Archive for category: culture and tradition

MEMORIES OF JOHN HARTFORD by Bob Carlin (Author) (American Made Music Series) Paperback photo 1 hartford My Memories Of John Hartford is a memoir about author Bob Carlin's years working alongside singer, songwriter, banjoist, and fiddler John Hartford (1937-2001) (left). Throughout his short life, Hartford was a hit tunesmith, festival headliner, and godfather of newgrass music. He also made contributions to the film and television industry as a star in The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour and helped create the soundtrack for O Brother, Where Art Thou? photo 2 Bob Carlin (right) and Hartford first met when Carlin interviewed the entertainer for Fresh Air with Terry Gross. From this first meeting over microphones developed a sixteen-year affiliation. Six years into their friendship, a working collaboration grew between the two. Carlin first accompanied John Hartford on several albums, eventually becoming his project manager for audio and video recordings. Finally, Carlin was recruited into John Hartford's last Stringband, for which he also served as the de facto road manager and right-hand guy. we´re gonna need a bigger bookshelf photo 3 book My Memories Of John Hartford opens with an overview of the years before Hartford and Carlin's friendship, then details the last fifteen years of John Hartford's life. Included are in-depth descriptions of Hartford's lifestyle, as well as his philosophies about music, performing, recording, and living as he expressed them to the author or to those around him, with some road stories thrown in for good measure. And, those last fifteen years of his short life, while tempered by available information, are viewed here through the impressionist lenses of the author's own experience There are plenty of books on these musicians and others like them at Amazon.com cover

Nobody expects biopics to be great, proclaimed Kayleigh Donaldson in a recent edition of the admirable Paste magazine. In an article that, otherwise,  literally knocked it out of the park  she unfortunately stepped on my dreams

My son, Andrew, a 42 year old teenager living in South Korea with his wife and daughter,  told me last Christmas, in our yuletide zoom conference, that Molly Tuttle had only the previous month, November 2023, released a new album that had immediately garnered great reviews.