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Bluegrass lyrics are almost always about death, loss, and unrequited love, but the music – the noise we make with out banjos and our fiddles – is joyful. The dead are always with us, even after their ghosts move on, but it's the life pulsing through our veins that makes the music.
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Erica Waters (Ghost Wood Song)
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Stealing equipment from a small-town fire station is such an easy, petty crime,” Nick said. “It feels anticlimactic after starting the day in New York selling three stolen Rembrandts and outwitting the FBI.”
“We could break into the International Bluegrass Music Museum,” she said. “I hear that it’s the Louvre of northwest Kentucky.”
That got Nick’s attention. “What have they got to see?”
“I was kidding! I was being sarcastic.”
“Sarcasm isn’t one of your strengths,” he said.
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Janet Evanovich (The Chase (Fox and O'Hare, #2))
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The Borderlander’s combative culture has provided a large proportion of the nation’s military, from officers like Andrew Jackson, Davy Crockett, and Douglas MacArthur to the enlisted men fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. They also gave the continent bluegrass and country music, stock car racing, and Evangelical fundamentalism.
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Colin Woodard (American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America)
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[In South Carolina listening to Gullah-speakers sing spiritials] As with bluegrass in Tennessee I am reminded once more of the extraordinary power that comes from music that is played in the place where it was born.
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Stephen Fry (Stephen Fry in America)
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Speaking more generally about what attracted him to bluegrass banjo, he said it was 'just the sound of the instrument, and then the fire, you know; the speed and all that. I was attracted by the intensity of it, really. And I was drawn to that incredible clarity-- when something is going along real fast and every note is absolutely clear. That, to me, was really amazing-- the Earl Scruggs instrumentals...' But Garcia refused to commit himself to just one style of music. Though bluegrass became his overriding obsession for about two years, he still dabbled in folk, old-timey and blues whenever the opportunity arose and there were players around.
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Blair Jackson (Garcia : An American Life)
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To be a full-blooded hillbilly was to be a living koan. Half of you wanted to be dignified and half of you couldn’t tolerate any restraint. You could see it in the regional art and hear it in the music. Wood carving with chainsaws. Cloggers who danced up a storm with the lower half of their bodies, but held the upper half perfectly still and stared off into the distance stone-faced. Or a group of bluegrass musicians who’d be playing the most raucous tunes imaginable, looking around at each other with bemused expressions that seemed to say where’s all that racket comin from?
Phoebe believed that nearly all the adult males everywhere were pretty much the same way. Most of them could manage to keep the top half of themselves under a semblance of control, but the bottom half tended to run wild. As she continued to descend the trail she couldn’t help but think that most men were mentally ill below the waist.
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Carolyn Jourdan (Out on a Limb: A Smoky Mountain Mystery (Nurse Phoebe, #1))
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Bluegrass is the other side of heavy metal. Both are musical forms steeped in tradition. They are the two forms of music that visually and audibly have not changed in decades. People in their respective fields still dress like Bill Monroe and Ronnie James Dio. Both forms have a traditional instrumental lineup and a parochial adherence to form.
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Bob Dylan (The Philosophy of Modern Song)
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I was only going to shoot you if he was in one band. And only if it had a name like Uncle Toejam's Acid Crematorium or something. But bluegrass is good, and hey, music is MY life too. Maybe I'll actually like the guy (assuming he's around long enough). Just don't write and tell me you're in the process of stirring up some baby Custard-Mustards.
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Ellen Wittlinger (Heart on My Sleeve)
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Father Brian D’Arcy spoke of the love the locals had for Shay Hutchinson and described him as ‘an originator’ of country music in Ireland, who highlighted the musical links between the United States and Ireland: He wanted to sing and make people happy with this other American music which in turn had been got from the Irish anyway … so country music and Irish people … it’s natural that we would want to be part of country music because it was our music originally. It came out from the Celtic nations, from Scotland and Ireland, went out to America to the bluegrass hills and they still play bluegrass as Irish music to this very day … people like Ricky Skaggs and Bill Monroe are indistinguishable from Sean McGuire [a famous fiddle player from Tyrone] playing the fiddle.
