communities around the state. Attached article: “An Interview with Square Dance Caller Bill Ohse,” by Beck Hill, 18-21. (See also: the documentary film, Reel ‘Em Boys, Reel ‘Em: A Film about West Virginia Dance Traditions, by Becky Hill and Gerry Milnes.)
Hofstra, Warren R., ed. 2013. Sweet Dreams: The World of Patsy Cline [1932-1963]. Music in American Life series. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 183 pp. Based on papers from a 2008 conference. Contents: Patsy Cline and the transformation of the working-class South / Bill C. Malone -- Legacy and legend: the cultural world of Patsy Cline’s Winchester [Va.] / Warren R. Hofstra and Mike Foreman -- Patsy Cline and the problem of respectability / Beth Bailey -- Cultural scripts and Patsy Cline’s career in the 1950s / Kristine M. McCusker; Interlude. The early years: hard times, and good times for country music in 1950s Washington, D.C. / George Hamilton IV -- Patsy Cline: a television star / Douglas Gomery -- ‘Nothing but a little ole pop song’: Patsy Cline’s music style and the evolution of genre in the 1950s / Jocelyn R. Neal -- ‘Becoming a postage stamp’: Patsy Cline, visual image, and the celebrity process / Joli Jensen -- Afterword: the historical significance of Patsy Cline / Warren R. Hofstra.
Holt, David. 2015. “Mentors & Heroes” [photo essay]. Appalachian Journal 42, no. 3-4 (Spring-Summer): 390-397. Portraits of nineteen “tradition-bearer” Appalachian musicians: singers, fiddlers, banjo players, and guitarists.
Howard, Wayne. 2014. “West Virginia’s Hammons Family.” Goldenseal: West Virginia Traditional Life 40, no. 4 (Winter): 6-13. Discusses this revered family of old time musicians and the popularity of their recordings. Sidebar by Gerald Milnes about the Mintie and Currence Hammonds branch of the family in Randolph Co.
Howell, Rebecca Gayle. 2016 “O, Death.” Oxford American, 1 July. 521 words. Tribute to bluegrass icon Ralph Stanley who died June 23. Stanley’s a cappella singing of “O, Death” was featured in the 2000 film O Brother, Where Art Thou? http://www.oxfordamerican.org/item/897-o-death.
Hubbs, Nadine. 2014. Rednecks, Queers, and Country Music. Berkeley: University of California Press. 225 pp. Contents: PART I. Rednecks and country music. Anything but country -- Sounding the working-class subject | PART II. Rednecks, country music, and the queer. Gender deviance and class rebellion in “Redneck Woman” | “Fuck Aneta Briant” and the queer politics of being political.
Huber, Patrick. 2014. “The New York Sound: Citybilly Recording Artists and the Creation of Hillbilly Music, 1924–1932.” Journal of American Folklore 127, no. 504 (Spring): 140-158.
Jamison, Phil. 2015. “Dare To Be Square: Passing It On” [community square dances]. Old-Time Herald 13, no 12. http://www.oldtimeherald.org/archive/back_issues/volume-13/13-12/index.html.
Jamison, Phil. 2015. Hoedowns, Reels, and Frolics: Roots and Branches of Southern Appalachian Dance. Music in American Life series. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 276 pp. Contents: Diversity and Cultural Transmission in the Southern Mountains | The Southern Square Dance | Square Roots | Transforming Tradition | Cecil Sharp and the Kentucky Running Set | Sharps Legacy | Barn Dances with Calls (1924-1933) | The Virginia Reel | Religion and Dancing | Couple Dances | The Cakewalk | Appalachian Step Dance | Clogging: Appalachian Step Dance on Stage | Community Dance in Appalachia | The American Square Dance | Appendix: Barn Dances with Calls | Glossary of Dance Terms, Figures, and Steps.
Johnson, Allen. 2014. “The Rhythm of Dwight Dillard.” Goldenseal: West Virginia Traditional Life 40, no. 4 (Winter): 14-19. Profile of old-time musician and banjo player Dwight Diller (b. 1946) of Hillsboro, Pocahontas County.
Johnson, David W. 2013. Lonesome Melodies: The Lives and Music of the Stanley Brothers [Carter and Ralph]. American Made Music series. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. 299 pp.
Jones, Diana. 2014. “Writing ‘Henry Russell’s Last Words’.” Goldenseal: West Virginia Traditional Life 40, no. 3 (Fall): 48-49. Personal narrative of writing the song with its themes of the 1927 Everettville, Monongalia County, coal mining accident that killed 111, and death of miner Henry Russell.
Jones, Loyal. 2015. “Bascom Lamar Lunsford: A Herald of Appalachian Studies” [1882-1973; fiddler and folklorist]. Appalachian Journal 42, no. 3-4 (Spring-Summer): 232-249. Jones is author of the biography, Minstrel of the Appalachians: The Story of Bascom Lamar Lunsford (1984; rpt. 2002).
Jones, Loyal. 2015. “In Memoriam: Jean Ritchie” [1922-2015]. Appalachian Heritage 43, no. 3 (Summer): 8-9. “Jean was the most traditionally authentic artist in the Folk Revival and afterwards....She didn’t just sing the ancient and marvelous songs and ballads that came down through the generations of her people, ...her performances took her audiences on profound cultural trips.”
June, Valerie. 2014. Multimedia Feature, Still: The Journal, no. 14 (Winter). Profile of Valerie June and her “organic moonshine roots music.” 241 words. http://www.stilljournal.net/multimedia-valeriejune.php.
