Banjo virtuoso Tom McKinney passed away peacefully at the CarePartners Hospice Center, Asheville on Friday morning, August 31, 2018. He was 76 years old. Thomas Haynes (Tom) McKinney III was born on November 25, 1941, in Orange County, Florida, was a
Polly Lewis Williamson Copsey passed away on Sunday, August 19, 2018, after a battle with the effects of Parkinson’s Disease and Lewy Body dementia for the past 16 years. She was 81 years of age. Born on January 23, 1937, in
Country music singer and songwriter Mel Tillis passed away on November 19, 2017, at the age of 85. Following major surgery in 2016 the Country Music Hall of Famer never quite regained his full strength. More associated as a country music crooner
Just turned 12 years of age, Fiddlin’ John Maupin began playing fiddle at the age of four. Since then he has been like a sponge, absorbing so much that by the time he was eight he knew over 200 fiddle
Author Barbara Martin Stephens was the common-law wife of Jimmy Martin, much troubled bluegrass star of the 1950s onwards. Her personal story, Don’t Give Your Heart to a Rambler: My Life with Jimmy Martin, the King of Bluegrass, relates the
In advance of the release of his debut album, Raising the Bar, Chad Darou has released not one, but two singles today, the title track, an instrumental, and Heaven, a re-working of the Bryan Adams’ ballad, with Cia Cherryholmes stealing
How much progress are you making in jam sessions? Have you got all the development aids that you need? Well, will a songbook - the words to the tunes that you are trying to conquer – be helpful? Published songbooks aren’t as
Retirement became hiatus as Gary Henderson, who recently vacated his positions with the Bluegrass Country Foundation at the end of May, has been lured back onto radio, this time at the central Tennessee-based Bell Buckle Radio. Henderson soon realised that quitting
Here’s another contribution in this periodical feature, where we ask a bluegrass personality to choose their top five Gospel songs. On this occasion Dan Hays, a former Executive Director at the IBMA, reveals his five favorites. Beulah Land - Marty Raybon:
Home in the Mountains was written by Rick Stanley, a cousin of bluegrass master Ralph Stanley and the husband of Donna Ulisse, a prolific songwriter in her own right. He was just 15 years old at the time it was