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Kevin Martin (A Happy Type of Sadness: A Journey Through Irish Country Music)
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banjo. A plucked, fretted lute where a thin skin diaphragm is stretched over a circular metal frame amplifying the sound of the strings. The instrument is believed to have evolved from various African and African-American prototypes. Four- and 5-stringed versions of the banjo are popular, each associated with specific music genres; the 5-stringed banjo, plucked and strummed with the fingers, is associated with Appalachian, old-time and bluegrass music, while the four-stringed versions (both the “plectrum” banjo, which is an identical 22-fret banjo, just like the 5-string instrument but without the fifth string and played with a plectrum, and the tenor banjo which has fewer frets [17 or 19], a shorter neck, is tuned in fifths and is played with a plectrum) is associated with vaudeville, Dixieland jazz, ragtime and swing, as well as Irish folk and traditional music. The first Irish banjo player to record commercially was James Wheeler, in the U.S. in 1916, for the Columbia label; as part of The Flanagan Brothers duo, Mick Flanagan recorded during the 1920s and 1930s as did others in the various dance bands popular in the U.S. at the time. Neil Nolan, a Boston-based banjo player originally from Prince Edward Island, recorded with Dan Sullivan’s Shamrock Band; the collaboration with Sullivan led to him also being included in the line-up for the Caledonia and Columbia Scotch Bands, alongside Cape Breton fiddlers; these were recorded for 78s in 1928. In the 1930s The Inverness Serenaders also included a banjo player (Paul Aucoin). While the instrument was not widely used in Cape Breton, a few notable players were Packie Haley and Nellie Coakley, who were involved in the Northside Irish tradition of the 1920s and 1930s; Ed MacGillivray played banjo with Tena Campbell; and the Iona area had some banjo players, such as the “Lighthouse” MacLeans. The banjo was well known in Cape Breton’s old-time tradition, especially in the 1960s, but was not really introduced to the Cape Breton fiddle scene until the 1970s when Paul Cranford, a 6-string banjo player, arrived from Toronto. He has since replaced the banjo with fiddle. A few fiddlers have dabbled with the instrument but it has had no major presence within the tradition.
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Liz Doherty (The Cape Breton Fiddle Companion)
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washroom was the same. Not possessed of a strong stomach, he’d opted not to find out. Cockroaches had been conducting a track-and-field meet along the footrail of the bar, the pungent odor of urine had been held to a draw by the generous application of sweet-smelling disinfectant, the old status quo had prevailed, and Lockington had spotted Rufe Devereaux sitting in a rear booth, talking to a blonde woman. There’d been something vaguely familiar about her but Lockington hadn’t been able to put his finger on it. Devereaux had observed Lockington’s entrance, waving to him, motioning him to take a seat at the bar, then holding up a be-with-you-in-a-moment finger. Club Howdy attendance had been sparse—a few scruffy-looking characters had been clustered in a dark corner of the place, there’d been a pair of elderly men at the end of the bar, but the tables had been deserted, and Lockington had discounted the threat of being crushed in a rush. A four-piece string band had been mauling “Clayton’s Ridge” when Lockington had seated himself. “Clayton’s Ridge” came under the heading of bluegrass, and Lockington had never been convinced that bluegrass came under the heading of music. Bluegrass had always reminded Lockington of a midnight cat fight in a trash heap, but he’d ordered a Martell’s and waited.
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Ross H. Spencer (The Devereaux File (The Lacey Lockington Mysteries))
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if bluegrass or country music—if it comes down to that country and it mixes with blues and it dances, then it’s called rock and roll.
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Jonathan Taplin (Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy)
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High lonesome is a sound or type of music in the bluegrass tradition. Its roots go back to Bill Monroe, Roscoe Holcomb, and the bluegrass region of Kentucky.
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Brené Brown (Braving the Wilderness: Reese's Book Club: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone)
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Performing at the Sea of Galilee, a huge full moon shining behind him, he launched into “Blue Moon of Kentucky” and the crowd came to its feet. He encored seven times that night. Bill had been pleasantly surprised that Jewish Americans like Gene Lowinger, Steve Arkin, and David Grisman had become his devotees; now he was happy, indeed profoundly moved, that Israelis loved and understood his music.