Kader, Emily. 2013. “SHARED TRADITIONS: Irish and Appalachian Ballads and Whiskey Songs.” Chap. 6 in Rethinking the Irish in the American South: Beyond Rounders and Reelers, ed. B. Giemza, 122-139. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
Kader, Emily. 2014. “‘Rose Connolly’ Revisited: Re-Imagining the Irish in Southern Appalachia.” Journal of American Folklore 127, no. 506 (Fall): 425-447. “This essay revisits the Appalachian murder ballad ‘Rose Connolly,’ the subject of a 1979 essay by D. K. Wilgus. Following Wilgus, I offer further evidence of the song’s presence in Ireland and interrogate persistent hesitancy to claim Irish influence on Appalachian folklore. My analysis then traces this bias to the influence of Cecil Sharp’s English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians (Sharp and Campbell, 1917) and his theories of race in the British Isles and Appalachia. Ultimately, I use ‘Rose Connolly’ to re-imagine Irish diasporic and Appalachian identities.”
Kahn, Si. 2015. “Precious Memories: A Play.” Appalachian Journal 42, no. 3-4 (Spring-Summer): 298-319. “Described as ‘part memory play, part eulogy, part inspiration,’ Precious Memories...was written for and stars Sue Massek of Kentucky’s feminist-labor Reel World String Band as Sarah Ogan Gunning (1910-1983), who played an influential role in American labor music history.” “The play is a dramatic monologue featuring Gunning who addresses her recently departed half-sister [Aunt Molly Jackson] and showcases the creativity of Kahn, a prolific songwriter himself.”
Keeling, Jeff. 2014. “A Radiator Shop Transformed: Site of 1929 Johnson City Sessions Speaks of Era’s Race Relations” [Tenn.]. Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine 29, no. 2 (Winter): 27-28. “...racial lines may have been blurred during the hillbilly recording sessions.” Music historian Ted Olson talks about the influence of African American musical styles at the historically black West Main Street Christian Church annex, former site of Rowe Radiator Shop.
Kiah, Amythyst. 2016. Multimedia Feature, Still: The Journal, no. 21 (Summer). Video clip (4:17 min.) of Johnson City, Tenn., “Southern gothic, alt-county blues singer/songwriter” Kiah singing “Darling Cora,” accompanying herself on the banjo. http://www.stilljournal.net/multimedia.php.
Kirk, Brandon Ray. 2015. “Feuds, Fiddle, Family, and Friends: Ed Haley’s Life on Harts Creek” [Logan Co.; 1885-1951]. Goldenseal: West Virginia Traditional Life 41, no. 4 (Winter): 12-23. “James Edward ‘Ed” Haley was one of the most gifted musicians ever to emerge from West Virginia. The blind fiddler was also an accomplished vocalist, clawhammer banjoist, guitarist, mandolin player, organist, and pianist.”
Kirk, Brandon Ray. 2015. “John Hartford’s Search for Ed Haley” [1885-1951]. Goldenseal: West Virginia Traditional Life 41, no. 3 (Fall): 24-27. “Renowned singer-songwriter and musician John Hartford researched Ed’s life and music from the early 1990s until his untimely death in 2001. He regarded Ed as ‘the best and most important fiddler of our time’.”
Koken, Walt. 2015. “Tales from the Woods, Part 12: J. P. and Roscoe” [1970s Whitesburg, Ky.]. Old-Time Herald14, no. 1 (July). http://www.oldtimeherald.org/archive/back_issues/volume-14/14-1/index.html.
Kotick, Lee. 2015. “Spencer Strickland: The Fourth Virginia Luthier.” Bluegrass Unlimited 49, no. 10 (April): 42-45. Profile of this musician and builder of mandolins and guitars, from Lambsburg, Va.
Law, Mary Elizabeth, and Bob Prater. 2013. “The Mountain City Playhouse” [Rabun Co., Ga.]. Interview by Jessica Phillips. Foxfire Magazine 47, no. 3-4 (Fall-Winter): 25-36. “Every Saturday night, the Mountain City Playhouse hosted hundreds of square dances for people all around to come and enjoy themselves.”
Lilly, John. 2014. Media review of The Johnson City Sessions 1928-1929: “Can You Sing or Play Old-Time Music?”(Bear Family Records, 2013), produced by Ted Olson and Tony Russell. Goldenseal: West Virginia Traditional Life 40, no. 4 (Winter): 66-67. Four CD boxed set; 100 tracks; with 135-page booklet.
Lockman, Brian. 2015. “An Interview with Alan Jabbour.” Old-Time Herald 14, no 2. http://www.oldtimeherald.org/archive/back_issues/volume-14/14-2/index.html.
Lockman, Nancy, and Brian Lockman, ed. 2014. “George Orthey and His Autoharps” [80 years old; Perry Co., Pa.]. Old-Time Herald 13, no. 9. http://oldtimeherald.org/archive/back_issues/volume-13/13-9/orthey.html.
Loretta Lynn: Still a Mountain Girl [film]. 2016. American Masters (series), 5 March. PBS Television premiere (53:14 min.). “Inducted into more music Halls of Fame than any female recording artist to date, Loretta Lynn (b. April 14, 1932) has earned four Grammy Awards, Kennedy Center Honors and a Presidential Medal of Freedom, and sold more than 45 million records worldwide.” http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/loretta-lynn-full-episode/6918/.
Loveless, Patty. 2014. “Mountain Music.” Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine 29, no. 2 (Winter): 5. “Mountain music is much more than lyrics, much more than the deceptively simple instrumentation; it’s a feeling.”
Lupton, John. 2013. “Come & Go with John Lilly: A Lifetime Love Affair with Old-Time Music [interview]. Sing Out! 55, no. 2 (Winter): 6-9. Discography. Career overview of guitarist, singer, and songwriter Lilly who since 1997 has been the editor of Goldenseal: West Virginia Traditional Life magazine.
