What do you think?
Rate this book
Industrial Strength Bluegrass: Southwestern Ohio's Musical Legacy
In the twentieth century, Appalachian migrants seeking economic opportunities relocated to southwestern Ohio, bringing their music with them. Between 1947 and 1989, they created an internationally renowned capital for the thriving bluegrass music genre, centered on the industrial region of Cincinnati, Dayton, Hamilton, Middletown, and Springfield. Fred Bartenstein and Curtis W. Ellison edit a collection of eyewitness narratives and in-depth analyses that explore southwestern Ohio’s bluegrass musicians, radio broadcasters, recording studios, record labels, and performance venues, along with the music’s contributions to religious activities, community development, and public education. As the bluegrass scene grew, southwestern Ohio's distinctive sounds reached new fans and influenced those everywhere who continue to play, produce, and love roots music. Revelatory and multifaceted, Industrial Strength Bluegrass shares the inspiring story of a bluegrass hotbed and the people who created it.
Contributors: Fred Bartenstein, Curtis W. Ellison, Jon Hartley Fox, Rick Good, Lily Isaacs, Ben Krakauer, Mac McDivitt, Nathan McGee, Daniel Mullins, Joe Mullins, Larry Nager, Phillip J. Obermiller, Bobby Osborne, and Neil V. Rosenberg.
Contributors: Fred Bartenstein, Curtis W. Ellison, Jon Hartley Fox, Rick Good, Lily Isaacs, Ben Krakauer, Mac McDivitt, Nathan McGee, Daniel Mullins, Joe Mullins, Larry Nager, Phillip J. Obermiller, Bobby Osborne, and Neil V. Rosenberg.
288 pages, Paperback
Published January 25, 2021
8 people are currently reading
39 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 1, 2021
Industrial Strength Bluegrass
Southwestern Ohio’s Musical Legacy
Edited by Fred Bartenstein and Curtis W. Ellison
Review by Barbara Bamberger Scott
This collection of essays and memoirs paints a vivid panorama of economic necessity sparking migration, and giving a home to a new musical genre based on old traditions.
Beginning in the early 1940s, Appalachian families long reliant on homesteading and coal mining for basic survival began to move north to seek better conditions. Industry-rich Ohio became a chief settlement region for these folks. But, after migration and the adjustment to new routines, nostalgia set in. Scornfully called hillbillies, or briars, by some Ohio natives, these wanderers took solace in their traditional music. Soon they would hear on records or radio or see in live performance what would come to be known as bluegrass music, based in old folk and country forms, but with a drive and crispness that some attribute to the mechanized hum of the factory. One early introduction to this new sound was brought to Dayton by the “father” of bluegrass himself, Bill Monroe. Dayton’s radio stations kept bluegrass on the airwaves, and with regular wages, the former migrants began to purchase records, phonographs, and even musical instruments.
As recounted here, southern Ohio became a hotbed of bluegrass, spawning such notables of the genre as The Osborne Brothers, Frank Wakefield, Larry Sparks,
Red Allen, J.D. Crowe and gospel groups like The Isaacs and the Marshall Family. The new music called for recording companies that also proliferated. In essays and interviews, Ohio-based musicians, technicians and producers of the 1940-1970s recall those halcyon days. The work of a performer could be rough, in bars where knife and gun fights might break out but the band had to keep playing. Lily Isaacs, motherly lead of her family gospel ensemble, recalls life on the road in a bus with handmade bunks and no bathroom. Along with the nationally recognized names, the editors also highlight popular indigenous groups like the Hotmud Family and the Corndrinkers. By the 1970’s, the times and the music were changing with more urban influences, but, we are told, the downhome music of Dayton and other Ohio venues “never got above its raisin’.”
Bartenstein is a music instructor at the University of Dayton, known for his editing work on Bluegrass Bluesman and The Bluegrass Hall of Fame. Fellow editor Ellison is a professor emeritus of history and American studies at Miami University of Ohio and author of Country Music Culture. Together they have created this lively look at the southern Ohio region and the music that magically materialized when the right people came along. Fans of bluegrass and any genuinely rooted American music will welcome this contribution as both soundly supported scholarship and down to earth accounts from those who were there and made it happen.
