Ivan Tribe’s Folk Music in Overdrive: A Primer on Traditional Country and Bluegrass Artists gathers together thirty-nine essays by this prolific researcher. Thirty-two of the essays previously appeared in Bluegrass Unlimited, others in periodicals such as Goldenseal and Old-Time Music and two are appearing for the first time. This reviewer was not able to locate the dates for the original publication of any of the works, but on page xiii of the acknowledgements section, Tribe comments that he began to write for Bluegrass Unlimited in 1973. This section also tells readers that Tribe revised and updated the articles for publication in this volume.
As explained in Ted Olson’s foreword, the expression “folk music in overdrive” was coined by Alan Lomax in 1959. It was about the time bluegrass was becoming distinguished from its country music parent. The expression has resonated with many, and has stood the test of time, as has the music it references. The book deals with artists hailing from the upland South. Through the era ending in the early 1960s, the upland South was the primary region for the original bluegrass artists and audiences. Later in the 1960s, the situation started to change to what it is today, when audience members and players are located seemingly everywhere in North America, as well as internationally.
There is also a seven-page introduction that discusses both the differences and influences between traditional country music and bluegrass that provide a framework for the essays that follow. The essays are divided into categories: Leaders, Solo Singers and Composers; Sidemen; Husband-Wife Duets; Brother Duets; and Families and Groups. Each section begins with a brief introduction in which Tribe tells of the importance of the type of artist represented.
Most of the musical performers about whom Tribe writes are not the biggest stars of the idioms depicted, a good decision for a book of this type. There are already bookshelves brimming with treatments about the likes of the father of bluegrass music, Bill Monroe; and about popular artists such as Flatt & Scruggs and the Stanley Brothers, and about 1930-era icons such as Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family who played major roles in defining directions for bluegrass and traditional country music.
Fiddler Billy Baker is a good example of the type of artist represented in the book. Baker was acknowledged by his peers as a talented pro. He began playing with Smiley Hobbs in the mid-to-late 1950s, and later served as the fiddler in Bill Monroe’s Bluegrass Boys. Billy also was a member of Earl Taylor’s Stony Mountain Boys, and he also collaborated with Del McCoury in several bands over about a decade. Baker had a lengthy career in music and is undoubtedly one of the many bluegrass players, as Ted Olson put it on page xi of the book’s foreward, who collectively helped create bluegrass music, but are underrepresented in scholarship about bluegrass music.
Throughout Folk Music in Overdrive, Tribe demonstrates a knack for locating musicians of interest to those who care about the music, and then relating details not only about their musical careers, but also illustrative information about their lives and the music business. For example, when readers learn that Billy Baker, like so many bluegrass musicians, supported himself through working a day job, readers familiar with the bluegrass genre acknowledge the depth of commitment required to play bluegrass professionally. In the case of Billy Baker, the day jobs were primarily in road construction and asphalt.
There is no template for what folklorists or others interested in bluegrass and traditional country music should know about artists, nor one instructing authors on what they should write about. However, in most cases, the articles in the book tell where a musician is from, where the musician worked, the musical groups the musician worked with, the other players in the group, and about key performances and recording sessions. Tribe also includes information about the musicians’ influences, reputation with peers, greatest successes and honors, and what their lives were like.
However, Folk Music in Overdrive stands out because Tribe’s quest for details takes the essays above and beyond the basics. For example, Tribe’s research into Roy Hall led him to the files of a recording company. In November 1938, Roy Hall’s Blue Ridge Entertainers recorded the tune “Orange Blossom Special,” with Tommy Magness as the group’s fiddle player. The composer of the tune was fiddler Ervin Rouse. The recording by the Hall-led group preceded the recording by the Rouse Brothers by seven months, but the Rouse Brothers prevented the release of the Hall-led version. Tribe quotes from the files of the record company a notation saying “Hold Release, Rouse Brothers refuse to sign contract,” and a later handwritten note saying “Don’t release-Pub. Promises Trouble.” Tribe’s narrative includes a postscript on the situation. It begins with the assessment of the Magness version that it was not as developed as most of his work. Then Tribe provides a quote from a Clayton Hall, after hearing the tune played for him by a grandson, decades after the incident. Clayton’s quote is: “Boy, Tommy didn’t do much with that one.” This is the kind of anecdote that is bound to become part of the lore that those who care about traditional country music will tell and retell, and it is typical of the essays in Folk Music in Overdrive.
Bluegrass and traditional country music are of course minority tastes. However, many of those who enjoy these styles consider the music as more than something that fills up the background with sound, or provides a beat for dancing. They hold that the music is created by musicians pursuing artistic visions. To these listeners, traditional music styles such as bluegrass embody complicated lines of artistic influences, cultural values, and the tastes of audiences—mixed with music business considerations. All those items and more are of interest to those with developed interests in bluegrass and traditional country music.
When individuals with pronounced musical interests get together, they talk about artists, great concerts they have attended, recorded music in their personal collections, and such things as posters advertising concerts, or practical matters such as the best ways to store and preserve recorded music and music-connected memorabilia. They might encounter each other at public events such as bluegrass festivals, concerts, jam sessions, parties, second-hand record shops and the like, and by chance. Members of this community of musically-engaged individuals frequently increase their knowledge about traditional music styles by reading books and magazine articles that serve their interest, and what is learned from reading often feeds their discussions about music. Folk Music in Overdrive is the type of book that will factor into discussions among bluegrass and traditional country community members for the foreseeable future.
Folk Music in Overdrive: A Primer on Traditional Country and Bluegrass Artists is a well written and authoritative collection of essays written by a master of the form in the field it covers. It brings together well composed and detailed articles about artists who deserve to be presented in company of each other, and about whom little is available in print. Because the publisher, the University of Tennessee Press, possesses the ability to distribute the volume, it should make its way into the collections of those who would most appreciate it. Folk Music in Overdrive will serve as a factual and entertaining sourcebook for those who enjoy and act to preserve bluegrass and traditional country music.
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[Review length: 1237 words • Review posted on March 4, 2019]