(Editor’s Note: Bluegrass Hall of Fame inductee and Grand Ole Opry member Jesse McReynolds passed away on June 23, 2023 at the age of 94. In his honor, we’re re-sharing this incredible first-person video from early 2020 that features McReynolds telling stories of his grandfather’s fiddle.)
A true legend as one half of iconic brother duo Jim & Jesse, 90-year-old musician Jesse McReynolds has inspired generations of pickers. But who influenced him? In this interview clip, the Grand Ole Opry star and Bluegrass Hall of Fame member reminisces about walking through the woods to visit his grandfather in Possum Holler, Virginia, near Coeburn. About a half a mile away, the sounds of his ancestor’s fiddle would greet him.
McReynolds further explains that his grandfather played on the Bristol Sessions, which ushered in artists such as the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers. Now, McReynolds has inherited that treasured fiddle, which can be heard on his latest Pinecastle Records album, The Bull Mountain Moonshiners’ Way. “I don’t know how long it’s been around, but it’s sounding better all the time, I think,” he says.
Artist:Ellis Paul Hometown: Charlottesville, Virginia Latest album:55 (available June 9, 2023)
Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?
I can’t say which artist has inspired me “the most,” there’s too many great ones in the generations that came before me and too many new ones popping up as I go. And some of them are unconscious influences. I don’t go to James Taylor or Paul Simon consciously, but they are such a part of my youth and DNA that I know they are there. The Beatles are my go to teachers, as is Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell. Their entire catalogues. When I listen to them with a magnifying glass, I’m constantly awe struck. They make my humility rise as a dominant emotional state. I’m good at what I do. But the gap between them and me is clear to me – but it is also where my great frontier lies. The best version of me is somewhere out there ahead — in that direction — and I need them as inspiration to explore it. To guide my improvements. So I dissect their music. And thank them. While their songs lie like frogs in the biology class of my mind.
What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc. — inform your music?
All of it! Everywhere I’m engaged in life can create a song — so I’m constantly on the lookout. I see what I do as a form of literature. There is a reason why Bob Dylan is walking around with a Nobel Prize in Literature. It’s storytelling, poetry, lyricism wrapped in imagery, dressed within melody and colored orchestration. It’s a visual medium in people’s brains as they watch the details unfold in a song while they are listening. So it’s like a movie or a painting. The music is a dance. It’s flowing. It’s a kind of geography.
Everything from a great meal to a great movie can inspire. Anytime I’m stuck, I try to get out and see a film or go to a museum or take a walk. Read a book. Watch how film makers tell their stories. It’s all a deep well to drink from, aren’t we incredibly lucky? I love my job.
What rituals do you have, either in the studio or before a show?
One of the best rituals I have in the studio is working with a grid sheet and stickers to watch the progress I’m making as the album evolves. I put it on the wall so everyone involved can see it. It’s a big piece of paper usually 18” by 24”. The songs are on the left side going down and all the tracks run across the top. After a musician plays their part, I give them a sticker to fill in their square for the song. It helps me project out, to see what’s left to do, and to see how much has been done. It helps to focus my thoughts on the parts left to finish and I can be creatively thinking about how I want the remaining tracks to lie against the ones that are completed. It also makes the musician feel good for some reason. They always love it. The stickers are usually cool, like Wizard of Oz characters. It brings out the first grader in people. They choose which sticker and then find their empty box and fill it with Toto.
If you had to write a mission statement for your career, what would it be?
Mainly— create beauty in every part of your work.
Now, since I’m in my fifties, this would be by making the most of your talent and my skill set. Focus on the writing because that is the part that will be left behind when you part from the earthly side of things. The recordings will tell the story of you in the years to come when your gone. So I’m editing the songs until they shimmer, working more in the studio to get things right and less as a road dog doing shows. I was always writing and recording on the fly. Coming into the studio with a voice torn up by the road. And songs written on airplanes. I’ve got more space now, because I’m established, and can live off of fewer shows. I can’t sing as high or sustain notes the same way, but I have more patience and wisdom now. I’m a better writer for those things. And the best is yet to come.
How often do you hide behind a character in a song or use “you” when it’s actually “me”?
