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Highways and heartaches : how Ricky Skaggs, Marty Stuart, and children of the New South saved the soul of country music / Michael Streissguth.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York : Hachette Books, 2023Copyright date: ©2023Edition: First editionDescription: xvii, 283 pages, 32 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (black and white) ; 23 cmContent type:
  • text
  • still image
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9780306826108
  • 0306826100
Other title:
  • How Ricky Skaggs, Marty Stuart, and children of the New South saved the soul of country music
Subject(s): Genre/Form:
Contents:
Get the Music Out -- Old Southern Leanings -- Down the Road -- The Soul of Bluegrass -- Peace, Love, and Country -- New South -- Close to the Fire -- Roses in the Snow -- New Traditionalists -- Hillbilly Rock -- Who Will Sing for Me? -- Which Side Are You On?
Summary: "In a dim clearing off a county road in Kentucky sits a sagging outdoor stage buried in moss and dead leaves. It used to be the centerpiece of carnival-like Sunday afternoons where local guitarists, fiddlers and mandolin players hammered out old mountain ballads while legends from the dawn of country music performed their classic hits. Most of the musicians who showed up have long since passed, but Nashville stars Ricky Skaggs and Marty Stuart survive. They were barely teenagers in the early 1970s when they visited this stage in the care of legends Ralph Stanley and Lester Flatt, respectively. Skaggs and Stuart followed their bosses to dozens of stages throughout Appalachia and deeper into the American southland. They were the children, absorbing the strange and wondrous dramas around them so they might one day bear witness to the scenes along the country music road. Highways and Heartaches takes readers on the rural circuit Skaggs and Stuart traveled, where an acoustic sound rooted in American musical tradition thrived, setting the stage for the wildly popular new traditionalist movement that defined country music in the 1980s before morphing into the Americana phenomenon that has kept country music's soul alive into present times. Through the eyes of Skaggs and Stuart, the book documents the New South which was in the throes of a glaring duality: stealing back jobs, population and cultural influence from the north while continuing to grapple with poverty, isolation and the environmental and human fallout of coal mining, particularly in Appalachia. On the road, Skaggs and Stuart witnessed labor strikes, new suburban housing tracts, aimless Vietnam veterans, creeping drug culture, politicians from a Robert Penn Warren novel, workers in North Carolina flush with cash from jobs in the state's Research Triangle. Still wrestling with the legacy of the Civil War, the region had nonetheless come into the light: courted by Richard Nixon, home to a manufacturing boom, lifting up Jimmy Carter, and exporting music and literature to the world. Nobody ever again ignored the South as current national politics and the sweeping popularity of modern country music can attest. Skaggs and Stuart were also forced to negotiate the hard truths of their performance circuit, brushing up against scheming promoters, unscrupulous record producers, backwoods prostitutes, moonshiners, and preachers warning them away from their chosen careers in music. They wrestled with the road's temptations and tolerated stuffy buses, greasy diners, and clawing fans. Such were the necessary costs of carrying the soul of country music into the 1980s. In Highways and Heartaches, the stories Skaggs and Stuart chronicle an endless Southern drama whose homespun music, undiluted characters, and gyrating socio-economic conditions echo along county roads and help define who we are as a nation. Riveting portraits of shadowy figures emerge for the first time anywhere next to scenes involving legends such as Johnny Cash, Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris, Ralph Stanley, Lester Flatt and Keith Whitley, the troubled bass-baritone singer who ran with Skaggs and Stuart and began his deadly descent into alcoholism in the late 1970s. Together, the known and unknown formed a rich vein of country music that ran from obscure places in the South to the glorious, tradition-fueled, commercial heights of the 1980s"-- Provided by publisher.
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library NonFiction 781.642 S915 Available 33111011322209
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

In this enlightening and entertaining book, experience the evolution of country music, from the rural routes of 1970s Appalachia to the 1980s country music boom that paved the way for modern Americana.

In a dim clearing off a county road in Kentucky sits a sagging outdoor stage buried in moss and dead leaves. It used to be the centerpiece of carnival-like Sunday afternoons where local guitarists, fiddlers and mandolin players hammered out old mountain ballads and legends from the dawn of country music performed their classic hits. Most of the musicians who showed up have long since passed, but Nashville stars Ricky Skaggs and Marty Stuart survive. They were barely teenagers in the early 1970s when they visited this stage in the care of legends Ralph Stanley and Lester Flatt, respectively. Skaggs and Stuart followed their bosses to dozens of stages throughout Appalachia and deeper into the American southland. They were the children, absorbing the wondrous music and strange dramas around them as they became innovators and living symbols of country music.



