November 8, 2007
Hank Thompson Is Dead; Country Singer Was 82
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Hank Thompson, a sequined singer and songwriter who fused jazz-inflected Western swing and hard-edged honky-tonk to produce seven decades of musical musings, seasoned with sly humor, on loving, drinking and dying, died on Tuesday at his home in Keller, Tex. He was 82.
His death was announced on www.hankthompson.com, which said, “There’s a new star in heaven.”
Tracy Pitcox, president of Heart of Texas Records, said the cause was lung cancer, The Associated Press reported.
Mr. Thompson sold more than 60 million records. He scored 29 Top 10 country hits from 1948 to 1975, and had 19 more in the Top 20, putting him in a league with other country legends like Tex Ritter, Hank Snow and Faron Young.
From “Humpty Dumpty Heart” in 1948 to “Gotta Sell Them Chickens,” a duet with Junior Brown in 1997, Mr. Thompson made the charts in six consecutive decades. With characteristic offbeat wit, he said in an interview with The Fort Worth Star-Telegram in 1997 that this was “a lot easier than doing it in six nonconsecutive decades.”
Mr. Thompson was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1989, and his band, the Brazos Valley Boys, was Billboard’s top-ranked country band from 1953 to 1965, a record that has never been broken.
Mr. Thompson was perhaps the most prominent representative of a new sort of country music that emerged from the juke joints favored by oil-field roughnecks and roustabouts in the 1940s. It mixed big bands and theatrical vocalists with fiddles and steel guitars. It was meant for dancing.
With his height, Stetson, silver-toed boots and rhinestone suits — and a gravelly, booming baritone voice — Mr. Thompson symbolized the brash new musical synthesis. Unlike Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, who strove for a unified sound in the manner of Ellington or Basie, Mr. Thompson wanted his own voice to be the primary thing.
“I want Hank Thompson up front and the Western swing sound behind me,” he told The Dallas Morning News in 1997.
In the 1950s, his biggest decade, Mr. Thompson was big indeed. He had 21 songs that reached the Top 20 on the country charts, including five Top 10s in 1954. Some of those 1950s hits included “Rub-a-Dub-Dub,” “Waiting in the Lobby of Your Heart” and “Squaws Along the Yukon.”
In 1952 “The Wild Side of Life” was the No. 1 country song of the year and Mr. Thompson was the No. 1 country artist.
His popularity stayed strong into the 1960s, and in 1960 he recorded “A Six-Pack to Go,” one of his biggest numbers in terms of longevity and status as a standard. Though his record sales declined in ensuing decades, he remained in strong demand as a performer, and his influence is often said to be evident in stars like George Strait and Lyle Lovett.
Bob Dylan once commented, perhaps tongue-in-cheek, to Newsweek that he had never felt all that at home with the New York folk-music crowd because one of his own major influences had been Hank Thompson.
Mr. Thompson helped lead the development of the art and business of modern country music. He was host of a variety show in Oklahoma City in the 1950s, said to be one of the first variety shows broadcast in color. He was one of the first country performers to do a straight country show in Las Vegas; earlier, performers like Eddy Arnold had simply inserted themselves into another production. In 1961 his “At the Golden Nugget” was the first live album by a solo country performer.
Mr. Thompson was also among the first country singers to have a corporate sponsor, Falstaff Beer.
Henry William Thompson was born in Waco, Tex., on Sept. 3, 1925, and as a boy won a case of Pepsi by playing the harmonica in a contest. Like his hero Gene Autry, he wanted to sing at the same time he played, so he switched to guitar. His parents bought him a secondhand one for $4. By the time he was 16 he had his own radio show, called “Hank the Hired Hand.”
He enlisted in the Navy, served in the Pacific theater in World War II and then studied electronics at several universities, including Princeton. His expertise meant that he was one of the first traveling country acts to have a sophisticated light-and-sound system.
After the war Tex Ritter helped Mr. Thompson land a recording contract with Capitol Records, which released “Humpty Dumpty.” He went to Nashville to star on a weekly radio show. Ernest Tubb got him a shot at the Grand Ole Opry, but he felt uncomfortable with Nashville’s more bluegrass-influenced music. Not even Hank Williams could talk him out of returning to the Texas honky-tonks. In lieu of a funeral, his memorial celebration will be held in one of them, Billy Bob’s Texas in Fort Worth.
