A desire of every music fan is to have a backstage pass to a big concert, but the behind-the-scenes action and personal life of a professional musician is a relatively unknown world. While most of us will never see what’s behind the curtain at the Grand Ole Opry, or set foot inside a band’s tour bus, we can at least read about those things in The Bluegrass Reader . Thomas Goldsmith, an experienced bluegrass journalist and reporter for the Nashville Tennessean , has assembled a wonderful collection of newspaper and magazine articles, album liner notes, convention speeches, and other stories from the world of bluegrass journalism. These articles give readers an inside look into bluegrass music’s most influential people and events.
The idea for this project actually came some years earlier from Neil Rosenberg, author of Bluegrass: A History , the “definitive volume” on bluegrass according to Goldsmith (four of Rosenberg’s articles appear in The Bluegrass Reader ). The book under review is not exactly a history of the music like Rosenberg’s book, although it is possible to trace the development of bluegrass because of the way the book is organized. Articles are grouped into three time periods that approximate the “generations” of bluegrass, from Bill Monroe and Flatt and Scruggs to Ricky Skaggs and Alison Krauss.
Before every article, Goldsmith provides a brief introduction to set the stage for what comes next. These intros are very interesting and fill in background information that the articles sometimes leave out. The majority of the material in the book comes from periodicals and liner notes, which lack the background explanations that are essential for novices. Almost all the articles, though, are written by qualified authors, who often provide first-hand perspectives on the subjects they write about. The contributors range from experienced journalists, like Rosenberg and Goldsmith, to musicians and other industry insiders.
Readers will find both academic articles and entertaining stories about the lives of bluegrass musicians. Among the scholarly articles are L. Mayne Smith’s “An Introduction to Bluegrass” and Alan Lomax’s “Bluegrass Background: Folk Music with Overdrive.” Both provide solid ethnomusicological insights and have proved to be pivotal pieces in the bluegrass literature. These articles, as Goldsmith reiterates time and again, helped bluegrass to gain acceptance outside the original fan base in the Appalachians and Upland South.
Some articles are much more conversational and entertaining than the ones mentioned above, and have also proven to be highly influential in bluegrass journalism. These include John Duffey’s “So You Don’t Like the Way We Do It” and Connie Walker’s “The Plight of the Bluegrass Widow.” Duffey, one of the all-time great mandolin players and tenor singers, gives readers a long-winded complaint about how fans will record the live shows and then fail to buy his band’s records. Most bluegrass musicians would be too afraid to lose fans to write such a blunt complaint, but Duffey unapologetically made his feelings well known (the article originally appeared in the popular magazine Bluegrass Unlimited ).
One of the true strengths of bluegrass music is how many of the finest pickers are also some of the most knowledgeable historians and journalists. The Bluegrass Reader has a fine sampling of articles from these musician-authors. Along with John Duffey’s piece, some great material is contributed by Tim Stafford, Murphy Henry, and Pete Wernick. In fact, one the most interesting topics in The Bluegrass Reader comes from a mild-mannered debate between Henry and Wernick over women in bluegrass. Henry argued (in a 1994 speech to the International Bluegrass Music Association) that the industry, particularly the IBMA, did not do enough to encourage female participation in bluegrass. Wernick, a master banjoist who is a past president of the IBMA, countered Henry by citing efforts to reach out to females that Henry failed to mention in her speech.
Since bluegrass has not experienced as much continued television coverage as popular music has received over the years, print media has been extremely important in the documentation and promotion of events and artists. The Bluegrass Reader does a fine job of assembling the most important and intriguing pieces of journalism that have been written about bluegrass over the years. Goldsmith even includes an article by Hunter S. Thompson, who is from the bluegrass-rich city of Louisville, KY. As readers will find out, bluegrass has managed to make its way to some unlikely people and places, but has never strayed too far from the vision of the first-generation musicians.
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[Review length: 738 words • Review posted on March 8, 2007]