Highways and Heartaches takes readers on the rural circuit Skaggs and Stuart traveled, where an acoustic sound first assembled by masters such as Bill Monroe, Earl Scruggs, and Mother Maybelle Carter ruled the day. The young men were heirs to a bluegrass tradition transmitted to them early in life. One part mountain soul and another African American-influenced rhythm, the music they received was alternately celebrated and neglected in the more than fifty years after the two met in 1971, but since then it has never stopped evolving and influencing the wider American culture thanks to Skaggs and Stuart and other actors in this book, such as Jerry Douglas, Tony Rice, Keith Whitley, Emmylou Harris, and Linda Ronstadt. Riveting portraits of Johnny Cash, Ralph Stanley, Lester Flatt and other heartland-born figures emerge, too.



Molded by forces in postwar southern culture such as racial conflict, fringe politics, evangelicalism, growing federal government influence, and stubborn patterns of Appalachian living and thinking, Skaggs and Stuart injected the spirit of bluegrass into their hard-wrought experiments in mainstream country music later in life, fueling the profitability and credibility of the fabled genre. Skaggs's new traditionalism of the 1980s, integrating mountain instruments with elements of contemporary country music, created a new sound for the masses and placed him in the vanguard of Nashville's recording artists while Stuart embraced seminal influences and attitudes from the riches of American culture to produce a catalog of significant recordings.



Skaggs and Stuart's friendship took years to jell, but their similar pathways reveal a shared dedication to the soul of country music and highlight the curious day-to-day experiences of two lads growing up on the demanding rural route in bluegrass culture. Their journeys--populated by grizzled mentors, fearsome undertows, and cultural upheaval--influenced their creativity and, ultimately, cut life-giving tributaries in the ungainly, eternal story of country music.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 245-266) and index.

Get the Music Out -- Old Southern Leanings -- Down the Road -- The Soul of Bluegrass -- Peace, Love, and Country -- New South -- Close to the Fire -- Roses in the Snow -- New Traditionalists -- Hillbilly Rock -- Who Will Sing for Me? -- Which Side Are You On?

"In a dim clearing off a county road in Kentucky sits a sagging outdoor stage buried in moss and dead leaves. It used to be the centerpiece of carnival-like Sunday afternoons where local guitarists, fiddlers and mandolin players hammered out old mountain ballads while legends from the dawn of country music performed their classic hits. Most of the musicians who showed up have long since passed, but Nashville stars Ricky Skaggs and Marty Stuart survive. They were barely teenagers in the early 1970s when they visited this stage in the care of legends Ralph Stanley and Lester Flatt, respectively. Skaggs and Stuart followed their bosses to dozens of stages throughout Appalachia and deeper into the American southland. They were the children, absorbing the strange and wondrous dramas around them so they might one day bear witness to the scenes along the country music road. Highways and Heartaches takes readers on the rural circuit Skaggs and Stuart traveled, where an acoustic sound rooted in American musical tradition thrived, setting the stage for the wildly popular new traditionalist movement that defined country music in the 1980s before morphing into the Americana phenomenon that has kept country music's soul alive into present times. Through the eyes of Skaggs and Stuart, the book documents the New South which was in the throes of a glaring duality: stealing back jobs, population and cultural influence from the north while continuing to grapple with poverty, isolation and the environmental and human fallout of coal mining, particularly in Appalachia. On the road, Skaggs and Stuart witnessed labor strikes, new suburban housing tracts, aimless Vietnam veterans, creeping drug culture, politicians from a Robert Penn Warren novel, workers in North Carolina flush with cash from jobs in the state's Research Triangle. Still wrestling with the legacy of the Civil War, the region had nonetheless come into the light: courted by Richard Nixon, home to a manufacturing boom, lifting up Jimmy Carter, and exporting music and literature to the world. Nobody ever again ignored the South as current national politics and the sweeping popularity of modern country music can attest. Skaggs and Stuart were also forced to negotiate the hard truths of their performance circuit, brushing up against scheming promoters, unscrupulous record producers, backwoods prostitutes, moonshiners, and preachers warning them away from their chosen careers in music. They wrestled with the road's temptations and tolerated stuffy buses, greasy diners, and clawing fans. Such were the necessary costs of carrying the soul of country music into the 1980s. In Highways and Heartaches, the stories Skaggs and Stuart chronicle an endless Southern drama whose homespun music, undiluted characters, and gyrating socio-economic conditions echo along county roads and help define who we are as a nation. Riveting portraits of shadowy figures emerge for the first time anywhere next to scenes involving legends such as Johnny Cash, Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris, Ralph Stanley, Lester Flatt and Keith Whitley, the troubled bass-baritone singer who ran with Skaggs and Stuart and began his deadly descent into alcoholism in the late 1970s. Together, the known and unknown formed a rich vein of country music that ran from obscure places in the South to the glorious, tradition-fueled, commercial heights of the 1980s"-- Provided by publisher.

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