Mr. Thompson is survived by his wife, the former Ann Williams. In 1970 he and his first wife, Dorothy Jean Ray, divorced. Dorothy had persuaded him to record “The Wild Side of Life” despite Mr. Thompson’s reservations that the tune had already been used in two previous country hits. Mr. Thompson’s version contained the line, “I didn’t know God made honky-tonk angels.”
The song’s immense popularity prompted one of the most famous answer songs of country music: “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky-Tonk Angels” by Kitty Wells. (Errant husbands did, she sang.) It made her the first woman in country music to have a million-seller.
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Monday, October 29, 2007
Porter Wagoner Obit
New York Times
October 30, 2007
Porter Wagoner, Singer, Dies at 80
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Porter Wagoner, a country singer who mixed rhinestone suits, a towering pompadour and cornball jokes with direct, simple songs over a career best known for his partnership with Dolly Parton, died last night in Nashville. He was 80.
His death, in a Nashville hospice, was announced by the Grand Ole Opry. Mr. Wagoner, who survived an abdominal aneurysm last year, was hospitalized this month with lung cancer, his publicist, Darlene Bieber, had said. Mr. Wagoner had 81 singles on the country charts, 29 of them in the Top 10. His many hits, typically songs seeking honest answers to hard questions, included “Green, Green Grass of Home,” “Skid Row Joe” and “The Cold Hard Facts of Life.”
For 21 years, appearing on television in flashy suits and a cotton-candy pompadour, he was the host of “The Porter Wagoner Show,” which was eventually syndicated in 100 markets, reaching 3.5 million viewers a week.
Mr. Wagoner recorded some of country music’s earliest concept albums, in which individual tracks combine in a thematic whole. On one, titled “What Ain’t To Be Just Might Happen” (1972), he explored insanity with songs that included “Rubber Room,” derived from his experience in a psychiatric ward. He won three Grammys for gospel recordings he made with the Blackwood Brothers.
For more than half a century, Mr. Wagoner was a fixture of the Grand Ole Opry; in 1992, after the death of Roy Acuff, he became its unofficial spokesman. And if Mr. Wagoner did not exactly discover Ms. Parton, her regular appearances on his television show were the foundation of her career. They won the Country Music Association’s award for duo of the year three times.
Though Mr. Wagoner never achieved the sort of country music sainthood accorded Hank Williams, Johnny Cash or Willie Nelson, his pure adherence to traditional forms became esteemed. Waylon Jennings once said, “He couldn’t go pop with a mouthful of firecrackers.”
In its citation honoring his induction in 1992, the Country Music Hall of Fame called Mr. Wagoner “one of country’s elder statesmen.”
Yet he was hardly shy about making waves. After Ms. Parton left his show in 1974, there ensued a six-year, very public legal mess — and not a few tawdry tabloid headlines. One asserted that Mr. Wagoner’s wife had found him and Ms. Parton in bed and shot both.
“There wasn’t nothing to that,” Mr. Wagoner said “with a wink” in an interview with The Tennessean in 2000. “She didn’t even hit Dolly.”
Mr. Wagoner riled country traditionalists in 1979 by inviting James Brown, the godfather of soul, to the Opry. Though Mr. Brown performed the country standards “Your Cheatin’ Heart” and “Tennessee Waltz,” which Mr. Wagoner had taught him, his rendition of his own “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” generated hate mail.
Mr. Wagoner’s life had elements of an old-fashioned country song. He was born on Aug. 12, 1927, on a farm where mules still pulled the plow, not far from West Plains, Mo., in the Ozark mountains. He sold the pelts of rabbits he trapped to scrape together the $8 he needed to buy his first guitar, a National, from Montgomery Ward. He spent hours pretending that the stump of a felled oak tree was the Opry stage and that he was introducing country stars.
After the family was forced to auction off their farm in the Depression, they moved to West Plains, where a local butcher hired Mr. Wagoner. When he heard him play the guitar, he put him on the radio to sing advertisements. Mr. Wagoner then moved to a station in Springfield, Mo., and signed a record contract in 1952 with Steve Sholes, the same RCA producer who signed Elvis Presley three years later.
