Neil V. Rosenberg met the legendary Bill Monroe at the Brown County Jamboree. Rosenberg's subsequent experiences in Bean Blossom put his feet on the intertwined musical and scholarly paths that made him a preeminent scholar of bluegrass music. Rosenberg's memoir shines a light on the changing bluegrass scene of the early 1960s. Already a fan and aspiring musician, his appetite for banjo music quickly put him on the Jamboree stage. Rosenberg eventually played with Monroe and spent four months managing the Jamboree. Those heights gave him an eyewitness view of nothing less than bluegrass's emergence from the shadow of country music into its own distinct art form. As the likes of Bill Keith and Del McCoury played, Rosenberg watched Monroe begin to share a personal link to the music that tied audiences to its history and his life--and helped turn him into bluegrass's foundational figure. An intimate look at a transformative time, Bluegrass Generation tells the inside story of how an American musical tradition came to be.

Gay never recorded an album, never won a Juno. His music existed in the moment, appreciated by the few who were lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. For the rest of us, those late-night jam sessions in a shack in an alley on the bad side of Edmonton never happened. We never got to hear him play the Cole Porter songs he loved with Carlos Montoya, never got to watch the ashes build dangerously on the end of his menthol cigarette. And when Frank Gay died, only the guitar players gently wept. - Shelley Youngblut Until his death in 1982, Edmonton luthier and guitarist Frank Gay built guitars for several famous musicians, including country stars Johnny Cash, Don Gibson, Webb Pierce, and Hank Snow. He captivated listeners with his singular talent on guitar and other instruments, and was well known within the music industry. Trevor Harrison's detective work uncovers the story of this private, charming, and bohemian man, doing a tremendous service to Canadian culture and music history. Harrison pieces together Frank Gay's life through interviews with people who knew him and saw him play. Very few recordings of him playing exist, and the sparse accounts of Gay's life and work raise more questions than they answer. Musicians and instrument makers, as well as those interested in Canadian music or Edmonton's colourful past, will be fascinated by this biography of western Canadian luthier, musician, and guitar virtuoso Frank Gay.

Living in the Woods in a Tree is an intimate glimpse into the turbulent life of Texas music legend Blaze Foley (1949-1989), seen through the eyes of Sybil Rosen, the woman for whom he wrote his most widely known song, "If I Could Only Fly." It captures the exuberance of their fleeting idyll in a tree house in the Georgia woods during the countercultural 1970s. Rosen offers a firsthand witnessing of Foley's transformation from a reticent hippie musician to the enigmatic singer/songwriter who would live and die outside society's rules. While Foley's own performances are only recently being released, his songs have been covered by Merle Haggard, Lyle Lovett, and John Prine. When he first encountered "If I Could Only Fly," Merle Haggard called it "the best country song I've heard in fifteen years." In a work that is part-memoir, part-biography, Rosen struggles to finally come to terms with Foley's myth and her role in its creation. Her tracing of his impact on her life navigates a lovers' roadmap along the permeable boundary between life and death. A must-read for all Blaze Foley and Texas music fans, as well as romantics of all ages, Living in the Woods in a Tree is an honest and compassionate portrait of the troubled artist and his reluctant muse.

It remains one of the most remarkable breakthroughs in music history. The nervous and dishevelled figure who played his punk-blues song 'Dog House Boogie' before Jools Holland and his dumbstruck Hootenanny audience that New Year's Eve 2006 seemed to have emerged from nowhere. Apparently a sixty-five-year-old former hobo, Steve played his trademark threestring guitar (aka The Three-String Trance Wonder) and stomped on a wooden box with a Mississippi motorcycle plate stuck on (aka The Mississippi Drum Machine). His Norwegian studio had recently failed, he'd had a heart attack, and he was only known among a tiny community of hardcore blues fans, yet by the next morning he was famous. His album Dog House Music, recorded in his kitchen, sold out overnight. 2007 brought a MOJO, Reading and Glastonbury, and 2008 worldwide success and his major label debut. The rest, they say, is history. Or perhaps not. Everyone loved the grit and authenticity of Steve's songs about life on the road. His roots in the Deep South were celebrated across the media, and BBC Four took Steve round Mississippi for a documentary. But look a little closer, and a very different musical - and personal - journey rears its head. In this groundbreaking new biography, Matthew Wright draws on new information and some musical collaborators to create a startling life story, teasing out crucial details to turn the regular story of a hobo's wanderings in the wilderness on its head and bring Seasick Steve's life in from the cold. The real Steve was not a blue-collar amateur who got lucky, but a committed professional, steeped in a variety of ever-changing, era-defining musical traditions throughout his life, from the moment his dad played him boogie-woogie piano as a baby. This is a career that's touched an astonishing range of lives, from Albert King and Lighnin' Hopkins to Jimi Hendrix, from Janis Joplin to Kurt Cobain and Slash of Guns N' Roses. Ramblin' Man tells the tale of the extraordinary life of this musical polymath, as he wound a course through some of the most epochal moments in music history of the twentieth century. The myth was astonishing; the real story is even better.

