Good things from BU

The many good things in the 55th newsletter issued by Bluegrass Unlimited magazine include a podcast featuring West Coast bandleader, multi-instrumentalist, singer, and songwriter Laurie Lewis (headliner at the 2003 Omagh festival), together with a fifty-track Spotify playlist taken from her recorded repertoire.

The Archive section includes reprints from 1970-71 of two articles by Gary Henderson on the Bailey Brothers of Tennessee, prominent members of the generation of musicians who were playing bluegrass before it had a name. The fourth instalment in the special series of articles by Dan Miller on the late Bill Emerson is 'Between the Country Gentlemen and Jimmy Martin (1958-62)', which, like the Bailey Brothers articles, gives a detailed picture of the working life of a professional recording and performing musician in the early decades of bluegrass.

BIB editor's note: Among the recordings Bill Emerson made in this stage of his career was the 1962 Prestige album by Harry and Jeanie West, Country music in bluegrass style, on which Harry West's version of 'Sitting on top of the world' has a more complete and coherent text than any other I've heard.

© Richard Hawkins