In 1953, Mr. Wagoner spent $350 to buy his first Nudie suit, one of the extravagant rhinestone-studded creations by the tailor Nudie Cohn. Mr. Wagoner’s was a peach-colored number with wagon wheels on it. He eventually owned 50 of them, for which he paid as much as $12,000 apiece. A special feature on most was the word “Hi!” in foot-high letters on each side of the lining. He would throw the jacket open when he saw somebody snapping his picture.
Mr. Wagoner recorded, performed in a local television show, joined the Opry and in 1960 started his own television show. In 1967, his vocal partner, Norma Jean, left, and Ms. Parton succeeded her. In addition to doing the show, the two recorded and toured together. They had a string of hit duets, including “Please Don’t Stop Loving Me,” which they wrote. It was No. 1 in October 1974.
Mr. Wagoner had several long periods when he did not record or tour. He sometimes explained that there was little good material available. The lyrics in at least two of his songs came from spending time in a Nashville mental hospital. One, “Committed to Parkview,” was written by Johnny Cash about a Nashville institution in which both men had stayed. It is part of an album Mr. Wagoner released last year, “The Rubber Room: The Haunting Poetic Songs of Porter Wagoner, 1966-1967.”
As a teenager Mr. Wagoner was married for a short time to Velma Johnson. In 1946, he married Ruth Olive Williams; they separated in 1966 and divorced in 1986. He is survived by his children, Richard, Denise and Debra.
As a songwriter, Mr. Wagoner was known for producing surprising literary twists. At the end of “Green, Green Grass of Home,” it is revealed that the story about a happy homecoming is the dream of a prisoner. On “I Knew This Day Would Come,” a young woman leaves her aging husband for a young lover, only to find herself in the same situation years later.
For all Mr. Wagoner’s accomplishments, he could not escape a certain question.“Did you sing with Dolly?” too many people asked.
“No,” he would say with a smile. “She sang with me.”
October 30, 2007
Porter Wagoner, Singer, Dies at 80
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Porter Wagoner, a country singer who mixed rhinestone suits, a towering pompadour and cornball jokes with direct, simple songs over a career best known for his partnership with Dolly Parton, died last night in Nashville. He was 80.
His death, in a Nashville hospice, was announced by the Grand Ole Opry. Mr. Wagoner, who survived an abdominal aneurysm last year, was hospitalized this month with lung cancer, his publicist, Darlene Bieber, had said. Mr. Wagoner had 81 singles on the country charts, 29 of them in the Top 10. His many hits, typically songs seeking honest answers to hard questions, included “Green, Green Grass of Home,” “Skid Row Joe” and “The Cold Hard Facts of Life.”
For 21 years, appearing on television in flashy suits and a cotton-candy pompadour, he was the host of “The Porter Wagoner Show,” which was eventually syndicated in 100 markets, reaching 3.5 million viewers a week.
Mr. Wagoner recorded some of country music’s earliest concept albums, in which individual tracks combine in a thematic whole. On one, titled “What Ain’t To Be Just Might Happen” (1972), he explored insanity with songs that included “Rubber Room,” derived from his experience in a psychiatric ward. He won three Grammys for gospel recordings he made with the Blackwood Brothers.
For more than half a century, Mr. Wagoner was a fixture of the Grand Ole Opry; in 1992, after the death of Roy Acuff, he became its unofficial spokesman. And if Mr. Wagoner did not exactly discover Ms. Parton, her regular appearances on his television show were the foundation of her career. They won the Country Music Association’s award for duo of the year three times.
Though Mr. Wagoner never achieved the sort of country music sainthood accorded Hank Williams, Johnny Cash or Willie Nelson, his pure adherence to traditional forms became esteemed. Waylon Jennings once said, “He couldn’t go pop with a mouthful of firecrackers.”
In its citation honoring his induction in 1992, the Country Music Hall of Fame called Mr. Wagoner “one of country’s elder statesmen.”
Yet he was hardly shy about making waves. After Ms. Parton left his show in 1974, there ensued a six-year, very public legal mess — and not a few tawdry tabloid headlines. One asserted that Mr. Wagoner’s wife had found him and Ms. Parton in bed and shot both.
“There wasn’t nothing to that,” Mr. Wagoner said “with a wink” in an interview with The Tennessean in 2000. “She didn’t even hit Dolly.”