I like character driven songs and usually have a couple on every album. The latest album, 55, has a song from the perspective of a tattooed lady in a circus. I did it as a writing exercise where I was assigning circus characters to my songwriting students. So I had to assume a lot of different things with this song: a woman’s perspective, a time/era perspective – because I felt like it was occurring in the late ’40s – and then someone who is essentially a circus act in a freak show. It was fun to write. Unlike, say a “bearded lady” or conjoined twins, the tattooed performer chose to look as she does. I don’t feel like she is a victim of circumstance in the same way, so the character invites the listener to gaze upon her physique. Circus life can be tough as well, doing show after show, so you sense her boredom. Despite the fact that she is lighting the wick on the big gun of the human cannonball. She’s a bit over it.
Artist:Lost & Found Hometown: Ferrum, Virginia Song: “Dreamer’s Hill” Album:Final Chapter Release Date: May 19, 2023 Label: Mountain Fever Records
Editor’s Note: The Lost & Found band began in 1973 with the oiginal lineup of Allen Mills, Gene Parker, Dempsey Young and Roger Handy. Most of Final Chapter was recorded in 2013 by Sammy Shelor at Mountain Fever Studios in Willis, Virginia. During a cleanup of the studio, Mountain Fever Records owner Mark Hodges came across the ‘lost’ hard drive containing Final Chapter.
In Their Words: “Dewitt ‘Buster’ Johnson reached out just pitching songs and he suggested ‘Dreamer’s Hill.’ I remember how that song was absolutely the standout. I immediately related to the story of the old man reminiscing about his younger days. The song describes the beauty and peace of a place from childhood. The last few lines really bring it home: ‘I’ve never known such peace alone and I know I never will / Till I leave this world behind me and return to Dreamer’s Hill.’” — Allen Mills, Lost & Found
“It was such an honor to be a part of a project by Lost & Found. They have been heroes of mine since my teenage years and to get to work in the studio with them was a dream come true. Their brand of bluegrass had a certain class and sound that made them stand out from the rest. And they maintained that sound through 50 years of recording and touring. These last recordings are a treasure, and I’ll always be grateful to have been part of it!” — Sammy Shelor, album engineer and longtime member of Lonesome River Band
It is immediately apparent upon stepping into a new special exhibit at the Birthplace of Country Music Museum that the contributions of women in old-time music are all-encompassing. From winning fiddle contests to writing timeless songs to working behind the scenes, women have made a mark on every corner of the old-time landscape. And they continue to do so, as evidenced by the exhibit’s title, I’ve Endured: Women in Old-Time Music.
On display through the end of 2023 inside this Bristol, Tennessee-Virginia, destination, the exhibit is rooted in history but undoubtedly feels topical. Through photos, video interviews, panels and artifacts, it tells a story that’s as relevant today as it was in the 1920s — or at any point in between. The exhibit was curated by a content team of curatorial staff and external experts led by Dr. Rene Rodgers, the museum’s head curator; a companion website enhances the narrative and will support the exhibit when it travels.
Toni Doman-Vandyke, the museum’s grant coordinator and curatorial specialist who also hosts a program on WBCM-LP Radio Bristol, the museum’s in-house radio station, observes, “Historically, women have had many challenges and have even faced restrictions on the songs they were allowed to sing. And that can also connect with early barn dance radio and record producers making decisions about what a performer — in this case, women — would look like. That can be everything from their costumes to how they’re portrayed. Their record producers really made assumptions on how an audience would perceive women. So, a woman is up there and she needs to be morally good, right? It’s the 1930s, it’s the Depression. We don’t want her singing these sad songs. Producers would often say, ‘You’re gonna sing this and it’s gonna sound this way.’ It took a long time for women to get their own voice out there.”
Erika Barker, the museum’s curatorial manager, adds, “In a lot of cases, it was men writing songs for women, and what they thought women were thinking or should be thinking, instead of women being able to write their own songs or record the songs that they had written.”
Experiencing the exhibit is fascinating if not slightly frustrating. Time and again, women were asked to adapt rather than embrace their creative identity, sometimes in a literal sense. For example, when John Lair envisioned an all-girl string band he’d call the Coon Creek Girls, he allowed fiddler player and radio star Lily May Ledford and her sister, guitarist Rosie Ledford, to keep their floral names and their Kentucky roots. However, to further feminize the group and underscore the rural origins, mandolinist Esther Koehler became “Violet” and Evelyn Lange assumed the role of “Daisy” (but first had to teach herself to play bass); their hometowns in Indiana and Ohio, respectively, were scrubbed from the story. All four women were presented as hailing from a holler in Kentucky — a completely fictional place.
