Lenny Breau (1941-1984) was called "the greatest guitarist who ever walked the face of the earth." Breau began playing the instrument at age seven, and went on to master many styles. His virtuosity influenced countless performers, but at the expense of his personal relationships. This book presents Breau's life story and his musical importance.

Today, country music enjoys a national fan base that transcends both economic and social boundaries. Sixty years ago, however, it was primarily the music of rural, working-class whites living in the South and was perceived by many Americans as “hillbilly music.” In Smile When You Call Me a Hillbilly, Jeffrey J. Lange examines the 1940s and early 1950s as the most crucial period in country music’s transformation from a rural, southern folk art form to a national phenomenon. In his meticulous analysis of changing performance styles and alterations in the lifestyles of listeners, Lange illuminates the acculturation of country music and its audience into the American mainstream. Dividing country music into six subgenres (progressive country, western swing, postwar traditional, honky-tonk, country pop, and country blues), Lange discusses the music’s expanding appeal. As he analyzes the recordings and comments of each of the subgenre’s most significant artists, including Roy Acuff, Bob Wills, Bill Monroe, Hank Williams, and Red Foley, he traces the many paths the musical form took on its road to respectability. Lange shows how along the way the music and its audience became more sophisticated, how the subgenres blended with one another and with American popular music, and how Nashville emerged as the country music hub. By 1954, the transformation from “hillbilly” music to country music was complete, precipitated by the modernizing forces of World War II and realized by the efforts of promoters, producers, and performers.

The Old South is slow to give up its secrets. Though satellite dishes outnumber banjo players a thousand to one, most traditions haven't died; they've just gone into hiding. Cockfighting is illegal in forty-eight states, yet there are three national cockfighting magazines and cockpits in even the most tranquil communities. Homemade liquor has been outlawed for more than a century, yet moonshiners in Virginia still ship nearly one million gallons a year. Some of these pastimes are ancient, others ultramodern; some are illegal, others merely obscure. But the people who practice them share an undeniable kinship. Instead of wealth, promotion, or a few seconds of prime time, they follow dreams that lead them ever deeper underground. They are reminders, ultimately, that American culture isn't as predictable as it seems-that the weeds growing between its cracks are its most vital signs of life. In these masterfully crafted essays, Burkhard Bilger explores the history and practice of eight such clandestine worlds. Like John McPhee and Ian Frazier, he introduces us to people whose spirit of individualism keeps traditions alive, from a fifty-something female coon hunter who spends 340 nights a year in the woods to a visionary frog farmer and a man whose arms are scarred by the eighty-pound catfish he catches by hand. A fluid combination of adventure, history, and humor, Noodling for Flatheads is evocative, intelligent, and wonder-fully weird-a splendid antidote to the sameness of today's popular culture.

Kentucky Country is a lively tour of the state's indigenous music, from the days of string bands through hillbilly, western swing, gospel, bluegrass, and honkey-tonk to through the Nashville Sound and beyond. Through personal interviews with many of the living legends of Kentucky music, Charles K. Wolfe illuminates a fascinating and important area of American culture. The list of country music stars who hail from Kentucky is a long and glittering one. Red Foley, Bill Monroe, Loretta Lynn, Tom T. Hall, the Judds, Dwight Yaokum, Billy Ray Cyrus, Ricky Skaggs, John Michael Montgomery, and Keith Whitely—all these and many others have called Kentucky home. Kentucky Country is the story of these stars and dozens more. It is also the story of many Kentucky musicians whose contributions have been little known or appreciated, and of those collectors, promoters, and entrepreneurs who have worked behind the scenes to bring Kentucky music to national attention.

Reunion is the awkward, tender meeting between a father and daughter after nearly twenty years separation. Dark Pony is the telling of a mythical story by a father to his young daughter as they drive home in the evening.