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Richard D. Smith (Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass)
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In a multifaceted, trend-setting career, he had truly become the most broadly talented and broadly influential figure in American popular music history. He had been much more than the Father of Bluegrass: He had been an uncle to country music, a first cousin to the folk revival, and a grandfather to rock ‘n’ roll.166
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Richard D. Smith (Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass)
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Contrary to popular belief, the performers who emerged from the southern hills to become the pioneers of country music and bluegrass were not from an exclusively aural folk tradition. Formal musical education, albeit rudimentary, was available each summer in towns like Rosine in the form of “singing schools!
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Richard D. Smith (Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass)
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Bill, it was said, was a direct descendant of President James Monroe; he grew up in the mountains; he rose from hardscrabble poverty in a backward, backwoods culture; bluegrass music sprang from ancient Scots-Irish culture transplanted to the Appalachians, where it blossomed as a traditional folk art.
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Richard D. Smith (Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass)
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dlaurent
The Ballad of Johnny Jihad (Down Desert Storm Way). ©
c. 2001
During the Gulf War (1990-1991), American Pro-Taliban Jihadist John Philip Walker Lindh was captured while serving with the enemy forces. Here is his tale in song and legend. My nowex at the time did not want me to run to the radio station with this, thought I’d look singularly ridiculii.
The following, 'The Ballad of Johnny Jihad' is sung to the tune of 'The Ballad of Jed Clampett' (1962), commonly known as 'The Beverly Hillbillies' song, the theme tune for the TV show series starring Buddy Ebsen. (Lyrics, Paul Henning, vocals Jerry Scoggins, Lester Flatt; master musicians of the art of the ballad and bluegrass ways, Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs).
The Ballad of Johnny Jihad
(Sung) Come and listen to the story of Johnny Jihad,
Who left home and country to study his Islam,
And then one day he was shooting at our troops,
So down through the camp did the government swoop.
(Voice Over): ‘Al Que-da that is, Af-ghani Tali-ban, Terror-ist . . .’
(Sung) Well, the first thing you know ol’ John from ’Frisco roamed,
The lawman said ‘he’s a lad misunderstood very far from home.’
Said, ‘Californee is the place he oughta be,’
So they request his trial be moved to Berkeley . . .
(Voice Over): ‘Liberals that is, group-ies, peace-activists . . .’
Announcer: The Johnny Jihad Show! (Intense bluegrass banjo pickin’ music) . . .
(Sung) Now its time to say goodbye to John and all his kin,
Hope ya don’t think of him as a fightin’ Taliban,
You’re all invited back again to this insanity,
To get yourself a heapin’ helpin’ of this travesty . . .
Johnny Jihad, that’s what they call ’im now
Nice guy; don’t get fooled now, y’hear?
(Voice Over): ‘Lawyerin’ that is, O.J.ism, media-circus . . .’ (Music) . . .
end
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Douglas M. Laurent
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Rock & roll music is a derivative of rockabilly music; rockabilly music is Bill Monroe and the blues tied together. That’s it.
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Richard D. Smith (Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass)
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The bitter irony, of course, was that the same young musicians who stood in awe of Bill Monroe were about to push him, and others like him, off the stage. Rock ‘n’ roll began to take the youth audience away from country music. And that was a disaster.
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Richard D. Smith (Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass)
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For those unhappy with modern society, folk music suggested the colors, scents, and textures of a more authentic time. The folk scene offered a purer cultural identity, or at least the fantasy of one.
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Richard D. Smith (Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass)
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Meanwhile, the Flatt and Scruggs juggernaut rolled on. Under Louise Scruggs’s shrewd management, Monroe’s former sidemen had become the bluegrass darlings of the northern folk music revival.
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Richard D. Smith (Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass)
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Ralph and Mike would soon be caught up in a remarkable phenomenon that transcended prevailing regional, class, and gender boundaries. It was an intertwining cultural grapevine that united northerners and southerners who shared a common passion for rural string band music. This network proved crucial to the survival of Bill Monroe’s career and even bluegrass itself.