Following a self-guided tour of the special exhibit, BGS spoke with Barker and Doman-Vandyke about the surprises they encountered while creating the exhibit as well as the lesser-known stories that they’re eager to share.
BGS: Since this is a topic that hasn’t often been explored, it seems that you could make this exhibit into whatever you wanted it to be. What got you the most excited about the process?
Doman-Vandyke: It’s not just names of people and dates. We really wanted to dive into those stories of women and I think we’ve done a really good job of that, really highlighting those hidden histories. And another thing we wanted to focus on was not just doing the big names. OK, we have a lot of well-known names in the exhibit of course, but we’re trying to uncover those hidden histories in those stories and people who might not have ever made it on the mainstream.
Of course, Ola Belle Reed is a huge name and a great influence in old-time music. Rhiannon Giddens, who is in the exhibit, is a huge innovator of old-time music and beyond. But in this exhibit we feature stories like Roni Stoneman’s. She has a great story where she was the only woman in a banjo contest, and she wasn’t allowed to be the winner even though she was the clear winner. All the judges said, “We can’t let a girl win this contest.” Another story that I really like in the exhibit is Sally Ann Forrester, who was the first woman to play in Bill Monroe’s band, although she was not seriously credited as being a musician because she was a woman. She was thought of by the public as just filling in for her husband, who was also a musician in Monroe’s band. And that was not the case!
Barker: One of my favorite “hidden women” in the exhibit is Dr. Katherine Jackson French, who was an early song collector. She tried to get her collection of Kentucky ballads published several years before Cecil Sharp published his famous ballad collection, but they were never published. About 110 years later, they’ve now been published. I found her story fascinating and I got invested in her while doing research for the exhibit. There are so many women like that, that were doing the work and moving the genre forward, and yet we don’t really know a lot of their names.
Doman-Vandyke: I also have to mention Elsie McWilliams as another really hidden story that spoke to me because she wrote dozens of songs for Jimmie Rodgers. Before we started doing research for this, I thought Jimmie Rodgers just wrote all his songs. I had no idea that he had someone that wrote for and with him, and yet she isn’t well-known for this achievement. In the interviews that we read, and as we uncovered information about her, she was kind of like, “I’ll just write them because he’s my brother-in-law.” She had a personal connection to Jimmie Rodgers, but she was a phenomenal piano player and songwriter. She’s actually known as one of the first women to make a career out of songwriting in country music and yet her story isn’t out there very much. Featuring these types of stories was really our goal when we all put this together.
Barker: Roba Stanley is another one that I liked that is not super well-known. She was one of the earliest women to record old-time music and is known as “The first sweetheart of country music,” but her career only lasted about a year. She even had a song called “Single Girl” that included the lyrics “Single life is a happy life! Single life is lovely! I am single and no man’s wife. And no man shall control me.” Then she got married, sold her guitar, moved, and never recorded again because her husband didn’t want her to perform publicly, which was not uncommon. But she was very successful for only having a few recordings out, and then she completely walked away from it when she got married.
Doman-Vandyke: Louise Scruggs is also a great example. She was Earl Scruggs’ wife and one of the first touring and booking managers in country music, not just old-time music. She had a huge career. Every time I’m in Nashville, I love to visit Spring Hill Cemetery because so many musicians are buried there. It’s great to just walk around and learn about history. We saw her gravestone there at the front and something that’s great about it is that all of her achievements were listed on her tombstone. And it wasn’t just, “Wife of Earl Scruggs,” which I thought was amazing.
I noticed Amythyst Kiah in a few places in the exhibit. What was it about her story that fits so well into this exhibit?
Barker: She has a special place in the heart of this museum in particular because she was a part of the original content team when the museum was being created. She lives in this area and is an alumna of East Tennessee State University’s Bluegrass, Old-Time and Country Music Studies program in the Department of Appalachian Studies. We love reconnecting with her and she’s got such a great background in this type of music, and is also Grammy-nominated and doing amazing things. She’s a great example of exactly what we’re talking about in the exhibit of women innovating and pushing boundaries with music today.