MacMorran, Jane. 2013. “Tales of Tennessee, New Zealand Style.” Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine 28, no. 2 (Winter): 68-69. Profile of world-class fiddler and ETSU faculty member, Colleen Trenwith, who returns home to New Zealand each winter.
Malone, Bill C. 2014. “‘The Southern Thesis’: Revisited and Reaffirmed.” Journal of American Folklore 127, no. 504 (Spring): 226-229. “I still believe that country music bears ‘a special relationship to the South,’ and that its defining and appealing elements are linked to its origins in that region .... Southerners did make music, and they performed with a body of styles that were different and, in my opinion, more exciting than those made in other regions of the country .... As I have argued...two powerful cultural factors made the rural music of the South distinctive and appealing: the presence of African Americans in close proximity to people of European extraction, and the pervasiveness of evangelical Protestantism.”
Martin, Joseph M. 2013. An Appalachian Winter: A Cantata for Christmas. Delaware Water Gap, Pa.: Shawnee Press. 93 pp. Words and music, with narrative introductions. Contents: Prelude -- ‘Tis a season for singing -- Long time ago -- Hope and expectation (Come thou long expected Jesus [2 tunes used]) -- Carol of the winter wind -- Mountain carol -- Gentle carols of Bethlehem (Away in a manger and O little town of Bethlehem) -- While shepherds watched -- A rustic star carol -- Children, go tell it on the mountain (Children, go where I send thee and Go tell it on the mountain).
Mathis, J. P., III. 2014. “Bluegrass Music in the Land of the Rising Sun.” Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine29, no. 2 (Winter): 58-59. “My wife Leona and I spent the summer of 2013 performing, traveling, and eating our way across the Japanese archipelago.” The author is a music instructor in Hyden, Ky., and his wife teaches violin and fiddle in Maryville, Tenn.
Mazor, Barry. 2014. Ralph Peer and the Making of Popular Roots Music. Chicago: Chicago Review Press. 316 pp. Chap. 3, “To Victor, On to Bristol, and the Making of Giants, 1926-1927,” pp. 71-120 [The Bristol Sessions].
McGaha, Jennifer. 2014. “Old Crow and Appalachian Soul.” Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine 29, no. 2 (Winter): 10-12. The traditional music group Old Crow Medicine Show is “an important character in the unfolding story of Appalachia. Old Crow takes us on a tour of these mountains and reintroduces us to our people.”
McGee, Nathan. 2014. “If You Can’t Go Home, Take Some of It with You: Twentieth-Century Appalachian Migration and the Music of Renfro Valley.” Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 112, no. 4 (Autumn): 589-611.
Meador, Michael M. 2016. “‘You write songs like people breathe’: Billy Edd Wheeler, Renaissance Man.” Goldenseal: West Virginia Traditional Life 42, no. 2 (Summer): 12-23. Biographical article on the songwriter, author, and Boone County native (b. 1932). “Over the last half-century, Billy Edd has been one of West Virginia’s best cultural attachés to the rest of the world.”
Menius, Art. 2016. “Putting Bluegrass in Its Place: David Holt’s State of Music Goes National.” Bluegrass Unlimited50, no. 10 (April): 28-31. PBS documentary airing in April examines modern masters of bluegrass and traditional music in the Southern mountains.
Miller, Scott. 2016. “Scott Miller: Going Home.” Still: The Journal, no. 18 (Summer). Brief profile of songwriter Miller by Grant Alden; and mini-documentary video clip (5:27 min.) of Miller’s leaving Nashville and returning to his family’s Shenandoah Valley farm in Bath Co., Va., after “fifteen years of perfecting the art of losing money in the music business.” http://www.stilljournal.net/scott-miller-feature.php.
Milnes, Gerald. 2015. “Phyllis Marks: ‘Learned by Heart’” [biography; b. 1927, Gilmer Co.]. Goldenseal: West Virginia Traditional Life 41, no. 1 (Spring): 22-27. “Phyllis is the last active ballad singer I know of in the state who learned by heart from traditional sources in the traditional way .... Phyllis learned most of her ballads, folksongs, and life lessons from her mother.” Includes lyrics from several songs.
Milnes Receives Award. 2013. Goldenseal: West Virginia Traditional Life 39, no. 3 (Fall): 73. Gerald Milnes of Elkins received the 2013 Vandalia Award, West Virginia’s highest folklife honor, “for his extensive work as folk art coordinator at the Augusta Heritage Center at Davis & Elkins College, as well as his filmmaking, photography, audio recordings, writings, and musical accomplishments.”
Mitchell, George. 2013. Mississippi Hill Country Blues 1967. American Made Music Series. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. 144 pp. B&W pictorial chronicling the author’s search for unsigned blues artists during 1967.
Morales, Helen. 2014. Pilgrimage to Dollywood: A Country Music Road Trip through Tennessee. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 165 pp. “Morales’s adventure allows her to compare the imaginary Tennessee of [Dolly] Parton’s lyrics with the real Tennessee where the singer grew up.” Contents: Caviar and fish sticks | A series of cravings: Graceland and other shrines, Memphis | Country is as country does: Loretta Lynn’s ranch, Hurricane Mills | Music City, USA: Nashville | Tennessee mountain homes: Pigeon Forge, Gatlinburg, Sevierville, and Locust Ridge | Color me America: Dixie Stampede, Pigeon Forge | Sifting specks of gold: Dollywood amusement park, the Great Smoky Mountains | Doing the pilgrimage.
Mullins, Daniel. 2015. “The Impact of Rounder 0044” [record album by J.D. Crow & the New South]. Bluegrass Unlimited 50, no. 3 (September): 40-43.
