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Emmett Miller – The Vaudeville Star Who Helped Shape Country Music

By Charles Wolfe

Emmett-Miller-photo

There are dozens of unsung heroes in the annals of country music; some are instrumentalists, like the legendary Georgia fiddler Joe Lee, who introduced the “long bow” style to greats like Clayton McMichen; some are songwriters, like the gospel singer Grady Cole, who wrote Tramp on the Street; others were promoters and radio personalities like the late Eddie Hill, who helped introduce the music of the Louvin Broth­ers to a wide audience. But one of the most unsung, and one of the most mysterious, was a remarkable blackface come­dian and singer named Emmett Miller. He flourished

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How Hard is it to Learn to Play the 5-String Banjo?

I get asked this question all the time, so I thought I might as well answer it. Learning the banjo can be as easy as falling off a log or as painful as a good ole root canal. It all depends on how it’s taught.

Bluegrass banjo as pioneered by Earl Scruggs sounds like it has a billion notes. It not only sounds complicated, it IS complicated. But friends, it doesn’t have to be that way. Unfortunately, most instruction books and banjo teachers completely miss the boat by starting the total beginner off with complicated rolls and then wonder why

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Rural Black String Band Music

By Charles Wolfe

Originally published in Black Music Research Newsletter 4, No. 2 (Fall 1980). Used by permission of Mary Dean Wolfe.

“The first time I think I ever seen Arnold Schultz … this square dance was at Rosine, Kentucky, and Arnold and two more colored fellows come up there and played for the dance. They had a guitar, banjo, and fiddle. Ar­nold played the guitar but he could play the fiddle-numbers like Sally Goodin. People loved Arnold so well all through Kentucky there; if he was playing a guitar they’d go gang up around him till he would

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“I’ve Been All Around This World” ~History, Lyrics & Banjo Tab

Of all the many kinds of songs there are to sing, by far my favorites are what I call “real songs.” These were not written in an air conditioned office on the fourteenth floor by fancy pants professional songwriters. Instead, they were written about events that really happened, by real people who were there to witness it.

Judge Parker “I’ve Been All Around This World” could not be any more real if it tried. The outlaw captured in this song was reportedly hanged for murder in Fort Smith, Arkansas in the 1870s. If this is true, the chances are good that he

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Blue Sky Boys

Rural Roots of Bluegrass

By Wayne Erbsen

It all began with a misunderstanding. It was early June, 1936, and the teenage brother duet of Bill and Earl Bolick had just abruptly ended a three-month stint at radio WGST in Atlanta over a dispute with the sponsor, W.J. Fincher’s Crazy Water Crystals. Within a matter of days the Bolicks traveled to the RCA Victor studio in Charlotte, North Carolina, to fulfill a contract to make their first recordings.

Perhaps out of spite, W.J. Fincher passed on to RCA Victor the erroneous information that the brothers had broken up their act. For this reason, Eli Oberstein

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Figuring Out Chords at the Shindig on the Green

By Wayne Erbsen

Shindig. To people in western North Carolina where I live, “Shindig” is short for Shindig on the Green, which is an outdoor bluegrass music festival held on the courthouse steps in Asheville, North Carolina. The Shindig is a unique summer festival, drawing regional bluegrass and old-time musicians who just want to get together to pick and socialize and strut their musical stuff on stage. For the musicians, it’s not a paid gig, just a big music party with a large audience. Only the house band, The Stoney Creek Boys, get paid.

On Labor Day, I attended the

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Tips for Figuring Out Chords

By Wayne Erbsen

Shindig. To people in western North Carolina where I live, “Shindig” is short for Shindig on the Green, which is an outdoor bluegrass music festival held on the courthouse steps in Asheville, North Carolina. The Shindig is a unique summer festival, drawing regional bluegrass and old-time musicians who just want to get together to pick and socialize and strut their musical stuff on stage. For the musicians, it’s not a paid gig, just a big music party with a large audience. Only the house band, The Stoney Creek Boys, get paid.

On Labor Day, I attended the

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The Secret Signals of Musicians

By Wayne Erbsen

It’s Saturday night. Instead of relaxing safe at home plopped comfortably in front of your big screen TV, you’ve got your hind quarters parked squarely on a hard folding chair. If that’s the case, chances are you’re either at a festival watching your favorite bluegrass band, or perhaps you’re huddled under a tarp in the pouring rain jamming with friends or total strangers at a fiddlers convention. Either way, you often witness secret or not-so-secret signals or cues from one musician to the rest of the group to alert them that a song or tune is about

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Bluegrass Music in Western North Carolina

Rural Roots of Bluegrass

Western North Carolina has long been fertile ground for the growth of bluegrass music. In fact, no other region or state has contributed so much to its development.

For many people, the appeal of bluegrass music is that it is a relatively new form of music that sounds old. Most scholars agree that bluegrass first gained national attention when Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys appeared on the Grand Ole Opry in 1945. In addition to Bill Monroe himself, this legendary band consisted of Lester Flatt (guitar), Earl Scruggs (banjo), Chubby Wise (fiddle) and Cedric Rainwater (bass). The reason that

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