Doman-Vandyke: Getting interested in old-time music was part of her roots and now she’s still paying homage to those roots but taking it in an innovative direction. That’s another thing we feature in the exhibit – old-time music is not just this one sound that has parameters around it. Old-time music has always been innovative. It’s always been influenced by the players around it. It’s always had different influences throughout time. Many of our interviewees touched on that point. I feel it’s important to preserve roots and branches of this music, but it’s also important to innovate and adapt for modern audiences. Old-time music especially is community oriented. It’s participatory and very welcoming, and all of those factors play into its innovation, its longevity, and where it’s going and how it’s being preserved and promoted.
Barker: One of the things we wanted people to see in the exhibit is that this music has multiple influences and connections, its history is rooted in different cultural influences, and there’s a place in this music for everybody.
This is going to be a traveling exhibit. What kind of message do you hope to spread as it goes out beyond East Tennessee and Appalachia?
Barker: Highlighting the fact that women have always been a part of this music and not just in the background. They’ve been moving the music forward, they’ve been innovating. They’ve been the ones, in a lot of cases, carrying on that culture and tradition, because especially in earlier days, women were seen as the community tradition-bearers. We’re showcasing how that has continued and how they continue to innovate. We’re giving a little bit more information on some of the stories and the women that you have heard about, and also introducing people to women they’ve never heard about and looking at why they might not have heard of those women — and why they should.
Doman-Vandyke: Something I would like people to take away from the exhibit is better understanding the barriers to success that women had. Women have historically not had as many opportunities as men to be successful in their own career. So many challenges that women face are women specific issues, like pregnancy and family responsibilities. There are stories where women have gotten pregnant and they aren’t able to continue performing. This still happens today.
Barker: Even today, there’s often no daycare at a festival or concert venue, even for the performers. It’s just not set up for motherhood and it was even more challenging during the earlier days, when it was less socially acceptable for a woman to even be on stage or be in the room. If a woman was at a bar, or somewhere music is being played, a lot of times there were assumptions made about her role there, or her role in the band. It’s not usually assumed that she’s the leader of the band —often she isn’t even assumed to be a real member of the band — and it’s certainly not socially acceptable for her to bring children with her, unless they were part of the act. Some people like the Carter Family did often take their children with them and find ways to share the stage with them as part of the act. But a lot of women weren’t either able or willing to do that, so that limits where they can travel and where they can play and how often they can play.
Here’s a philosophical question for you. What surprised you the most as this was coming together?
Doman-Vandyke: What has surprised me the most is just how many challenges are still prevalent. When we were talking to all of our interviewees, they touched on that: “Hey, we’ve come a long way historically but we’re still not there yet.” Every one of our interviewees made that point really clear that we still have a long way to go, where we’re getting to equity.
Barker: I did like that they were all pretty optimistic. That was reassuring. But I think that was probably one of the things that surprised me, too. I’d like to think of a lot of these issues as being in the past, and well, maybe to some degree, they are. But they’re certainly not all in the past. Especially wage disparity. And that’s across all sectors, not just music.
Doman-Vandyke: These challenges and issues that women face that we featured in the exhibit aren’t just specific to old-time music. You could pick up the themes in this exhibit and put it into any genre of music and still have the same challenges women face, whether that’s rock ‘n’ roll, whether that’s country music. I mean, even take music out of it and women are still facing all of these issues. I hope this exhibit brings awareness to the challenges women in old-time music and adjacent genres have historically faced and also brings excitement to visitors in learning about these incredible women.