Mullins, Daniel. 2015. “The Making of Rounder 0044.” Bluegrass Unlimited 50, no. 3 (September): 36-39. Stock number of the influential 1975 Rounder Record album by the band, J.D. Crow & the New South, with members J.D. Crowe, Ricky Scaggs, Jerry Douglas, Tony Rice, and Bobby Slone.
Music in Appalachia. 2014. Special issue, Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine 29, no. 2 (Winter): 1-72. Essays, poems, history, artist profiles, music and book reviews.
Nager, Larry. 2013. “Ronnie Reno: Bluegrass Music’s Youngest Old Timer.” Bluegrass Unlimited 48, no. 1 (July): 24-29. “Reno hosts the top national bluegrass TV show...“Reno’s Old Time Music Feastival.” See also: “Reno & Smiley and 911,” by Tim White, p. 32 [Don Reno, Red Smiley, and 1960s Roanoke, Va.].
Nager, Larry. 2014. “Great Pretenders: All-Star Earls Are Perfectly Foggy.” Bluegrass Unlimited 49, no. 4 (October): 26-33. The Earls of Leicester, more than just an “Earl”Scruggs and “Lester” Flatt tribute band, is comprised of Jerry Douglas, Shawn Camp, Barry Bales, Charlie Cushman, and Tim O’Brien.
Nager, Larry. 2014. “Rhoda Vincent Takes Control.” Bluegrass Unlimited 48, no. 12 (June): 26-31. Profile of the “Queen of Bluegrass” (b. 1962, Kirksville, Mo.).
Nager, Larry. 2015. “The Big Bang Reloaded: New CD and Film Honor The Bristol Sessions.” Bluegrass Unlimited50, no. 4 (October): 32-34. Orthophonic Joy: The 1927 Bristol Sessions Revisited (Sony/Legacy, double CD).
Nager, Larry. 2015. “Late Night Pickin’: David Letterman Leaves a Bluegrass-Sized Hole in Our TVs.” Bluegrass Unlimited 50, no. 2 (August): 32-34. The retiring TV host welcomed many bluegrass musicians over the years. “Letterman loved the banjo and...featured it often.”
Nager, Larry. 2016. “Full Circle: Nitty Gritty Dirt Band Turns 50.” Bluegrass Unlimited 50, no. 8 (February): 20-25. Detailed review of the band’s long evolution, various members, and continuing appeal. Original members include Jeff Hanna, John McEuen, Jimmie Fadden, and later, Bob Carpenter. A recording of the September, 2015, Nashville Ryman Auditorium reunion will air on TV in March 2016, along with the release of a CD and DVD of the concert.
Nava, Margaret. 2014. “The Cigar Box Guitar.” Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine 29, no. 2 (Winter): 32.
Newby, Tim. 2015. Bluegrass in Baltimore: The Hard Drivin’ Sound and Its Legacy. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. 235 pp. “Based upon interviews with legendary players from the Golden Age of Baltimore Bluegrass [1940s-50s], this book provides the first in-depth coverage of this transplanted-roots music and its broader influence, detailing the struggles Appalachian musicians faced in a big city that looked down on their ‘poorest example of poor man’s music’.”
Newfont, Kathryn, Cadence Wilmoth, Madison Moss, Ian Kirkpatrick, and Brandon Johnson. 2015. “‘Don’t Cut Bluff’ -- Twenty Years of Music and Activism at the Bluff Mountain Festival” [Hot Springs, N.C.]. North Carolina Folklore Journal 62, no. 1 (Winter-Spring): 65-95.
Nipper, Melissa. 2014. “An Appalachian Score: A Family’s Musical Heritage from Fiddling to Classical Violin.” Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine 29, no. 2 (Winter): 48-50. Johnson City, Tenn., classical violinist and conductor Kellie Brown shares her bluegrass and gospel family roots growing up in Piney Flats, Tenn.
Olson, Ted. 2013. “‘Can You Sing Or Play Old-Time Music?’: The Johnson City Sessions” [Tenn.; 1928, 1929]. Old-Time Herald 13, no. 6. “If the 1927 Bristol Sessions can be considered ‘the Big Bang of Country Music,’ then the Johnson City Sessions were a major aftershock.” http://oldtimeherald.org/archive/back_issues/volume-13/13-6/johnsoncity.html.
Olson, Ted. 2014. “Carroll Best: Old-Time ‘Fiddle-Style Banjo’ from the Great Smoky Mountains” [feature article]. Old-Time Herald 13, no. 10. 6,582 words. “This article is adapted from the album notes to the new CD release Carroll Best and The White Oak String Band: Old-Time Bluegrass from the Great Smoky Mountains, 1956 and 1959.” http://www.oldtimeherald.org/archive/back_issues/volume-13/13-10/best-fv.html.
Olson, Ted. 2014. “‘Hell’s Broke Loose in Georgia!’” Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine 29, no. 2 (Winter): 42-44. “Stephen Vincent Benét’s 139-line poem ‘The Mountain Whippoorwill’ [1925] vividly interprets the Appalachian tradition of fiddle contests.” Olson traces various interpretations including those of John Carson, Charlie Daniels, and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s John McEuen.
Olson, Ted. 2015. “The Folk Box: A Forgotten, Yet Unforgettable, Album from the Folk Era” [1964 release]. Old-Time Herald 14, no 1 (July):8- (14 pp.). http://www.oldtimeherald.org/archive/back_issues/volume-14/14-1/index.html.
