Bluegrass Bluesman: A Memoir, the autobiography of Josh Graves (edited by Fred Bartenstein) has been awarded a Certificate of Merit by the Association for Recorded Sound Collections. Since 1991, the ARSC has sought to preserve and study historical sound recordings of, and relating to, all forms of music, in every applicable audio media.
In the case of the Graves biography, Josh had recorded many hours of interviews in the early 1990s about his life and long bluegrass career with Flatt & Scruggs, and later with Lester Flatt and as a solo artist. The tapes from those interviews, which had been created with an eye towards being compiled, languished for many years, until they were edited into book form more recently by Fred Bartenstein. The book was released in September of 2012 by University of Illinois Press.
Bluegrass Bluesman won the Certificate of Merit in the Best Research in Recorded Country Music Category. The Best History in that category for 2013 was Satan is Real: The Ballad of the Louvin Brothers, by Charlie Louvin.
For more information about this important work, which provides an insider’s look at a seminal time in bluegrass history, see our two earlier articles about the book.