Mr. Wagoner riled country traditionalists in 1979 by inviting James Brown, the godfather of soul, to the Opry. Though Mr. Brown performed the country standards “Your Cheatin’ Heart” and “Tennessee Waltz,” which Mr. Wagoner had taught him, his rendition of his own “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” generated hate mail.
Mr. Wagoner’s life had elements of an old-fashioned country song. He was born on Aug. 12, 1927, on a farm where mules still pulled the plow, not far from West Plains, Mo., in the Ozark mountains. He sold the pelts of rabbits he trapped to scrape together the $8 he needed to buy his first guitar, a National, from Montgomery Ward. He spent hours pretending that the stump of a felled oak tree was the Opry stage and that he was introducing country stars.
After the family was forced to auction off their farm in the Depression, they moved to West Plains, where a local butcher hired Mr. Wagoner. When he heard him play the guitar, he put him on the radio to sing advertisements. Mr. Wagoner then moved to a station in Springfield, Mo., and signed a record contract in 1952 with Steve Sholes, the same RCA producer who signed Elvis Presley three years later.
In 1953, Mr. Wagoner spent $350 to buy his first Nudie suit, one of the extravagant rhinestone-studded creations by the tailor Nudie Cohn. Mr. Wagoner’s was a peach-colored number with wagon wheels on it. He eventually owned 50 of them, for which he paid as much as $12,000 apiece. A special feature on most was the word “Hi!” in foot-high letters on each side of the lining. He would throw the jacket open when he saw somebody snapping his picture.
Mr. Wagoner recorded, performed in a local television show, joined the Opry and in 1960 started his own television show. In 1967, his vocal partner, Norma Jean, left, and Ms. Parton succeeded her. In addition to doing the show, the two recorded and toured together. They had a string of hit duets, including “Please Don’t Stop Loving Me,” which they wrote. It was No. 1 in October 1974.
Mr. Wagoner had several long periods when he did not record or tour. He sometimes explained that there was little good material available. The lyrics in at least two of his songs came from spending time in a Nashville mental hospital. One, “Committed to Parkview,” was written by Johnny Cash about a Nashville institution in which both men had stayed. It is part of an album Mr. Wagoner released last year, “The Rubber Room: The Haunting Poetic Songs of Porter Wagoner, 1966-1967.”
As a teenager Mr. Wagoner was married for a short time to Velma Johnson. In 1946, he married Ruth Olive Williams; they separated in 1966 and divorced in 1986. He is survived by his children, Richard, Denise and Debra.
As a songwriter, Mr. Wagoner was known for producing surprising literary twists. At the end of “Green, Green Grass of Home,” it is revealed that the story about a happy homecoming is the dream of a prisoner. On “I Knew This Day Would Come,” a young woman leaves her aging husband for a young lover, only to find herself in the same situation years later.
For all Mr. Wagoner’s accomplishments, he could not escape a certain question.“Did you sing with Dolly?” too many people asked.
“No,” he would say with a smile. “She sang with me.”
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Janis Martin - The Female Elvis RIP
Along with Lorrie Collins and Wanda Jackson, one of the finest female rockabillies there was. We had the great delight of hearing Ms. Martin perform in Green Bay in 2005 and she not only sounded great but just seemed like the kind of person you'd want to share a beer with. Sad that she seemed to be really enjoying her career the second time that it would end so soon.
SB
From the Washington Post:
Janis Martin, 67; Teen Rockabilly Star Was 'the Female Elvis' of the 1950s
By Matt SchudelWashington Post Staff WriterWednesday, September 5, 2007; B07
Janis Martin, 67, a teenage rockabilly sensation of the 1950s who was billed as "the female Elvis," died Sept. 3 of cancer at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C. She lived in Danville, Va.
After beginning her career on country-music radio shows in Virginia, Ms. Martin had a short but bright burst of fame in the 1950s with the dawn of rock-and-roll. By 15, she was recording for RCA, had a Top 40 hit and seemed poised for stardom.
She was a ponytailed blonde with a strong, clear, country-inflected voice and had a series of lively, eye-catching dance moves on stage. A convention of disc jockeys named her "the most promising female vocalist" of 1956.
Ms. Martin was also one of the few young women, along with Wanda Jackson and Lorrie Collins, to make a mark in the masculine, raw-edged music that decades later became known as rockabilly.