Artist:Starlett & Big John Hometown: Danville, Virginia (Starlett Boswell Austin); Southampton County, Virginia (Big John Talley) Song: “The Ties That Bind” Album:Living in the South Release Date: February 24, 2023 Label: Rebel Records
In Their Words: “The song came to mind one day after I left church where we sang ‘Blessed Be the Tie That Binds.’ As I was around the house humming it later that day I picked up the bass, started playing that traditional groove and thought ‘the ties that bind, they must have come loose’ and it went from there. I sang and played the first verse and chorus for Big John at our next practice, and the song was finished at our very next studio session!” — Starlett Boswell Austin
“The story behind this was that we wanted to write a traditional song with a ‘Larry Sparks feel’ to it, because we just love the feeling and delivery that only Larry can deliver. We worked on it at a songwriting session and finished it up while we were recording, the whole time continuing to ask ourselves, ‘What would Larry Sparks write and sing… if he was a girl?'” — Big John Talley
Artist:Jeffrey Scott Hometown: Culpeper, Virginia Song: “Oreo Cookie Blues” Album:Going Down to Georgia on a Hog Release Date: March 3, 2023 Label: Music Maker Foundation
In Their Words: “This song was written by a guy named Lonnie Mac. I actually first heard the tune in the Mississippi Delta style by Stevie Ray Vaughan. But me being a Piedmont bluesman, I decided to take it and put a Piedmont blues spin on it. I first heard it years ago, up on Interstate 84 in Connecticut, while I was driving a truck back to Virginia. It was around 3 o’clock in the morning and that song came on the radio and it just tickled me! So I pulled over to listen to the rest of it. A lot of older ladies will come up and buy my CDs when I play that one. Once when I was playing at the John Jackson Blues Festival, and I played that song, this older lady came up to me and said, ‘I want the CD with that naughty song on it.’ (laughs) I’ve had the Oreo cookie blues. When I was a kid, I would get in real big trouble sometimes for sneaking down late at night to steal some cookies, but it was always worth it.” — Jeffrey Scott
On Monday August 7, 1972, with fresh memories of Maritimes old-time and bluegrass, I drove from New Brunswick to New England to join my wife and kids, who were house-sitting for my in-laws in Norwich, Vermont.
On Thursday the 10th I headed south. A fourteen-hour drive brought me to Morgantown, West Virginia, the home of my friend and partner in research, photographer and film-maker Carl Fleischhauer, then employed at West Virginia University. We’d known each other for twelve years. (Our stories are in Bluegrass Odyssey: A Documentary in Pictures and Words, 1966-86 [U of IL Press 2001]). We were about to embark on fieldwork.
During the preceding year, when I began planning for the book Bluegrass: A History, I asked Carl to help me think about photos. In addition to documenting bluegrass festivals and other venues he, with Sandy Rothman, had recently looked for traces of earlier days in a field trip to the old Monroe home in Rosine, Kentucky. Now, we made plans for our own field trip. Carl would take photos. I would make notes and do interviews.
We spent that Friday in Morgantown looking at Carl’s photos and films and listening to LPs as we prepared for the research. At the end of the evening, my notes say,
Did some picking.
Early Saturday morning we piled in my new Toyota with our gear (cameras, tape recorder, axes, tent, sleeping bags) and headed southwest, crossing into Kentucky from Huntington, WV and snaking down through the mountains to Jackson, the seat of Breathitt County. Three hundred miles; we arrived around 2 o’clock.
There we headed just outside of town for Bill Monroe’s Second Annual Kentucky Blue Grass Festival. When I went to Canada in 1968, Bill Monroe had one festival a year at Bean Blossom in Indiana. Now he was running a bunch in other states, as were other artists. Festivals were the big news in bluegrass music in 1972. We sought to document the bluegrass festival experience.
Later others would write about this, like Bob Artis (“An Endless Festival” in Bluegrass [1975]) and Robert Owen Gardner (The Portable Community [2021]). Here’s how my notes from Jackson begin:
West of town on main hwy, down short steep road. Paid camping & Sat. fees, never did pay for Sunday. Parked & walked down to the stage area — tent set up, natural amphitheatre, uncovered stage, bad sound. Lots of cops around on Saturday.
Made contact with Pete & Marion Kuykendall, and agreed to move in next to them to camp. Set up tent, attempted to speak to Monroe but he was busy coping with the Goins Bros. problem of being hassled by the cops for drinking. Later Kuykendall said that cops had asked Monroe for $ (3 or 6 hundred) and he had refused to pay off so they were taking it out in fines. Lots of racing around on Sat. with flashing lights etal, but they stayed away on Sunday.
Listened then to IT’S A CRYING TIME, hot & exciting Japanese bluegrass band. Then back to Kuykendall’s bus/home whatall. Thunderstorm; discovery that cassette recorder didn’t work on batteries because plug distorts switch; got it running eventually. Oldest Kuykendall girl Sam/Ginger comes in with bass player of above-mentioned Japanese band, then leaves. Kuykendalls are a bit worried about this but Carl & I both notice later that a number of young girls (McLain girls, for example) are hanging around, with this group.
