Bluegrass Newgrass Old Time And Americana Music

A colorful and comprehensive history of bluegrass and old-time Appalachian music from its legendary roots to today’s Grammy-winning stars. With simple instrumentation—banjo, guitar, and base—a great variety of musical traditions converged to create the “old-timey” music of Appalachia. Over time, that mountain sound evolved into numerous genres and subgenres that continue to thrive today. Now musician and roots music historian Craig Harris takes readers on an anecdotal journey through this distinctly American music. From the Grand Ole Opry and the historic Bristol Sessions to contemporary festivals and the reemergence of Bluegrass in popular culture, Harris combines extensive research and never-before-seen photographs with more than ninety exclusive interviews. Bluegrass, Newgrass, Old-Time, and Americana Music is chock full of anecdotes about Bill Monroe, Flatt & Scruggs, Del McCoury, Doc Watson, Alison Kraus, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and more.

With retail sales of the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack exceeding 6.5 million copies since its 2000 release, bluegrass music has re-entered the spotlight as a major American style, spawning huge successes with subsequent albums. Author Stephanie P. Ledgin has captured the rich history of this music in Homegrown Music, a lively, informative book that is perfect for newcomers and devoted fans, musicians, and non-musicians. Though recognized and embraced internationally, bluegrass is one of only two musical genres native to America and, like jazz, it boasts a colorful and lively history, one that is captured here in all its detail complete with candid interviews with such legends as Earl Scruggs, Ralph Stanley, and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Covering such aspects of bluegrass as instrumentation, songs, the festival experience, and parking lot picking, Homegrown Music also offers candid interviews with many celebrated bluegrass figures. An extensive up-to-the-minute resource guide of print, audio-visual, and Internet materials rounds out the volume. Enthusiasts of all ages will find much to discover and much to enjoy.

A musical genre forever outside the lines With a claim on artists from Jimmie Rodgers to Jason Isbell, Americana can be hard to define, but you know it when you hear it. John Milward’s Americanaland is filled with the enduring performers and vivid stories that are at the heart of Americana. At base a hybrid of rock and country, Americana is also infused with folk, blues, R&B, bluegrass, and other types of roots music. Performers like Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, and Gram Parsons used these ingredients to create influential music that took well-established genres down exciting new roads. The name Americana was coined in the 1990s to describe similarly inclined artists like Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle, and Wilco. Today, Brandi Carlile and I’m With Her are among the musicians carrying the genre into the twenty-first century. Essential and engaging, Americanaland chronicles the evolution and resonance of this ever-changing amalgam of American music. Margie Greve’s hand-embroidered color portraits offer a portfolio of the pioneers and contemporary practitioners of Americana.

Building on his 2006 book, Which Side Are You On?, Dick Weissman's A New History of American and Canadian Folk Music presents a provocative discussion of the history, evolution, and current status of folk music in the United States and Canada. North American folk music achieved a high level of popular acceptance in the late 1950s. When it was replaced by various forms of rock music, it became a more specialized musical niche, fragmenting into a proliferation of musical styles. In the pop-folk revival of the 1960s, artists were celebrated or rejected for popularizing the music to a mass audience. In particular the music seemed to embrace a quest for authenticity, which has led to endless explorations of what is or is not faithful to the original concept of traditional music. This book examines the history of folk music into the 21st century and how it evolved from an agrarian style as it became increasingly urbanized. Scholar-performer Dick Weissman, himself a veteran of the popularization wars, is uniquely qualified to examine the many controversies and musical evolutions of the music, including a detailed discussion of the quest for authenticity, and how various musicians, critics, and fans have defined that pursuit.

Wayne Erbsen's newest book takes a deep look at bluegrass music to uncover its true roots: ballads of early pioneers, Scots-Irish fiddle tunes, black spirituals, plantations melodies, blues, murder ballads, sentimental parlor songs from Tin Pan Alley, North Carolina banjo styles and gospel songs. the book is richly illustrated with over 100 vintage photos and includes lyrics, musical notation, chords, history and playing tips to 94 songs. There are also nearly 80 pages of history and profiles portraying important musicians including the Monroe Brothers, Carter Family, Bradley Kincaid, Riley Puckett, Charlie Poole, Wade & J.E. Mainer, Vernon Dalhart, Carolina Tar Heels, G.B. Grayson and Henry Whitter, Fiddlin' Arthur Smith, Ernest V. Stoneman, Blue Sky Boys, Fiddlin' John Carson, Coon Creek Girls, Earl Scruggs, Eck Robertson, Callahan Brothers, Samantha Bumgarner, Bill Monroe Zeke & Wiley Morris, Jimmie Rodgers and Stringbean. Optional CD by Wayne Erbsen and Laura Boosinger is available containing fourteen songs from the book.

A chronological guide to bluegrass music that describes and traces the development of the musical genre.

The twentieth anniversary paperback edition, updated with a new preface Winner of the International Bluegrass Music Association Distinguished Achievement Award and of the Country Music People Critics' Choice Award for Favorite Country Book of the Year Beginning with the musical cultures of the American South in the 1920s and 1930s, Bluegrass: A History traces the genre through its pivotal developments during the era of Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys in the forties. It describes early bluegrass's role in postwar country music, its trials following the appearance of rock and roll, its embracing by the folk music revival, and the invention of bluegrass festivals in the mid_sixties. Neil V. Rosenberg details the transformation of this genre into a self-sustaining musical industry in the seventies and eighties is detailed and, in a supplementary preface written especially for this new edition, he surveys developments in the bluegrass world during the last twenty years. Featuring an amazingly extensive bibliography, discography, notes, and index, this book is one of the most complete and thoroughly researched books on bluegrass ever written.

Bluegrass music is an original characterization, simply called a 'representation, ' of traditional Appalachian music in its social form.