Music in American Life: Bluegrass Generation (ePub)

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.|
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Contents
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Prologue
Summer 1961
Meeting Monroe: June–July 1961
Bean Blossom: 1961
House Band: July–August 1961
Meeting the Audience: July 1961
Playing the Five: 1953–June 1961
Letters to Home: August 1961
Meeting the Regulars: August 1961
Bloomington: July–August 1961
Fall 1961
Monroe Again: September 1961
Autumn Work: September–October 1961
Stepping Up: October 1961
Connections: October 1961
White House Blues: October 1961
End of the Season: November 1961
Cannonball Blues: December 1961
Spring 1962
Meeting Marvin Hedrick: January–June 1962
College Kids: March 1962–May 1962
Summer 1962
Back to the Jamboree: July–August 1962
Folk in Bloomington: July–September 1962
Fall 1962
Mocking Bird Hill: September 1962
Folk and Country: October 1962
College Folk, Bluegrass, Banjo Necks: November 1962
Spring 1963
On the Road: January–March 1963
Spring Pickin': April 1963
Reno & Smiley: April 1963
Stonemans, Banjo Contest: May 1963
Summer 1963
Meeting Ralph Rinzler: June 1963
Ralph Fires Birch: June 1963
A Business Model: June–July 1963
Bobby Hits the Barn: June 1963
Two Country Sundays: July 1963
Conversations with Ralph: July 1963
Week 6 and the Letter: July–August 1963
Mandolin Sunday: August 1963
Berkeley Bluegrass: August–September 1963
Marvin Takes Over: August–September 1963
Fall 1963
Back to the Barn: September 1963
Monroe Day: September–October 1963
Bluegrass HQ: October–November 1963
Bean Blossom Hop: November 1963
Last Report to Ralph: November–December 1963
After the Jamboree: 1964–1967
Afterword
Recordings, Bibliography, and Notes
Recordings
Notes
Bibliography
Credits
Index|Neil V. Rosenberg is Professor Emeritus of Folklore at Memorial University of Newfoundland. He is the author of Bluegrass: A History and coauthor of Bluegrass Odyssey and The Music of Bill Monroe.