Country music of late 1960s and early 1970s was a powerful symbol of staunch conservative resistance to the flowering hippie counterculture. But in 1972, the city of Austin, Texas became host to a growing community of musicians, entrepreneurs, journalists, and fans who saw country music as a part of their collective heritage and sought to reclaim it for their own progressive scene. These children of the Cold War, post-World War II suburban migration, and the Baby Boom escaped the socially conservative world their parents had created, to instead create for themselves an idyllic rural Texan utopia. Progressive country music-a hybrid of country music and rock-played out the contradictions at work among the residents of the growing Austin community: at once firmly grounded in the conservative Texan culture in which they had been raised and profoundly affected by the current hippie counterculture. In Cosmic Cowboys and New Hicks: The Countercultural Sounds of Austin's Progressive Country Music Scene, Travis Stimeling connects the local Austin culture and the progressive music that became its trademark. He presents a colorful range of evidence, from behavior and dress, to newspaper articles, to personal interviews of musicians as diverse as Willie Nelson, Jerry Jeff Walker, and Doug Sahm. Along the way, Stimeling uncovers parodies of the cosmic cowboy image that reinforce the longing for a more peaceful way of life, but that also recognize an awareness of the muddled, conflicted nature of this counterculture identity. Cosmic Cowboys and New Hicks brings new insight into the inner workings of Austin's progressive country music scene - by bringing the music and musicians brilliantly to life. This book will appeal to students and scholars of popular music studies, musicology and ethnomusicology, sociology, cultural studies, folklore, American studies, and cultural geography; the lucid prose and interviews will also make the book attractive to fans of the genre and artists discussed within. Austin residents past and present, as well as anyone with an interest in the development of progressive music or today's 'alt.country' movement will find Cosmic Cowboys and New Hicks an informative, engaging resource.

Combining the history of country music's roots with portraits of its primary performers, this text examines the relationship between 'America's truest music' and the working-class culture that has constituted its principal source, nurtured its development, and provided its most dedicated supporters.

The man who acts under the name Will Oldham and sings and composes under the name Bonnie "Prince" Billy has, over the past quarter-century, made an idiosyncratic journey through, and an indelible mark on, the worlds of indie rock and independent cinema. These conversations with longtime friend and associate Alan Licht probe his highly individualistic approach to music making and the music industry, one that cherishes intimacy, community, mystery, and spontaneity. Exploring Oldham's travels and artistic influences while discussing his experiences with such disparate figures as Johnny Cash, Bjork, James Earl Jones, and R. Kelly, the book conveys the brilliance that has captivated fans and made Oldham one of our most influential and beloved songsmiths. Oldham has declared this book his "last interview"-an essential guide to his life and career. Featuring a full discography, it offers the most in-depth look we may ever get of this fascinating cult figure.

A pivotal member of the hugely successful bluegrass band Flatt and Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys, Dobro pioneer Josh Graves (1927-2006) was a living link between bluegrass music and the blues. In Bluegrass Bluesman, this influential performer shares the story of his lifelong career in music. In lively anecdotes, Graves describes his upbringing in East Tennessee and the climate in which bluegrass music emerged during the 1940s. Deeply influenced by the blues, he adapted Earl Scruggs's revolutionary banjo style to the Dobro resonator slide guitar and gave the Foggy Mountain Boys their distinctive sound. Graves' accounts of daily life on the road through the 1950s and 1960s reveal the band's dedication to musical excellence, Scruggs' leadership, and an often grueling life on the road. He also comments on his later career when he played in Lester Flatt's Nashville Grass and the Earl Scruggs Revue and collaborated with the likes of Boz Scaggs, Charlie McCoy, Kenny Baker, Eddie Adcock, Jesse McReynolds, Marty Stuart, Jerry Douglas, Alison Krauss, and his three musical sons. A colorful storyteller, Graves brings to life the world of an American troubadour and the mountain culture that he never left behind. Born in Tellico Plains, Tennessee, Josh Graves (1927-2006) is universally acknowledged as the father of the bluegrass Dobro. In 1997 he was inducted into the Bluegrass Hall of Fame.