Olson, Ted. 2015. “The 1927 Bristol Sessions: The Big Bang, or the Big Brag of Country Music?” Appalachian Journal 42, no. 3-4 (Spring-Summer): 262-283. Includes Roundtable discussion by: Nolan Porterfield, Dave Samuelson, Wayne Daniel, Barry Mazor, and Joe Wilson, 270-278; plus an Appendix listing “Commercial Recording Studios in Appalachia” in twelve cities, 278-282.
Olson, Ted. 2015. “Jean Ritchie (December 8, 1922--June 1, 2015).” Bluegrass Unlimited 50, no. 2 (August): 14. Called the Mother of Folk, “Ritchie’s haunting original songs owed much to the traditional ballads and lyric folk songs she heard and sang when growing up in the musical Richie family” in the community of Viper, Perry County, Ky. She is the author of Singing Family of the Cumberlands (Oxford University Press, 1955).
Olson, Ted. 2015. “Joe Wilson (March 16, 1938--May 17, 2015). Bluegrass Unlimited 50, no. 1 (July): 14-15 with sidebar, “A Remembrance of Joe,” by Mark Yacovone. Promoter and interpreter of Appalachian music, and co-creator of The Crooked Road heritage music trail, “an effort to mesh local culture and tourism in southwestern Virginia.”
Parsons, Penny. 2015. “Gary Reid: A Life of Stanley Brothers.” Bluegrass Unlimited 50, no. 6 (December): 34-38.
Parsons, Penny. 2015. “Jake Tullock: The ‘Forgotten’ Foggy.” Bluegrass Unlimited 50, no. 1 (July): 42-47. East Tennessean [1922-1988] “multi-talented bassist, harmony singer, and comedian with Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs, and the Foggy Mountain Boys during the height of their fame.”
Parsons, Penny. 2016. Foggy Mountain Troubadour: The Life and Music of Curly Seckler [b. 1919]. Music in American Life series. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 241 pp. “His foundational work [mandolin] in Flatt and Scruggs’s Foggy Mountain Boys secured him a place in bluegrass history.”
Pasley, Lucas. 2014. “Fred McBride: Going Across the Mountain” [fiddler; N.C.]. Old-Time Herald 13, no. 10. http://www.oldtimeherald.org/archive/back_issues/volume-13/13-10/index.html.
Pecknold, Diane, ed. 2013. Hidden in the Mix: The African American Presence in Country Music [thirteen essays]. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. 383 pp. Contents: Introduction: country music and racial formation / Diane Pecknold -- Black hillbillies: African American musicians on old-time records, 1924-1932 / Patrick Huber -- Making country modern: the legacy of modern sounds in country and western music / Diane Pecknold -- “In a class by himself”: Arnold Schultz and categorical ambiguity among western Kentucky thumbpickers / Erika Brady -- Fiddling with race relations in rural Kentucky: the life, times, and contested identity of Fiddlin’ Bill Livers / Jeff Keit -- Why African Americans put the banjo down / Tony Thomas -- Old-time country music in North Carolina and Virginia: the 1970s & 1980s / Kip Lornell -- “The South’s gonna do it again”: changing conceptions of the use of “country” music in the albums of Al Green / Michael Awkward -- Dancing the habanera beats (in country music): the creole-country two-step in St. Lucia and its diaspora / Jerry Wever -- Playing chicken with the train: Cowboy Troy’s hick-hop and the transracial country west / Adam Gussow -- If only they could read between the lines: Alice Randall and the integration of country music / Barbara Ching -- You’re my soul song: how Southern soul changed country music / Charles Hughes -- What’s Syd got to do with it? King Records, Henry Glover and the complex achievement of crossover / David Sanjek.
Petrus, Stephen, and Ronald D. Cohen. 2015. Folk City: New York and the American Folk Music Revival. Foreword by Peter Yarrow. New York: Oxford University Press. 320 pp. Profusely illustrated.
Phipps, Molly. 2013. “Picking Through History” [Earl Scruggs; banjo]. Appalachian Journal 41, no. 1-2 (Fall 2013-Winter 2014): 6-7. Reprint of newspaper article, “A decade in the making: Scruggs Center plans grand opening,” Shelby, N.C Star, 4 January 2014.
Polenberg, Richard. 2015. Hear My Sad Story: The True Tales That Inspired “Stagolee,”“John Henry,” and Other Traditional American Folk Songs. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. 293 pp. Twenty-five ballads, including Chapters: 5. Omie Wise (1807) | 6. The Ballad of Frankie Silver (1831) | 7. Tom Dooley (1866) | 13. John Hardy (1894) | 16. John Henry (1870s) | 17. Engine 143 (1890) | 18. Casey Jones (1900) | 19. Wreck of the Old 97 (1903) | 20. Cotton Mill Blues (1930s) | 22. Only a Miner (1930s).
Presley, Angaleena. 2015. Multimedia Feature, Still: The Journal, no. 18 (Summer). Two video clips of the country music singer and her band: “Angaleena Presley American Middle Class (3:12 min.); and “Angaleena Presley – The Making of ‘American Middle Class’” (6:28 min.; debut album, Slate Creek Records), with promotional press kit by Silas House. http://www.stilljournal.net/multimedia-angaleenapresley.php.
Prouty, Scott. 2014. “Tradition Comes Out of the Past, But It Happens in the Present: An Interview with Gerry Milnes” [Augusta Heritage Center at Davis & Elkins College, Elkins, W. Va.]. Old-Time Herald 13, no. 9. “This interview is the first in the Old-Time Music Group’s Revival Generation Oral History Project. Over the coming years we will be gathering stories of old-time musicians who came to the music in the 1960s, ‘70s, and early ‘80s.” http://oldtimeherald.org/archive/back_issues/volume-13/13-9/index.html.
