Awards

• Winner of Certificate of Merit in category Best Historical Research in Recorded Country or Folk Music, Association for Recorded Sound Collections Awards for Excellence.

Overview

With its rich but underappreciated musical heritage, Washington, D.C. is often overlooked as a cradle for punk, the birthplace of go go, and as the urban center for bluegrass in the Untied States. Capital Bluegrass: Hillbilly Music Meets Washington, D.C. richly documents the history and development of bluegrass in and around the nation's capital since it emerged in the 1950s. In his seventeenth book, American vernacular music scholar Kip Lornell discusses both well-known progressive bluegrass bands including the Country Gentlemen and the Seldom Scene, and lesser known groups like the Happy Melody Boys, Benny and Vallie Cain and the Country Clan, and Foggy Bottom. Lornell focuses on colorful figures such as the brilliant and eccentric mandolin player, Buzz Busby, and Connie B. Gay, who helped found the Country Music Association in Nashville. Moving beyond the musicians to the institutions that were central to the development of the genre, Lornell brings the reader into the nationally recognized Birchmere Music Hall, and tunes in to NPR powerhouse WAMU-FM, which for five decades broadcast as much as 40 hours a week of bluegrass programming. Dozens of images illuminate the story of bluegrass in the D.C. area, photographs and flyers that will be new to even the most veteran bluegrass enthusiast. Bringing to life a music and musical community integral to the history of the city itself, Capital Bluegrass tells an essential tale of bluegrass in the United States.

Full Product Details

9780199863112

Table of Contents

Reviews

Kip Lornell has written an outstanding book documenting the history of bluegrass music in the Washington, D.C., area...Capital Bluegrass focuses on bluegrass in a specific area, but the book's implications are wide ranging. Throughout, Kip Lornell provides information regarding the evolving relationships between the DMV bluegrass community and the general American culture, and also between the DMV bluegrass community and surroundings and country and folk music industries. Capital Bluegrass: Hillbilly Meets Washington, DC will appeal to scholars of bluegrass music as well as to bluegrass fans in search of a good read about an important location for the music. * Philip Nusbaum, Journal of Folklore Research *

Kip Lornell has written an outstanding book documenting the history of bluegrass music in the Washington, D.C., area...Capital Bluegrass focuses on bluegrass in a specific area, but the book's implications are wide ranging. Throughout, Kip Lornell provides information regarding the evolving relationships between the DMV bluegrass community and the general American culture, and also between the DMV bluegrass community and surroundings and country and folk music industries. Capital Bluegrass: Hillbilly Meets Washington, DC will appeal to scholars of bluegrass music as well as to bluegrass fans in search of a good read about an important location for the music. -- Philip Nusbaum, Journal of Folklore Research

Author Information

Kip Lornell has taught courses in Ameircan music and ethnomusicology at George Washington University since 1992. Lornell won a 1997 Grammy for Best Liner Notes for Smithsonian Folkways ""Anthology of American Folk Music,"" and Lornell and Charles Wolfe earned the ASCAP-Deems Taylor book award for The Life and Legend of Leadbelly (Harper Collins, 1993). He has been interviewed numerous times on NPR for his expertise on American folk music.

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