Tim Newby's
Bluegrass in Baltimore: The
Hard Drivin' Sound and It's Legacy (McFarland
& Company, 2015, 244 pages, $35.00/9.99) should become a
centerpiece for any person interested in the relationship between the
growth of bluegrass from the mountains of Appalachia to the mills and
factories where it found its form, to the important and lasting
influence of this music as a part of the development of music in
America. It all took place, in microcosm, in and around Baltimore
which continues into today as an incubator and a storehouse of
bluegrass excellence. Newby recounts, in amazing detail and vigorous
prose, the growth of bluegrass music's second generation of great
musicians, many of whom preferred to stay at home rather than assume
the national stage in American bluegrass, folk, and roots music.
Carefully researched and meticulously annotated, this volume is a
treasure trove of interesting people and necessary knowledge.
Baltimore's bluegrass history can stand as an example of regional
bluegrass as a contributor to and an example of the more national
music we see today.
As the Great Depression of the nineteen thirties was followed by
World War II in the early forties, industrial America grew, fueled by
a work force which included a huge migration of poor people seeking
to escape the poverty and lack of work in the mountainous spine of
Appalachia who moved to industrial cities around the Great Lakes and
along the coasts and riverways or the continent. Cities like Hammond,
Indiana, to which Bill Monroe moved from his home in Rosine, to
Cincinnati, Columbus, Lowell, Columbus, and Baltimore attracted
workers, who brought their music and their culture with them. They
settled in and went to work, but they continued to find their
entertainment in the music they brought with them that developed
alongside and within the new technologies and cultural influences
that became available in the larger and more confusing urban world of
heavy industry. In Baltimore, as in Columbus, for instance, the
center of this entertainment became the small, smoke-filled, violent
environment of the neighborhood bar, where many bluegrass second
generation musicians developed.
Alan Lomax, on of American music's great achivists, made Earl
Taylor's Smokey Mountain Boys the first bluegrass band to appear at
Carnegie Hall in 1959 and later sponsored a concert on February 8,
1963 at New York University which brought Bill Monroe to town with
Del McCoury playing banjo in his band. This seems to have been the
event at which David Grisman and Del McCoury met, leading to a
lifelong musical and personal relationship. Monroe had added McCoury
to his band after seeing him in a Baltimore dive. The Carnegie Hall
concert had introduced bluegrass to the urban folk audience as a form
of folk music rather than country music as well as seeking to put
bluegrass into a context culminating in showing rock & roll to be
a culminating music combining folk, bluegrass, country and blues.
The subsequent concert at NYU served to cement one of the crucial
ideas in Newby's story, that bluegrass is an organic part of the
growth of Americana music which continues to develop within the
context of changes in America's developing technology, economics,
education, and taste. The stories of Hazel Dickens, Alice Gerard, Del
McCoury along with, more recently, Mike Munford and Patrick
McAvinue's emergence from the Baltimore scene onto the national stage
combine with the reluctance of many others to leave their comfortable
environments, jobs, and families to take leadership in the music's
development. Meanwhile, the nearby presence of Sunset Park and The
New River Ranch provided venues for local and national music to mix
and interact.
Newby's prose is direct, and refreshingly free of academic or
scholarly cant while still clearly being the product of thoughtful
and thorough research. Fortunately, he was able to interview a number
of the seminal figures in the Baltimore bluegrass scene still living
when he began collecting material for this book. He interviews
widely, talking to local Baltimore musicians while reaching far into
the progressive end of bluegrass to quote the Infamous Stringdusters'
Chris Pandolfi. His thought that the name “bluegrass” came from
fans of Flatt & Scruggs requesting songs they had played when
they were in Monroe's band but not mentioning the founder's name.
This suggests a breadth and subtlety to Newby's thinking that makes
him stand out. He's a lively, interesting, and creative writer.
Included at the beginning of each chapter is a “Recommended
Listening” section at the beginning of each chapter. These
recommended listening sections are easily achieved through accessing
one of the streaming music internet sites like Spotify, Pandora, or
YouTube. Newby has included extensive footnotes from a wide variety
of printed sources and from his own interviews and correspondence. He
includes sometimes chapter-long profiles of important Baltimore
musicians who may be largely or entirely unknown to bluegrass fans in
other regions of the country. Combining solid scholarship with sharp,
incisive prose is no small matter, but Newby seldom gets lost in the
weeds.
Tim Newby
Tim Newby graduated from Widener
University with a history degree in 1996. Since then he has been
working as a teacher and freelance writer. He has regularly
contributed to a number of different magazines and web sites,
including Paste, Honest Tune, Inside Lacrosse,
Relix, jambase.com, jambands.com, Glide
Magazine, Aural States, and others. He is also the
Features Editor at Honest Tune. Bluegrass
in Baltimore is his
first book, though he contributed to the Phish Companion Vol 2 in
2004.
While regional bluegrass music may seldom have reached the national
stage or grabbed its attention, the story Tim Newby tells is one of
local and regional achievements which often touch, collide with,
influence, and nurture the larger world of bluegrass, while remaining
a vital, growing, and often exciting local and regional force
recognized and treasured by those within its bubble or carefully
watching from around the edges. Hazel Dickers, Alice Gerrard, Danny
Paisley, Patrick McAvinue, and always Del McCoury, nurtured in
Baltimore's bars, come quickly to mind, while Earl Taylor, Walt
Hensly, and Russ Hooper more or less stayed home, contributing, but
not gaining national recognition. In writing Bluegrass
in Baltimore: The Hard Drivin' Sound and It's Legacy (McFarland
& Company, 215, 244 pages, $35.00/9.99) Tim Newby has filled in a
largely untold hole in the story of bluegrass development while
explaining much of how those who stayed home have still enriched the
genre. I bought Bluegrass in
Baltimore in an electronic edition and read it on myKindle app.
No comments:
Post a Comment