A 1998 article in the Nashville Scene newspaper described the enduring excitement of the music she made as a teenager: "Forty years later, Martin's records remain some of the most rockin', most thrilling hillbilly music ever to emerge from the Music City."
When Ms. Martin secretly married and became pregnant, her record label dropped her, and she returned to a life of relative obscurity in southern Virginia. Except for a few local appearances, she was all but forgotten until 1982, when she emerged from retirement with a concert in England.
"I can't begin to tell you what it was like -- like stepping back in time," she told the Nashville Scene. "Those kids dressed like we did in the '50s. Here I'd been a housewife and a mother. When I hit the stage, it was like I'd come home."
The song young European admirers clamored for wasn't her Top 40 hit, "Will You, Willyum" but a hard-charging tune called "Drugstore Rock 'n' Roll," which Ms. Martin wrote when she was 15.
"I wrote 'Drugstore Rock 'n' Roll' in about ten minutes," she recalled in a 1993 interview with Roctober magazine. "Everything in that song is actually the scene that was happening for us as teenagers," she said. "The drugstore was the only place we had to go and hang out after school."
Janis Darlene Martin was born March 27, 1940, in Sutherlin, Va., and lived in Akron, Ohio, for eight years before her family returned to southern Virginia. Ms. Martin began playing the guitar at age 4, balancing it upright because it was too big for her to hold.
Pushed by a "typical show-business mother," Ms. Martin finished second in her first talent contest at age 8. In the next two years, she entered 11 more contests and won all of them, including a statewide competition.
By 11, she was a regular on a weekly country-music radio show in Danville. She appeared with country star Ernest Tubb at 13 and became a featured performer with the Old Dominion Barn Dance, a weekly country concert in Richmond broadcast on CBS Radio.
Her influences were country stars Eddy Arnold and Hank Williams, but she soon became interested in Ruth Brown, LaVern Baker and other rhythm-and-blues singers.
"I heard Ruth Brown, and I just found my kind of music," she said in 1993.
She went on tour with country singers Hank Snow and Porter Waggoner, made a demo tape and in short order was recording for RCA with Chet Atkins and Floyd Cramer, all before her 16th birthday.
She was called "the female Elvis" with the approval of Elvis Presley, her RCA label mate, and sang one of her minor hits, "My Boy Elvis" on NBC's "Today" show. She also appeared on "The Tonight Show" and "American Bandstand" and at the Grand Ole Opry.
Another song she recorded was a teenage anthem to runaway hormones: "Let's Elope, Baby."
"At the time I was recording 'Let's Elope, Baby,' " she later said, "my parents didn't even know I was married."
She had eloped at 15 with her childhood sweetheart, Tommy Cundiff, who was in the Army. On a USO tour in Europe in 1957, Ms. Martin had a rendezvous with her husband and became pregnant. She recorded her final songs for RCA when she was 17 and in her eighth month of pregnancy.
Ms. Martin recorded a few songs in 1960 for a European label, but she seemed to be a show-business has-been at 20. She divorced her husband, settled in Danville to raise her son, then married and divorced a second husband, Ken Parton.
She worked in the office of the Henry County sheriff, then spent 26 years as the manager of a Danville country club. For the past 29 years, she was married to Wayne Whitt, who first saw her perform as a teen at the old Barn Dance show in Richmond.
"She was a cute little old gal in a ponytail just belting out that music that nobody else was doing," he said yesterday.
Ms. Martin's son, Kevin Parton, who played drums in her bands, died in January.
In addition to her husband, survivors include a granddaughter and great-granddaughter.
SB
From the Washington Post:
Janis Martin, 67; Teen Rockabilly Star Was 'the Female Elvis' of the 1950s
By Matt SchudelWashington Post Staff WriterWednesday, September 5, 2007; B07
Janis Martin, 67, a teenage rockabilly sensation of the 1950s who was billed as "the female Elvis," died Sept. 3 of cancer at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C. She lived in Danville, Va.
After beginning her career on country-music radio shows in Virginia, Ms. Martin had a short but bright burst of fame in the 1950s with the dawn of rock-and-roll. By 15, she was recording for RCA, had a Top 40 hit and seemed poised for stardom.