Radosh, Ronald. 2014. “Roots Music.” New York Times Book Review, 7 December, 18(L). Reviews: “Wayfaring Strangers: The Musical Voyage from Scotland and Ulster to Appalachia,” by Fiona Ritchie and Doug Orr (University of North Carolina Press, 2014): and “Ralph Peer and the Making of Popular Roots Music,” by Barry Mazor (Chicago Review Press, 2014). http://nyti.ms/1G00J8r.
Reid, Gary B. 2015. The Music of the Stanley Brothers. Foreword by Neil V. Rosenberg. Music in American Life series. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 286 pp. Contents: Death is only a dream: 1947-1948 | To us, that would have been the impossible: Columbia Records, 1949-1952 | Some of our best recordings were the Mercurys: 1953-1958 | “How mountain girls can love”: the early King/Starday years, 1958-1962 | “Stone walls and steel bars”: the later King years 1963-1966. Discographies, notes, bibliography, indices, b&w photos.
Reish, Greg. 2015. “Down Yonder.” Oxford American, no. 91 (Winter): 39-42. Anecdotes from the career history of the 1920s old time string band, the Skillet Lickers.
Ritchie, Fiona, and Doug Orr. 2014. Wayfaring Strangers: The Musical Voyage from Scotland and Ulster to Appalachia. Foreword by Dolly Parton. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 361 pp. Includes audio CD featuring 20 songs by musicians profiled in the book. Fiona Ritchie is the host of National Public Radio’s The Thistle & Shamrock weekly radio program.
Ritchie, Jean. 2015. Multimedia Feature, Still: The Journal, no. 17 (Winter). Two video clips of musician, folklorist, activist Jean Ritchie (1922-1915) singing: “Rainbow Quest: Jean Ritchie – Shady Grove” (1:29 min.); and “Jean Ritchie Sings Blackwaters” (3:22 min.). http://www.stilljournal.net/multimedia-jeanritchie.php.
Roach, Ron R. 2014. “‘The Story of Bluegrass:’ Carlton Haney, Bill Monroe, and Redemption Drama in the First Bluegrass Festivals.” Journal of Appalachian Studies 20, no. 1 (Spring): 7-23. “One of the most memorable features of [promoter] Haney’s early bluegrass festivals was ‘The Story of Bluegrass,’ a musical narrative recounting the creation of bluegrass as a musical genre.”
Rorrer, Kinney, and T. Malcolm Rockwell. 2014. “Champion Records: Old-Time Playing and Singing.” Old-Time Herald 13, no 11 (December 2014-January 2015). Links to scanned PDF images of catalogs of song titles and shipping figures from old-time music recordings issued on the Champion label between 1925 and 1934. http://www.oldtimeherald.org/champion/index.html.
Rorrer, Kinney. 2015. “The North Carolina Rambler: Charlie Poole” [1892-1931; biography]. Appalachian Journal42, no. 3-4 (Spring-Summer): 252-261. “Nearly a century ago...Charlie Poole lived the ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ lifestyle, full of alcoholism and tabloid-worthy tales, while he combined the traditional dance music of his home region with the popular music of his generation.” He was an old time banjo player and leader of the North Carolina Ramblers and “helped pave the way for commercial country music and bluegrass.”
Ruchala, James. 2015. “The Old Folks Danced the Do Si Do: Dancing in the Old-time Music Community of North Carolina” [Surry Co.; 1820-present]. Journal of American Culture 38, no. 1 (March): 39-50.
Sanders, Randy. 2014. “J. William Adkins.” Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine 29, no. 2 (Winter): 51-53. Traces the musical path of guitarist Adkins from St. Albans, W. Va., high school dropout to the creation of his doctoral composition at U.Va., Strange Tales from Appalachia.
Satterlee, Dennis. 2016. “‘Keep on Going’: The Unknown Red Allen Recording.” Bluegrass Unlimited 50, no. 12 (June): 42-43. Glenn and Vivian Watson, who are originally from Estill County, Ky. and played their music over local radio stations, recorded in 1959 the now-collectible song, “Just Keep on Going,” at the Gateway/Kentucky studio in Cincinnati with Red Allen singing harmony.
Sauceman, Fred. 2014. “Editor’s Notebook.” Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine 29, no. 2 (Winter): 3. Introduction to this special issue on “Appalachian Music.” “For thirty years now, the Floyd Country Store [Floyd, Va.] has hosted the Friday Night Jamboree, a major stop on The Crooked Road: Virginia’s Heritage Music Trail.”
Sauceman, Fred. 2014. “Looking Up: The Saucemans” [1940s-60s]. Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine 29, no. 2 (Winter): 17-21. “Carl and J.P. Sauceman most always won the singing contest during...summertime community gatherings...in southern Greene County, Tennessee .... [They] can be credited with bringing bluegrass to the deep South.”
Scoggins, Michael C. 2013. The Scotch-Irish Influence on Country Music in the Carolinas: Border Ballads, Fiddle Tunes & Sacred Songs. Charleston, S.C.: History Press. 174 pp. Contents: The musical heritage of the Scotch-Irish | Folk music versus traditional music | Ballads and folk songs | Dance music and instrumentation | Sacred music | The birth of modern country music | Country music forms a new circle.
Simpson, Sturgill. 2014. Multimedia Feature, Still: The Journal, no. 16 (Fall). Profile of Breathitt County, Ky., country musician Sturgill Simpson, with a video clip of him singing “Turtles All the Way Down” (3:04 min.) from his album Metamodern Sounds in Country Music. http://www.stilljournal.net/multimedia-sturgill-simpson.php.
Skaggs, Ricky, with Eddie Dean. 2013. Kentucky Traveler: My Life in Music. New York: itbooks. 338 pp. “Celebrating his fortieth year as a professional musician, the musical prodigy and legend who revived modern bluegrass music presents a candid memoir.”