Country music's debt to African American music has long been recognized. Black musicians have helped to shape the styles of many of the most important performers in the country canon. The partnership between Lesley Riddle and A. P. Carter produced much of the Carter Family's repertoire; the street musician Tee Tot Payne taught a young Hank Williams Sr.; the guitar playing of Arnold Schultz influenced western Kentuckians, including Bill Monroe and Ike Everly. Yet attention to how these and other African Americans enriched the music played by whites has obscured the achievements of black country-music performers and the enjoyment of black listeners. The contributors to Hidden in the Mix examine how country music became "white," how that fictive racialization has been maintained, and how African American artists and fans have used country music to elaborate their own identities. They investigate topics as diverse as the role of race in shaping old-time record catalogues, the transracial West of the hick-hopper Cowboy Troy, and the place of U.S. country music in postcolonial debates about race and resistance. Revealing how music mediates both the ideology and the lived experience of race, Hidden in the Mix challenges the status of country music as "the white man’s blues." Contributors. Michael Awkward, Erika Brady, Barbara Ching, Adam Gussow, Patrick Huber, Charles Hughes, Jeffrey A. Keith, Kip Lornell, Diane Pecknold, David Sanjek, Tony Thomas, Jerry Wever

Kentuckians have been wearing out shoe leather at informal jamborees since the state was settled over two hundred years ago. Tadpole's Dew Drop Inn played host to some fifteen hundred musical shindigs in its time as a mecca of Marshall County music. A Rosine barn dance gave bluegrass founder Bill Monroe his start, and another fosters new musical talent at its weekly get-togethers. Clawhammer banjo players, Appalachian cloggers and square dance callers from Possum Trot to Rabbit Hash celebrate the unique musical culture of Kentucky. Join Grammy-nominated soundtrack artist J.D. Wilkes as he waltzes around the Bluegrass, looking for oprys, socials, porch pickins and barn dances in every holler.

Eclectic guitarist and veteran Mel Bay author Tommy Flint provides a comprehensive introduction to fingerstyle guitar technique. Intended for the serious student learning the guitar without the advantage of having a teacher- clear photographs, diagrams, and standard and tab notation will guide you every step of the way. Original fingerstyle tunes and arrangements of folk standards abound in this book, driving home concepts of music theory, technique, syncopation, walking bass, barre chords, slurs, moveable chords, use of the capo, the Nashville number system, and much more.

Despite the homogenization of American life, areas of strong regional consciousness still persist in the United States, and there is a growing interest in regionalism among the public and among academics. In response to that interest ten folklorists here describe and interpret a variety of American regional cultures in the twentieth century. Their book is the first to deal specifically with regional culture and the first to employ the perspective of folklore in the study of regional identity and consciousness. The authors range widely over the United States, from the Eastern Shore to the Pacific Northwest, from the Southern Mountains to the Great Plains. They look at a variety of cultural expressions and practices—legends, anecdotes, songs, foodways, architecture, and crafts. Tying their work together is a common consideration of how regional culture shapes and is shaped by the consciousness of living in a special place. In exploring this dimension of regional culture the authors consider the influence of natural environment and historical experience on the development of regional culture, the role of ethnicity in regional consciousness, the tensions between insiders and outsiders that stem from a sense of regional identity, and the changes in culture in response to social and economic change. With its focus on cultural manifestations and its folkloristic perspective this book provides a fresh and needed contribution to regional studies. Written in a clear, readable style, it will appeal to general readers interested in American regions and their cultures. At the same time the research and analytical approach make it useful not only to folklorists but to cultural geographers, anthropologists, and other scholars of regional studies.

From humble folk instrument to American icon, the story of the guitar is told in this “exceptionally well-written” memoir by the NPR commentator (Guitar Player). In this blend of personal memoir and cultural history, National Public Radio commentator Tim Brookes narrates the long and winding history of the guitar in the United States as he recounts his own quest to build the perfect instrument. Pairing up with a master artisan from the Green Mountains of Vermont, Brookes learns how a perfect piece of cherry wood is hued, dovetailed, and worked on with saws, rasps, and files. He also discovers how the guitar first arrived in America with the conquistadors before being taken up by an extraordinary variety of hands: miners and society ladies, lumberjacks and presidents’ wives. In time, the guitar became America’s vehicle of self-expression. Nearly every immigrant group has appropriated it to tell their story. “Part history, part love song, Guitar strikes just the right chords.” —Andrew Abrahams, People