Dinner with Kuykendalls. Frank & Marty Godbey come in and are around for the rest of the evening. Mostly we sit & talk, though I went down to the amphitheatre to catch Jim & Jesse and the Japanese bands. Came back, then returned to catch Monroe. Afterwards listened to picking group in tent near us. Did mainly Emerson & Waldron, Newgrass Revival, Bluegrass Alliance, Gentlemen, etc. Chromatic banjo. Noisy night in Carl’s tent, as sessions went on late and busses started early. I got a spider bite.
Bill Monroe (center) and the Blue Grass Boys at the Second Annual Kentucky Bluegrass Festival, Jackson KY, Saturday, August 12, 1972. Bandmembers include Monroe Fields, bass; Jack Hicks, banjo; Joe Stuart, guitar (hidden); Monroe, mandolin; and Kenny Baker, fiddle.
I’d known the Kuykendalls since 1966. Pete, a 1996 inductee to the Bluegrass Hall of Fame, was a musician, record collector, producer, publisher, and, since 1970 owner-editor of the first and leading bluegrass monthly Bluegrass Unlimited.
Pete Kuykendall, editor of Bluegrass Unlimited, in his RV parked in the camping area at the Second Annual Kentucky Bluegrass Festival, Jackson KY, Saturday August 12, 1972.
Pete and I had already been corresponding about bluegrass history when we met on Labor Day weekend 1966 at the second Roanoke Bluegrass Festival. Subsequently, I visited the Kuykendalls in Virginia where Pete encouraged me to write for the then all-volunteer magazine he would later own. I began with a review of the festival, published the following January — the first of eight articles I did for BU in 1967.
Photo made by Pete Kuykendall’s son Billy with one of Carl Fleischhauer’s cameras. Carl is seated at left with two other cameras on the table. This photo was made at the time of Neil Rosenberg’s (top of head above stove) interview of Pete Kuykendall, editor of Bluegrass Unlimited, in his RV at the Second Annual Kentucky Bluegrass Festival, Jackson KY, Saturday, August 12, 1972. In the background, at left, is Pete’s wife and Bluegrass Unlimited co-manager Marion Kuykendall.
By 1970 Pete and Marion were running BU full-time; I’d done an article for them earlier in 1972 (eventually I would write a monthly column) so we had been in touch recently by mail and phone. Conversations with Pete were never brief! He loved to share the business scuttlebutt and he had plenty since they were selling the magazine at festivals every weekend and had just launched BU’s own annual festival.
I think this may have been the first time I met the Godbeys. From Lexington, and before that, Columbus, Ohio, they had been following the bluegrass scene for a decade. Frank is a musician who is still performing these days. By 1972 he and Marty had begun writing and publishing photos in BU. For them, as for me, hanging out with the Kuykendalls was a good way to keep up on the bluegrass news. People were already talking about starting an industry association, though that — the IBMA — wouldn’t happen until 1986. Pete was one of its founders.
Neil Rosenberg (facing camera) interviewing Pete Kuykendall, editor of Bluegrass Unlimited, in his RV parked in the camping area at the Second Annual Kentucky Bluegrass Festival, Jackson KY, Saturday, August 12, 1972. In the background, with an air rifle, is Pete’s son Billy Kuykendall.
With the growth of the festivals came clubs, newsletters, and magazines. Bluegrass enthusiasts (many of them musicians) followed their favorites to festivals and other venues. Paths crossed; networks grew. The politics of bands was a favorite discussion topic.
Over the course of the festival, I made note of gossip about the always changing bands. Ricky Skaggs had just left Ralph Stanley — there were rumors about where he was headed next. Was Bill working to get Ralph Stanley on the Opry? Some thought so. The II Generation was said to be splitting up. Stories were told of bluegrass festival camp followers.
At this Jackson, Kentucky festival were a bunch of bands that had been appearing at Bill Monroe’s other 1972 festivals — Monroe, Jim & Jesse, Flatt, Reno & Harrell, the Goins, Ralph Stanley — mature musicians who’d been working with this music for a substantial period of time and who stuck close to the early models of which they were, often, the authors. Classic bluegrass, one could say.
What the audience didn’t hear was the kind of stuff we’d heard from the jammers late Saturday night, like “One Tin Soldier,” The Bluegrass Alliance’s cover of a song popularized in the film Billy Jack. Their bluegrass version, with Sam Bush’s lead voice and Tony Rice’s harmonies and guitar work, was a hit, a big step on the road to newgrass.
