OHR Presents: Bluegrass!

This week, a boisterous bounty of Bluegrass bands both regional and international recorded live at Ozark Folk Center State Park. Also, interviews with these peppy pickers. In the 1940’s, Kentucky mandolinist Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys band coined a brand new sound onto the American popular music landscape. Named after Monroe’s band, this new “bluegrass” music was an evolution of the traditional old-time music of Appalachia. Drawing its roots from the same English, Scottish and Irish ballads and dances as early Appalachian folk music, bluegrass also utilizes the same type of acoustic stringed instruments. Banjo, mandolin, fiddle, guitar, dobro, and upright acoustic bass are the standard tools for bluegrass. Add to those a ferocious driving tempo, brilliant virtuosity, and a style of singing that Bill Monroe described as a “high lonesome sound” and you’ve got bluegrass! Featured in this episode of Ozark Highlands Radio are: Nashville based multiple IBMA award winners the Becky Buller Band; Grammy nominated Austin, Texas progressive bluegrass sensation Wood & Wire; Ozark Original ACMA award winning family bluegrass band The Keisler Brothers; Pikeville, Kentucky IBMA award winner and the most soulful voice in bluegrass today, Dave Adkins; Newark, Arkansas’ own three finger banjo Jedi Adam Fudge; Ozark Original mandolinist and Acoustic Music Talk podcast host Brad Apple; Bethesda, Maryland progressive bluegrass icons Seldom Scene. In this week’s “From the Vault” segment, musician, educator, and country music legacy Mark Jones offers a 1980 archival recording of bluegrass legend Buck White performing the traditional song “More Pretty Girls than One,” from the Ozark Folk Center State Park archives. Author, folklorist and songwriter Charley Sandage presents an historical portrait of the people, events and indomitable spirit of Ozark culture that resulted in the creation of the Ozark Folk Center State Park and its enduring legacy of music and craft. In this episode, Charley speaks with Ozark Folk Center wood worker Joe Roe about the subtleties of bow making.