Jimmie Rodgers (1897-1933), the first performer elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame, was a folk hero in his own lifetime and has been idolized by fans and emulated by performers ever since. His life story has been particularly susceptible to romanticizing, marked as it was by humble origins, sudden success and fame, and an early death from tuberculosis.

Nolan Porterfield's biography banishes the rumors and myths that have long shrouded the Blue Yodeler's life story. Unlike previous writings about Rodgers, Porterfield's book derives from extensive and detailed research into original sources: private letters, personal interviews, court records, and newspaper accounts. "Jimmie Rodgers" significantly expands and alters our knowledge of the entertainer's life and career, explaining the nature of his role in American culture of the Depression era and providing insightful background on the milieu in which he worked. Porterfield writes a preface for this edition.

Nolan Porterfield's other books include "Last Cavalier: The Life and Times of John A. Lomax" and an award-winning novel, "A Way of Knowing." A native of Texas, he now lives near Bowling Green, Kentucky.

This volume focuses on fifty of the most important entertainers in the history of country music, from its beginnings in the folk music of early America through the 1970s. Divided into five distinct categories, it discusses the pioneers who brought mountain music to mass audiences; cowboys and radio stars who spread country music countrywide; honky-tonk and bluegrass musicians who differentiated country music during the 1940s; the major contributions that female artists made to the genre; and the modern country sound which dominated the genre from the late 1950s to the mid - 1980s. Each entry includes a brief biography of the chosen artist with special emphasis on experiences which influenced their musical careers. Covered musicians include Fiddlin' John Carson, Riley Puckett, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Bob Willis, Bill Monroe, Hank Williams, Sr., Dale Evans, June Carter Cash, Loretta Lynn, Buck Owens, Roy Clark, Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard.

"Distributed by the University of Nebraska Press for Whale and Star Press" For the Cowboy Junkies it all begins with a song: an acoustic guitar and a voice. But each song comes to each album with its own history, along its own strange path. Some are born and realized in a matter of minutes; others take years to finally find a place. Some pop out as perfect little gems; others mutate and transform themselves, stealing and pillaging from the unformed. XX celebrates the twentieth anniversary of the Cowboy Junkies, one of the most distinctive and influential rock bands in recent years. Starting with the seminal album "The Trinity Session," the Canadian band's signature sound, based on traditional blues and post-punk rock, has garnered much critical acclaim and an uncommonly devoted international following. The Cowboy Junkies are guitarist and lyricist Michael Timmins, bassist Alan Anton, and Timmins's siblings Margo (lead vocals) and Peter (drums). This book, the first to focus on the Cowboy Junkies, offers an intimate look at the band through their own photographs and the poetic lyrics of Michael Timmins, who chose the selections. Each lyric is accompanied by a resonant illustration created by renowned artist Enrique Martinez Celaya, who is a friend and fan of the band.

They may wear cowboy hats and boots and sing about "faded love," but western swing musicians have always played jazz From Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys to Asleep at the Wheel, western swing performers have played swing jazz on traditional country instruments, with all of the required elements of jazz, and some of the best solo improvisation ever heard.

In this book, Jean A. Boyd explores the origins and development of western swing as a vibrant current in the mainstream of jazz. She focuses in particular on the performers who made the music, drawing on personal interviews with some fifty living western swing musicians. From pioneers such as Cliff Bruner and Eldon Shamblin to current performers such as Johnny Gimble, the musicians make important connections between the big band swing jazz they heard on the radio and the western swing they created and played across the Southwest from Texas to California.

From this first-hand testimony, Boyd re-creates the world of western swing-the dance halls, recording studios, and live radio shows that broadcast the music to an enthusiastic listening audience. Although the performers typically came from the same rural roots that nurtured country music, their words make it clear that they considered themselves neither "hillbillies" nor "country pickers," but jazz musicians whose performance approach and repertory were no different from those of mainstream jazz. This important aspect of the western swing story has never been told before.