Smith, Anne Chesky. 2014. “Martin Music: Keeping Rural Traditions Alive in Urban Centers.” Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine 29, no. 2 (Winter): 13-15. “Marcus Martin [b. 1881] gained fame as a musician in the mill town of Swannanoa,” Tenn. “A few years after the Martins made their move to Swannanoa, Bascom Lamar Lunsford began organizing the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival in Asheville. Martin became a favorite...and opened the festival for many years with the traditional tune ‘Grey Eagle’.”
Smith, Ralph Lee. [1986] 2016. The Story of the Dulcimer. 2nd ed. Charles K. Wolfe Music Series. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. 277 pp. “...traces the dulcimer’s beginnings back to European immigration to America in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries .... In this second edition, Smith brings the dulcimer’s history into the twenty-first century with a new preface and updates to the original edition.”
Smith, Richard D. 2013. “Saving the Ryman: How the Birthplace of Bluegrass Was Preserved” [opened 1892]. Bluegrass Unlimited 47, no. 12 (June): 32-36. “The Ryman Auditorium is the most celebrated of the Grand Ole Opry’s homes.”
Smith, Richard D. 2015. “When Bluegrass and Old-Time Music Came to Folk City: Southern Music Featured in a New Exhibit and Book on the Folk Revival in New York.” Bluegrass Unlimited 50, no. 3 (September): 32-34. Exhibit on view through November 29 at Museum of the City of New York. Companion book, Folk City: New York and the Folk Music Revival, by Stephen Petrus and Ronald D. Cohen (Oxford University Press).
Spalding, Susan Eike. 2014. Appalachian Dance: Creativity and Continuity in Six Communities. Urbana: University Of Illinois Press. 271 pp. Weatherford Award winner for nonfiction. “Interviews with black and white Virginians, Tennesseeans, and Kentuckians...explore the evolution and social uses of dance practices in each region.”
Spottswood, Richard K. 2014. “Pete Seeger (May 3, 1919--January 27, 2014).” Bluegrass Unlimited 48, no. 9 (March): 16.
Spottswood, Dick. 2016. “In the Hills of Roane County: The Story and the Song.” Bluegrass Unlimited 50, no. 9 (March): 46-47. “Like ‘Tom Dooley’...this is a confession, sung in first person by a murderer who seeks forgiveness for his crime and pity for his punishment.” “Bill Monroe’s ‘Roane County Prison’...and versions of ‘In the Hills of Roane County’ by...the Stanley Brothers and others can be found on YouTube.”
Stern, Lewis M. 2016. Dwight Diller: West Virginia Mountain Musician. Contributions to Southern Appalachian Studies series, no. 39. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. 203 pp. “Diller is a 69 year old musician...devoted to traditional Appalachian fiddle and banjo music, and a seminary-trained minister steeped in local Christian traditions. This book tells the story of Diller’s life and music, his personal challenges and his decades of teaching an elusive musical form.”
Stimeling, Travis D. 2014. The Country Music Reader. New York: Oxford University Press. 382 pp. “...anthology of primary source readings from newspapers, magazines, and fan ephemera encompassing the history of country music from circa 1900 to the present.”
Stuart, Chris. 2014. “Alice Gerrard: Not Done Yet” [b. 1934; profile]. Bluegrass Unlimited 48, no. 12 (June): 46-49. Singer/songwriter, editor, collector, and documenter Gerrard was once married to Mike Seeger, founded the Old-Time Herald, and is best known as half of a singing duo with Hazel Dickens.
Stuart, Marty. 2014. American Ballads: The Photographs of Marty Stuart. Edited by Kathryn E. Delmez, with an introduction by Marty Stuart and an essay by Susan H. Edwards. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. 115 pp. “...will coincide with an exhibition at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville, Tennessee. This book will present images from these three bodies of work: “Badlands” on his time with the Lakota; “The Masters” from his work with musicians; and “Blue Line Hot Shots.”
Titon, Jeff Todd. 2013. “Music and the US War on Poverty: Some Reflections.” Yearbook For Traditional Music 45, 74-82. Includes discussion of two Baptist groups in the southern Appalachian mountains which the author has followed since the 1970s.
Tottle, Jack. 2014. “Musical Journeys and Improbable Connections: An Appalachian-Hawaiian Kinship.” Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine 29, no. 2 (Winter): 55-57. History of Hawaiian steel guitarists and their influence on Appalachian country and bluegrass musicians.
Tottle, Jack. 2016. “ETSU’s Archives of Appalachia: A Guided Tour via Time Machine.” Bluegrass Unlimited 50, no. 8 (February): 28-30. Overview of remarkable music collections at East Tennessee State University’s Center for Appalachian Studies and Services (CASS).
Tribe, Ivan. 2013. “Billy Baker: Fiddler for Sixty Years and Counting” [b. 1936 near Pound, Va.]. Bluegrass Unlimited 47, no. 10 (April): 40-43.
Tribe, Ivan. 2013. “Joe and Stacy Isaacs: Making Mountain Bluegrass.” Bluegrass Unlimited 47, no. 11 (May): 40-44. Profile of Joe Isaacs, b. 1947 Jackson Co., Ky.; founder of the gospel group, The Isaacs, and now a member of a duo with Stacy York Isaacs whom he married in 2010.
Tribe, Ivan. 2014. “The Black Mountain Bluegrass Boys: Forty-Six Years of Mountain State Bluegrass” [Pocahontas Co., W. Va.]. Bluegrass Unlimited 49, no. 5 (November): 34-36.