She was a ponytailed blonde with a strong, clear, country-inflected voice and had a series of lively, eye-catching dance moves on stage. A convention of disc jockeys named her "the most promising female vocalist" of 1956.
Ms. Martin was also one of the few young women, along with Wanda Jackson and Lorrie Collins, to make a mark in the masculine, raw-edged music that decades later became known as rockabilly.
A 1998 article in the Nashville Scene newspaper described the enduring excitement of the music she made as a teenager: "Forty years later, Martin's records remain some of the most rockin', most thrilling hillbilly music ever to emerge from the Music City."
When Ms. Martin secretly married and became pregnant, her record label dropped her, and she returned to a life of relative obscurity in southern Virginia. Except for a few local appearances, she was all but forgotten until 1982, when she emerged from retirement with a concert in England.
"I can't begin to tell you what it was like -- like stepping back in time," she told the Nashville Scene. "Those kids dressed like we did in the '50s. Here I'd been a housewife and a mother. When I hit the stage, it was like I'd come home."
The song young European admirers clamored for wasn't her Top 40 hit, "Will You, Willyum" but a hard-charging tune called "Drugstore Rock 'n' Roll," which Ms. Martin wrote when she was 15.
"I wrote 'Drugstore Rock 'n' Roll' in about ten minutes," she recalled in a 1993 interview with Roctober magazine. "Everything in that song is actually the scene that was happening for us as teenagers," she said. "The drugstore was the only place we had to go and hang out after school."
Janis Darlene Martin was born March 27, 1940, in Sutherlin, Va., and lived in Akron, Ohio, for eight years before her family returned to southern Virginia. Ms. Martin began playing the guitar at age 4, balancing it upright because it was too big for her to hold.
Pushed by a "typical show-business mother," Ms. Martin finished second in her first talent contest at age 8. In the next two years, she entered 11 more contests and won all of them, including a statewide competition.
By 11, she was a regular on a weekly country-music radio show in Danville. She appeared with country star Ernest Tubb at 13 and became a featured performer with the Old Dominion Barn Dance, a weekly country concert in Richmond broadcast on CBS Radio.
Her influences were country stars Eddy Arnold and Hank Williams, but she soon became interested in Ruth Brown, LaVern Baker and other rhythm-and-blues singers.
"I heard Ruth Brown, and I just found my kind of music," she said in 1993.
She went on tour with country singers Hank Snow and Porter Waggoner, made a demo tape and in short order was recording for RCA with Chet Atkins and Floyd Cramer, all before her 16th birthday.
She was called "the female Elvis" with the approval of Elvis Presley, her RCA label mate, and sang one of her minor hits, "My Boy Elvis" on NBC's "Today" show. She also appeared on "The Tonight Show" and "American Bandstand" and at the Grand Ole Opry.
Another song she recorded was a teenage anthem to runaway hormones: "Let's Elope, Baby."
"At the time I was recording 'Let's Elope, Baby,' " she later said, "my parents didn't even know I was married."
She had eloped at 15 with her childhood sweetheart, Tommy Cundiff, who was in the Army. On a USO tour in Europe in 1957, Ms. Martin had a rendezvous with her husband and became pregnant. She recorded her final songs for RCA when she was 17 and in her eighth month of pregnancy.
Ms. Martin recorded a few songs in 1960 for a European label, but she seemed to be a show-business has-been at 20. She divorced her husband, settled in Danville to raise her son, then married and divorced a second husband, Ken Parton.
She worked in the office of the Henry County sheriff, then spent 26 years as the manager of a Danville country club. For the past 29 years, she was married to Wayne Whitt, who first saw her perform as a teen at the old Barn Dance show in Richmond.
"She was a cute little old gal in a ponytail just belting out that music that nobody else was doing," he said yesterday.
Ms. Martin's son, Kevin Parton, who played drums in her bands, died in January.
In addition to her husband, survivors include a granddaughter and great-granddaughter.
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Welcome!
Welcome to the Sangamon Valley Roots Revival Radio Hour blog! We hope that this site will allows us to exchange information on our collective passion, American Roots Music. Look forward to a calendar of upcoming live events. In addition, I hope to share my thoughts and the writing of music scholars on a wide variety of muisc topics. So visit frequently and add your two cents. Glad to have you listening!
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