The Japanese bands were new to the scene. Japanese bluegrass began in the early sixties. In 1971, Bluegrass 45 came from Kobe, Japan, with the sponsorship of their label, Rebel, to tour U.S. bluegrass festivals. They made a big hit at Monroe’s Bean Blossom festival with their showmanship and musical savvy. This year they were back, along with another Japanese outfit, It’s A Crying Time.
Visiting from Japan, the band It’s a Crying Time performs at the Second Annual Kentucky Bluegrass Festival, Jackson KY, Saturday, August 12, 1972. Band members include Eiichi “Ei’ Shimizu, banjo; Kazuyoshi “Kazu” Onishi, mandolin; Satoshi “Sato” Yamaguchi, guitar; Akira “May” Katsumi, bass.
Monroe had booked the Japanese bands as a novelty, something you couldn’t see just anywhere in the bluegrass world. As I mentioned in my field notes, I found It’s A Crying Time’s music “hot & exciting,” and I was not the only one in the audience reacting this way. They came to the attention of Lester Flatt, who, after watching them rehearse, invited mandolinist Kazu Onishi to join him on stage at his final set.
Backstage moment at the Second Annual Kentucky Bluegrass Festival, Jackson KY, Saturday, August 12, 1972. Akira Katsumi, Kazu Onishi, Lester Flatt, and Akira Otsuka. Otsuka was Kazu’s friend from the Japanese scene, a member of the Bluegrass 45.
This video comes from the Bluegrass 45’s appearance at Carlton Haney’s Camp Springs festival:
They are announced at the beginning of the video by emcee, writer, and DJ Bill Vernon. Vernon was here at Jackson, as I learned Sunday morning when I went down to the early morning gospel show. Pete Kuykendall introduced me to Bill there, and we had a long chat about the politics of the bluegrass industry. I wrote in my notes:
A very loquacious and complex person.
At that morning’s gospel show, the music came to a stop as a fundamentalist preacher began his sermon. At that point, I noted:
Bill Vernon cut out from the morning sermon, he’d had enough…
During the preacher’s sermon at the gospel program at the Second Annual Kentucky Bluegrass Festival, Jackson KY, Sunday, August 13, 1972. Bill Monroe (wearing a black suit) is seated in the audience area at left.
I stayed and heard some good music, noting:
The gospel section’s high point was when the Goins Bros. did “Somebody Touched Me” and Eleanor Parker came on stage & started clapping hands and singing; Monroe caught on and came up to join in too.
During the gospel program at the Second Annual Kentucky Bluegrass Festival, Jackson KY, Sunday, August 13, 1972. When the Goins Brothers band performed “Somebody Touched Me,” they were joined on stage by Eleanor and Rex Parker and Bill Monroe. Eleanor and Bill joined the Goins trio at the main microphone while Rex sang and played mandolin at the “stage right” microphone.
This kind of spontaneity, which gave festivals their appeal, was not there all the time. Jim & Jesse, I wrote, had:
A good show, with Jim Brock sounding especially good, but … a cut and dried quality to it all.
Describing Lester Flatt and his Nashville Grass, I concluded:
To me the whole band sounded tired, lackluster.
But Flatt’s final set was enlivened when It’s A Crying Time mandolinist and tenor Kazu Onishi came on stage to sing “Salty Dog Blues” with him.
During my times around the stage area, I had a chance to talk with Monroe and with some of the musicians I’d gotten to know during my years as a backstage regular at Bean Blossom, like Birch Monroe, Joe Stuart, and Roland White.
I arranged with Birch, who was busy helping Bill run the festival, for an interview, to take place later in the week at his home in Martinsville, Indiana.
Joe Stuart offstage at the Second Annual Kentucky Bluegrass Festival, Jackson KY, Saturday, August 12, 1972.
Joe told me about his experiences playing bluegrass in Canada with Charlie Bailey. He’d even appeared in Newfoundland.
Roland, whom I’d known since his days as a Blue Grass Boy, was now playing with Lester Flatt. He told me they were working solid, playing festivals every weekend.
Here’s what I wrote about the audience:
Audience — bluegrass die-hards from Ohio, Ky., D.C., Carolinas. Few freaks. Appear to be about 50% campers, 50% local people. Certainly no more than 1500-2000, on Saturday, though figure of 3000 was bandied about. Bill moved his Ky festival to Jackson from Ashland this year because the turnout at Ashland was dropping. Fact, bluegrass ain’t as popular in Kentucky as it is elsewhere — Ohio, D.C.