Tribe, Ivan. 2014. “Jim and Valerie Gabehart: West Virginia’s Eminent Bluegrass Couple” [Lincoln Co.; both b. 1961]. Bluegrass Unlimited 49, no. 1 (July): 38-41.
Tribe, Ivan M. 2014. “Natchee the Indian: Many Stories, Some Factual.” Goldenseal: West Virginia Traditional Life40, no. 3 (Fall): 50-53. Biography of legendary Depression-era fiddler “Natchee,” born Lester Vernon Storer, 1913.
Tribe, Ivan M., and Jacob L. Bapst. 2015. West Virginia’s Traditional Country Music [vintage photos]. Foreword by Buddy Griffin. Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia. 127 pp. Contents: The early days | WWVA Radio and the Jamboree | Mountain State Radio to 1945 Later radio and live television | Real folk musicians and bluegrass | West Virginia goes national.
Tyler, Paul L. 2014. “Hillbilly Music Re-imagined: Folk and Country Music in the Midwest.” Journal of American Folklore 127, no. 504 (Spring): 159-190. “...the hillbilly is re-imagined to encompass a larger pool of folk musicians whose practices resided beyond the control of the musical establishment of the 1920s.”
Watts, Julia. 2014. “Virgil and Rayford: Creating Locally Grown Music from Organic Ingredients” [Ky.]. Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine 29, no. 2 (Winter): 29-31. Watts reviews CDs by her coal miner father, Rayford Watts, and Virgil Bowlin: Virgil Sings Rayford and Camp House Blues.
Weinstein, Natalya. 2014. “Remembering Jim Shumate: Pioneering Bluegrass Fiddler” [1921-2013]. Bluegrass Unlimited 49, no. 3 (September): 44-45.
Wheeler, Billy Edd. 2016. “Remembering ‘Aunt Jenny’ Wilson.” Goldenseal: West Virginia Traditional Life 42, no. 2 (Summer): 24-25, 73. Old-time banjo player and storyteller Virginia Wilson (1900-1992) was 1984 recipient of the Vandalia Award, West Virginia’s highest folklife honor.
Wildsmith, Dana. 2014. “Fly Swift Around Ye Wheels of Time.” Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine 29, no. 2 (Winter): 39-40. Shape note singing from The Sacred Harp at Hindman Settlement School, Ky., during Family Folk Week under the direction of Ron Pen.
Wilson-Giarratano, Gail. 2015. Carolina Bluegrass: A High Lonesome History. Charleston, S.C.: History Press. 176 pp. Contents: I. I heard a banjar playin’: (Re)birth of the banjo | You can only get there from here | High on the hog -- II. Still pickin’ in Carolina: Stories from the fold | Musicians & champions, traditions & memories.
Wilson, Joe. 2013. “The Hill Billies: The Band That Named the Music” [1924; Galax, Va.]. Bluegrass Unlimited 48, no. 1 (July): 42-43. “Due to radio broadcasts from Washington, D.C., and New York, the Hill Billies became the first nationally known country music band.”
Winkler, Wayne. 2013. “Sounds from the Clanjamfry.” Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine 28, no. 2 (Winter): 64-67. Profile of Scotsman Jack Beck, co-owner of the Lonesome Pine Bookstore in Big Stone Gap, Va., and producer of the weekly program Celtic Clanjamfry, transmitted from public radio station WETS-FM, Johnson City, Tenn.
Winkler, Wayne. 2014. “Brother against Brother.” Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine 30, no. 1 (Summer): 45-50. History of the Everly Brothers’ (Phil and Don) 1950s rise to fame, their influence on a generation of singers, and their feud and famous onstage breakup in 1973.
Winkler, Wayne. 2014. “The Johnson City Sessions: A Story Whose Time Has Come.” Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine 29, no. 2 (Winter): 22-26. “The latest box set collection from Germany’s Bear Family Records, The Johnson City Sessions, 1928-1929, documents the work of [Frank B.] Walker and is as meticulously produced and documented as its predecessor, The Bristol Sessions, 1927-1928. Dr. Ted Olson...who initiated and produced The Bristol Sessions [2011], has done the same for the lesser-known Johnson City recordings [2013].
Winkler, Wayne. 2016. “Roy Acuff and the ‘Trial of the Century’” [Johnson City, Tenn.]. Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine 31, no. 2 (Winter): 51-53. Recounts the 1962 trial of Hack Smithfield for the murder of Roy Faircloth at which “The King of Country Music,” Acuff, was called to testify.
Wiseman, Mac, with Walt Trott. 2015. All My Memories Fit for Print. Foreword by Charlie Daniels. Madison, Tenn.: Nova Books Nashville. 352 pp.
Withers, Bill. 2015. “Wherever You Go, You Take Yourself”—Interviewing Bill Withers” [b. 1938; W. Va.]. Appalachian Journal 42, no. 3-4 (Spring-Summer): 344-357. Interview by Anna Sale; Introduction by Mark Freed and Trevor McKenzie. Withers, who recorded major hits “Ain’t No Sunshine” (1971) and “Lean on Me” (1972), was inducted into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame in 2007.
Wood, Dave. 2015. “Transcription as a Blessing and a Curse.” Appalachian Journal 42, no. 3-4 (Spring-Summer): 404-411. Review essay of The Milliner-Koken Collection of American Fiddle Tunes, transcribed and annotated by Clare Milliner and Walt Koken (Mudthumper Music, 2011).
Worthington, TJ. 2014. “Howard Joines: Mountain Fiddler in Changing Times” [1908-1981]. Old-Time Herald 13, no. 7. Joines was a master fiddler in Alleghany Co., N.C. http://www.oldtimeherald.org/archive/back_issues/volume-13/13-7/index.html.