Primer: Bluegrass

love the dude tuning down his banjo during his solo

Jimmy Martin just seems like the coolest chillest bro

fun vid.

Damn, been meaning forever to explore BG properly, or not properly considering the genre outliers mentioned above. Anyway, dumb question -- is proper bluegrass the stuff that would soundtrack a hillbilly chase scene, ie fast tempos, and slower paced stuff falls under old timey?

nah, there's plenty of bluegrass ballads....

I just listened to the bluegrass station on Pandora and loved it. Have there been any better anthologies since Amatuerist's post in 2003?

bluegrass is (generally) post-war and focuses more on instrumental solos and highly-melodic breaks. old-time music is of an earlier vintage and the musicians tend to play the melody in unison. in bluegrass, the solos are often high-speed variations on the basic melody.

I've been getting into Mac Wiseman lately, and his discography is...weird. he was possibly the first bluegrass star to stray from the formula and court a mainstream audience — for a brief and occasionally awkward period in the late '50s, his label marketed him as a pop-rock/pop-country singer, although a lot of those sides went unissued until decades later (on Bear Family's Teenage Hangout compilation). there's an interesting article on nodepression about that phase of his career and about how purists have effectively erased his pop-leaning material from history, memorializing him as a bluegrass traditionalist even though he never really was one to begin with. this is good stuff, imho:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qN7kR35oxNg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPmsM3p3ELE

his first foray into gospel (on his 1959 LP Beside the Still Waters) is less surprising, but it contains some of his finest vocal performances, with a tasteful lack of the gloopy strings/organs/backup choirs that mar a lot of other country gospel records:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvLbnxBNJxs

Good streaming on Saturday night (and shows are archived for a while, I think): Tuscaloosa Public Radio's "Bama Bluegrass: and "Bluegrass Breakdown" (the second show originates in Nashville). Both got good range and deep stash.
http://apr.org/

neat!

Bluegrass legend Dr. Ralph Stanley died Thursday night after a battle with skin cancer, according to a Facebook post by his grandson, Nathan Stanley.

Dr. Stanley was 89 years old and a member of the Grand Ole Opry and the Bluegrass Hall of Fame. After receiving an honorary Doctorate of Music from Lincoln Memorial University in 1976 (and another from Yale in 2014), he was known to fans worldwide as "Doctor Ralph."

http://www.tennessean.com/story/entertainment/music/2016/06/23/ralph-stanley-bluegrass-legend-dead-89/86038242/

A Facebook friend posted this. Apropos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjPeeUpdK1U

Got one of those 8 Classic Albums box-CDs of the Stanley Brothers for a great price. Excellent winter driving music. This one feels almost sinister.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seaDfe_mtEE

I learned recently that that extra beat in Clinch Mountain Backstep (above) makes the tune "crooked" - which is kind of a catchall term for tunes that don't quite follow standard form. Usually means an extra bar, extra half bar, extra beat or something like that, but occasionally can be standard pulse/bars but with an odd or offbeat change.