Audience on the hillside natural amphitheater at the Second Annual Kentucky Bluegrass Festival, Jackson KY, Saturday, August 12, 1972.
The festival closed with a finale, orchestrated by Monroe. At the first festivals in the mid-60s, which were created to honor Monroe, such events were somewhat spontaneous, but by now, seven years after the first one, these events were highly ritualistic. By the time it happened, I noticed that the Kuykendalls had left. They were not the only ones.
The finale performance at the Second Annual Kentucky Bluegrass Festival, Jackson KY, Sunday, August 13, 1972. At the center, in white suits, are Bill Monroe and Lester Flatt. Here are a few of the other performers, left to right: Curly Ray Cline (on the ramp), Melvin Goins (guitar, facing camera), Kenny Baker (fiddle, white hat, wearing a suit), Joe Stuart (just behind Baker, partly hidden), Buck Ryan (fiddle, white belt), Jack Hicks (banjo, white hat, wearing suit), Paul Warren (fiddle, white hat, at microphone), Vic Jordan (banjo, facing forward), Ralph Stanley (banjo, dark suit, hidden behind McCormick), Haskell McCormick (banjo, in profile), Monroe and Flatt with Don Reno (wearing white) partly hidden behind them, Raymond W. McLain and sister Alice McLain (hidden behind Flatt), Jesse McReynolds (mandolin, wearing striped jacket), Ruth McLain (bass, behind McReynolds), Raymond K. McLain (guitar, no hat), Roland White (mandolin, white hat), Rex Parker (mandolin, striped shirt), and Monroe Fields (leaning on van).
We packed up soon after and headed west for Lexington. I was hoping to interview J.D. Crowe.
Artist:Gail Ceasar Hometown: Pittsfield, Virginia Song: “Going Down the Road Feeling Bad” Album:Guitar Woman Blues Release Date: January 6, 2023 Label: Music Maker Foundation
In Their Words: “I like that song very much. The first time I heard it was on The Andy Griffith Show. It had that folksy bluegrass sound I love and I just liked it and wanted to learn it. It’s a great song because you can relate to it. Basically, it’s about what people have to deal with in everyday life, going to work, and going out in public. You know, people might be mistreated. Sometimes you feel bad and sometimes you have good days. This album includes songs that I’ve been playing over the years, old country blues I like to sit around the house and play. I had cousins that played, and uncles that played it. I hope people like it, I like it, I hope people can listen to it and enjoy it as much as I do.” — Gail Ceasar
Artist:Nick Fallon Weitzenfeld Hometown: Floyd, Virginia Song: “no.” Album:shuttered blind Release Date: November 18, 2022 Label: Fallon Records
In Their Words: “This song might be considered the crazy uncle of the EP. It’s a nugget of simple poppy-silliness in the midst of much more serious pieces. ‘no.’ is about ghosting and all its relatives, both from the perspective of the ghoster and the ghostee. Whether it’s completely cutting contact with a romantic prospect, slowly falling out of communication with a friend, or just not responding to a potential plan, my generation is in the midst of a decency crisis when it comes to our online interactions. We might be too connected for our own good, unable to set boundaries and have challenging conversations with our peers. A song for the youth to chew on, perhaps 🙂 ” — Nick Fallon Weitzenfeld
Artist:Martha Spencer Hometown: Whitetop Mountain, Virginia Song: “Wonderland” Album:Wonderland Release Date: September 2, 2022
In Their Words: “‘Wonderland’ is the title track, and I hoped it would be a good kickoff journey into the album. I thought of the album as a bit of a storybook of songs, from home and from afar, and wanted the tracks to have an atmosphere of sounds to take you somewhere. My full name is Martha Alice Spencer, and I had a show on Radio Bristol called the Hillbilly Wonderland show, so I thought it would be a good tie-in, too.
“But I wrote the song itself thinking about the things or people you meet sometimes that help you see and feel the magic and beauty in life, and that feeling of falling into love with someone or something you’re passionate about. Some of the lyrics of ‘here I go falling down a rabbit hole’ could be the things you just can’t help but fall into like the passionate side of yourself, embracing and having fun with your own and others’ eccentricities. I see Wonderland as a place to be able to do your own thing and shine — glitter, rhinestones and all.” — Martha Spencer
Photo Credit: Jill Beaton
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