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Don Rigsby is hard at work this winter, recording a tribute album to one of his chief musical heroes, Ralph Stanley. Rigsby tells us that it will be called Doctor's Orders, and be released on Rebel Records. He and Ralph picked out the material together, and the good Doctor will also appear as a guest [...]
Rebel Records has two new entries to announce in its ongoing commitment to digitizing their complete catalog of classic bluegrass and old time music. The label intends to shoot for two new digital releases each month, a real treat for lovers of the old time way. For October, they have a pair of Ralph Stanley [...]
Charlie Sizemore sent along this lovely tribute to Jack Cooke, who passed away earlier this week on December 1. They became acquainted during Charlie's tenure with Ralph Stanley & The Clinch Mountain Boys, where Jack held down the bass job for nearly 40 years. Unable to attend Jack's funeral owing to a nasty bug, Charlie [...]
Can't You Hear the Mountains Calling is the title Rounder Records has given to a reissued Ralph Stanley CD that has risen from humble beginnings. It was originally released as Sixteen Years on cassette tape in 1985 on Stanley's Rivertracks label, intended for regional distribution, and then re-released ten years later on Copper Creek. Accompanying [...]
Friday's (4/25) edition of Blue Plate Special on WDVX promises a very special performance by The Road Scholars, a "one weekend only" band with some high octane vocal power. In addition to their live radio appearance, they will be performing at EarthFest 2008 on the East Tennessee State University Campus on April 26. The group [...]
John Pennell, bass player with The Charlie Sizemore Band, asked us to post this remembrance of his friend, Wayne Fields, who died on March 21. Wayne played banjo with Sizemore, and is featured on his recent CD, Good News, released in 2007. Pennell is a member of Sizemore's band as well, and is a noted [...]
Wayne Fields, most recently the banjo player with The Charlie Sizemore Band, passed away from complications associated with cancer on March 21. The deminutive Fields was born in Hazard, Kentucky, and moved to the Lexington area at a young age. He started playing a guitar in his church at the age of eleven and grew [...]
In yesterday's edition of the New York Times, the music section had a story featuring Tom T. Hall. The story was focused on Mr. Hall's relationship to country radio stations and was appropriately headlined as... Who Needs Country Radio? Not Tom T. Hall The story spends a good deal of time discussing Hall's growing alliance [...]
Our UK correspondent, Richard F Thompson, shares this review of a CD he found to be especially worthy. Charlie Sizemore recently released Good News, his debut album for Rounder Records (0591) and the first of any kind for five years. For a lot of people it is indeed very good news, even if the CD's [...]
Rounder Records has posted an interview with Charlie Sizemore on their web site. The occasion for the interview is his recent Rounder CD, Good News, but Charlie also talks about the influence of Ralph Stanley and The Stanley Brothers on his music. In the interview, Sizemore recalls how he came to join Stanley as a [...]