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Richard D. Smith (Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass)
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Rinzler was struck by the fact that for all its onstage spontaneity, Monroe’s music wasn’t intuitive. He had consciously created it and could relate exactly where he had gotten each sound, like a painter who knows exactly what colors he has used from his palette.35 Rinzler began to see that this enigmatic man did little that he had not very deliberately decided upon.
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Richard D. Smith (Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass)
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Meanwhile, David Grisman, a Ralph Rinzler protege and Monroe devotee from New Jersey, was living in California and developing his own newgrassy sound, a blend of bluegrass, swing, and Jewish klezmer that he called “dawg music” (after the canine nickname bestowed on him by friend Jerry Garcia).
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Richard D. Smith (Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass)
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Of course, the most common response is that Bill Monroe was “the Father of Bluegrass” and its true creator. It was his melding of a band sound around fiddle playing, his high singing, his revolutionary mandolin stylings, and his distinctive surging rhythm that set bluegrass apart from the rest of country or folk music.
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Richard D. Smith (Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass)
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Numerous Monroe protégés formed their own groups performing in his style. The most famous were Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, respectively the guitarist-lead vocalist and the banjo picker who were core members of the classic Blue Grass Boys lineup of the late 1940s. They left to form the tremendously successful partnership of Flatt and Scruggs & the Foggy Mountain Boys, gaining crossover fame in the 1960s by contributing music to the soundtracks of the Beverly Hillbillies television show and the movie Bonnie and Clyde.
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Richard D. Smith (Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass)
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Arguments about the origins of bluegrass are particularly intense because—as “traditional” as bluegrass is in comparison to the rest of American popular music—it has a starting point within living memory (unlike opera or symphonic music), and its origins can arguably be credited to one man
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Richard D. Smith (Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass)
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Bill Monroe’s earliest paid music work was thanks to Shultz, who asked Bill to “second him” on guitar when he fiddled for square dances.
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Richard D. Smith (Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass)
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With lively bluegrass music playing in the background, Nora started to arrange a table display designed to appeal to the festival attendees heading to the Balloon Fest, the Craft Beer Fest, or the Mountain Bike Fest. “Balloons, beer, and bikes? I’m picturing Pennywise getting a DUI at the X Games.
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Ellery Adams (Ink and Shadows (Secret, Book, & Scone Society, #4))
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Different groups have different priorities. Because Hispanics tend to have low incomes, they support increases in government services, even at the cost of more taxes for others. Most Hispanics supported all five spending initiatives on the May, 2005 California ballot; most whites opposed all five.
Prof. Nikolai Roussanov of the Wharton School has found that both blacks and Hispanics spend 50 percent less on medical care than do whites with similar incomes, and that blacks and Hispanics spend 16 percent and 30 percent less, respectively, on education than do whites with similar incomes. Many studies have also found that blacks and Hispanics save less than whites for future goals like retirement. How do they spend their money? Blacks are more likely than whites to buy lottery tickets and to spend disproportionately more money doing so.
Prof Roussanov says the biggest difference, however, is that blacks and Hispanics spend 30 percent more than whites with the same income on what he calls “visible goods” meant to convey status, such as clothing, cars, and jewelry.
Different groups have different buying patterns. In 2004, Sears decided to turn 97 of its 870 locations into “multicultural stores,” in which clothing, signs, décor, and displays were geared to Hispanics and blacks, who do not have the same tastes and body sizes as whites. Hispanics want “stylish,” form-fitting clothing in bright, loud colors, and the highest heels available. Blacks need more “plus” sizes. In the multicultural stores, Sears displays the loud clothing prominently, near entrances. Clothing white women are likely to buy, such as the more traditional Land’s End line, is in the back.
For years there was a Roy Rogers-Dale Evans Museum in Victorville, California, filled with Roy Rogers memorabilia and even his horse Trigger—stuffed, of course. That part of California is now heavily Hispanic, and no one is interested in Roy Rogers. The museum moved to Branson, Missouri, which has become a resort catering to bluegrass and country music fans, who are overwhelmingly white. Victorville immigrant Rosalina Sondoval-Marin did not miss the museum. “Roy Rogers? He doesn’t mean anything,” she said. “There’s a revolution going on, and it don’t include no Roy Rogers.
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Jared Taylor (White Identity: Racial Consciousness in the 21st Century)