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This is a video of Bascom Lamar Lunsford (fiddle and vocals) and three other musicians (guitar and banjo) singing a song called "Doggett Gap" recorded in Ashville, North Carolina on October 7th, 1928. "Doggett Gap" seems very similar to the more famous "Cumberland Gap", so it could simply be a variation of Cumberland Gap with an alternate title. • Tommy Jarrell: Cumberland Gap (1983)

This man is the great Appalachian Mountain North Carolina folk musician/historian/wonderful character Bascom Lamar Lunsford. I have posted here the entire documentary that I made because so many of my subscribers have asked to see more of this film. Back in 1965, I was making my first television documentary (23 years old) and got the chance to go down from New York City to spend six weeks with Bascom and his wife Freda as they drove around the North Carolina Appalachian Mountains to find unknown but great musicians, dancers, poets, singers & songwriters for his music festival- The Asheville Music...

Are Excited to be a part of the Earl Scruggs Music Festival This Year

Today is director John Ford's 129th birthday. He said: "..... the sweetest freedom is an honest heart." 2 very different musicians in whom I see honest hearts are German trombone player Phil Zey and Bluegrass Band Leader Del McCoury. I met Phil at Dieng temple in Central Java Indonesia. He played a bit of Sinatra in the temple and hit a golf ball just outside it. The footage in the main link to this post show Phil leaving the temple. (I published the temple footage 3 years ago today.) Later on in Australia, I took him up into mountain forests...

Are you a bluegrass picker looking to make a move? Or maybe you and your instrument are just in the mood for a long summer road trip. Whatever your reason, we understand the draw of a town where it’s easy to find people to pick with. Nothing builds your bluegrass chops faster than regular opportunities to play with others, and there aren’t many better ways to make friends in a new home, either. With that in mind, here are what we consider the best bluegrass jamming towns in America: Asheville NC Boulder CO Mountain View AK Washington DC Nashville TN...

Funny stories, riddles, excellent banjo, guitar, harmonica accompaniment for blue grass music; some originals, some their rendition of other artists' songs.

Spent some time with this fabulous musician while touring in Japan, way back in 1985. You all have probably heard his music every day without knowing it. He played various instruments in movies and commercials.

The Petersens"The Petersens are a family band performing full-time in Branson, MO. The band consists of Katie Petersen on fiddle, Ellen Petersen on banjo, Matt Petersen on guitar, Julianne Petersen on mandolin, Karen Petersen on bass, and Emmett Franz on dobro."https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viQx4KDivPY

Kaye Watson is not a demanding parent intent of strictly imposing her will on her children. Instead, she tries to gently nudge them in the right direction. Watson comes from a family of music lovers. Not professional musicians, these are folks that just love listening to all kinds of music (though predominately traditional country) and singing along, sometimes to the top of their lungs. As she was home-schooling her two youngest boys a few years ago while living in Marissa, she wondered if the siblings would be interested in taking their musical intrigue to the next level, causing her to...

Del McCoury turns 82 today and still leads a band which includes his two sons Ronnie and Rob. As Tim Goldich of Chicago says, "there’s nothing more wonderful than family.” This is the strong shining light of socially healthy life. It will survive while modern feminist hatred of parenting, homemaking and marriage and love can only die. Who was it who said that this music is so strong that you can't kill it with an axe-handle?

Tony Rice, surely the most influential guitarist and vocalist in the history of bluegrass music, died on Christmas morning. He was 69 years of age, and died swiftly without pain. Tony changed forever the way bluegrass guitar is played, both as a lead and an accompaniment instrument. Audiences saw hints of his genius during his stint with Bluegrass Alliance in the early 1970s, but it appeared fully formed with J.D. Crowe & The New South in 1975 on their classic recording for Rounder Records, known colloquially by its catalog number, 0044. Those of us fortunate to be alive at that...

Roses aren't red and violets aren't blue. At least that's the premise of a new book, 'Outside Color', which puts forward the debate that colour is, in fact, an illusion. Author Dr Mazviita Chirimuuta uses the book to explore the historical debates that suggest colour doesn't exist - at least not in the literal sense. Light, however, does exist, and it's the mind that transforms that light into colour. 'Of all the properties that objects appear to have,'writes the University of Pittsburgh professor, 'colour hovers uneasily between the subjective world of sensation and the objective world of fact.' Optical illusions,...

Musician’s “Dueling Banjos” cover from the Deliverance soundtrack became a huge hit in 1973Bluegrass musician Eric Weissberg, whose cover of the Arthur “Guitar Boogie” Smith instrumental “Dueling Banjos” became an unlikely pop hit when it appeared on the soundtrack to the 1972 film Deliverance, died Sunday at the age of 80 after a five-year struggle with dementia. His son, Will Weissberg, confirmed the musician’s death to Rolling Stone. “Eric Weissberg was a consummate musician, a solid and seemingly effortless player of stringed instruments of all kinds — banjo, guitar, mandolin, fiddle, pedal steel, and string bass,” his lifelong friend and...

Bering Strait was a bluegrass/country music band from Russia. In 2003, the band was nominated for a Grammy Award and appeared on the TV show 60 Minutes. The group disbanded in 2006. The lineup on their first album was Alexander Arzamastsev (drums), Natasha Borzilova (lead vocals), Sergey "Spooky" Olkhovsky (bass guitar), Sergei Passov (mandolin, fiddle), Lydia Salnikova (keyboards, background vocals), Sasha Ostrovsky (steel guitar, Dobro) and Ilya Toshinsky (electric guitar, banjo).[ Bering Strait (Russian bluegrass band) covers Fleetwood Mac's "You Make Loving Fun"

TGIFF! Its Fiddle Friday and we have Durang's Hornpipe, Mississippi Sawmill Man and Durham's Reel by Buddy Durham (1957). THE WESTERNER https://thewesterner.blogspot.com/

Here is some early Flatt & Scruggs:I'll Never Shed Another Tear (1950). THE WESTERNER https://thewesterner.blogspot.com/

This weekend we lost one of the great voices in bluegrass music, Mac Wiseman. This eight-song compilation is my tribute to the entertainer. I certainly don't hold this up as being representative of his entire career, as I most enjoy his tunes from the early fifties. However I have included a tune from 60s and one from his wonderful collaboration with Merle Haggard in 2015. The tunes on this tribute are 1. Crazy Blues 1954 2. Fire In My Heart 1953 3. I'd Rather Live By The Side Of The Road 1953 4. Dreaming Of A Little Cabin 1952 5....

Our gospel tune today is Jesus Is The Answer by The Burchfield Family. The tune is on their 2017 CD I Rejoice. THE WESTERNER https://thewesterner.blogspot.com/

Today we have some early bluegrass with Mac Wiseman's 1953 recording of Crazy Blues. THE WESTERNER https://thewesterner.blogspot.com/

For Swingin' Monday we have Pee Wee King & His Golden West Cowboys - Ragtime Annie Lee. Recorded at RCA studio A in Chicago on Nov. 4, 1951. That's Redd Stewart on fiddle and vocals, Shorty Boyle on fiddle and Gene Engle on piano. The Westerner www.thewesterner.blogspot.com