Southwestern Ohio’s Musical Legacy
Edited by Fred Bartenstein and Curtis W. Ellison
Review by Barbara Bamberger Scott
This collection of essays and memoirs paints a vivid panorama of economic necessity sparking migration, and giving a home to a new musical genre based on old traditions.
Beginning in the early 1940s, Appalachian families long reliant on homesteading and coal mining for basic survival began to move north to seek better conditions. Industry-rich Ohio became a chief settlement region for these folks. But, after migration and the adjustment to new routines, nostalgia set in. Scornfully called hillbillies, or briars, by some Ohio natives, these wanderers took solace in their traditional music. Soon they would hear on records or radio or see in live performance what would come to be known as bluegrass music, based in old folk and country forms, but with a drive and crispness that some attribute to the mechanized hum of the factory. One early introduction to this new sound was brought to Dayton by the “father” of bluegrass himself, Bill Monroe. Dayton’s radio stations kept bluegrass on the airwaves, and with regular wages, the former migrants began to purchase records, phonographs, and even musical instruments.
As recounted here, southern Ohio became a hotbed of bluegrass, spawning such notables of the genre as The Osborne Brothers, Frank Wakefield, Larry Sparks,
Red Allen, J.D. Crowe and gospel groups like The Isaacs and the Marshall Family. The new music called for recording companies that also proliferated. In essays and interviews, Ohio-based musicians, technicians and producers of the 1940-1970s recall those halcyon days. The work of a performer could be rough, in bars where knife and gun fights might break out but the band had to keep playing. Lily Isaacs, motherly lead of her family gospel ensemble, recalls life on the road in a bus with handmade bunks and no bathroom. Along with the nationally recognized names, the editors also highlight popular indigenous groups like the Hotmud Family and the Corndrinkers. By the 1970’s, the times and the music were changing with more urban influences, but, we are told, the downhome music of Dayton and other Ohio venues “never got above its raisin’.”
Bartenstein is a music instructor at the University of Dayton, known for his editing work on Bluegrass Bluesman and The Bluegrass Hall of Fame. Fellow editor Ellison is a professor emeritus of history and American studies at Miami University of Ohio and author of Country Music Culture. Together they have created this lively look at the southern Ohio region and the music that magically materialized when the right people came along. Fans of bluegrass and any genuinely rooted American music will welcome this contribution as both soundly supported scholarship and down to earth accounts from those who were there and made it happen.
May 27, 2021
With this book, the contribution of Southwest Ohio to the national bluegrass music scene has received overdue recognition. Especially during the 1950s and 1960s, the Cincinnati-Dayton corridor attracted a large number of Appalachian migrants who were seeking a better life in the city. They brought their culture and traditions with them, and some of the musicians emerged as national stars (including the Osborne Brothers, J.D. Crowe, Frank Wakefield, Jim & Jesse McReynolds, Larry Sparks, Red Allen, Earl Taylor, Roy Lee Centers, and Joe Mullins). Others who were equally talented failed to achieve widespread fame, but they were nevertheless influential in the development of bluegrass music (e.g., Katie Laur, Jeff Roberts, Noah Crase, Mike Lilly, Dorsey Harvey, Paul "Moon" Mullins, Vernon "Boatwhistle" McIntyre and his son, Vernon, Jr.).
As might be expected of an anthology, the writing quality is rather uneven. Lily Isaacs provides a captivating and improbable story about her evolution from a German-born Jewish child of Polish Holocaust survivors to a born-again Christian Southern gospel singer. Larry Nager offers vivid descriptions of rough Ohio bars that often featured live bluegrass bands and knife fights. There's also an interesting chapter on the role of local radio in promulgating bluegrass music throughout the area. At the other end of the spectrum, Mac McDivitt's chapter, which indefatigably catalogues a formidable list of record labels, record stores, and recording studios, can be saluted for its comprehensiveness, but to a normal reader it's about as interesting as a spreadsheet. And an appendix of "Recommended Southwestern Ohio Bluegrass Recordings" lists dates, artists, and song titles, but not the sources; consequently, finding any of those recordings would require a reader's effort that the editors could easily have spared.
There are various interesting nuggets to be mined here. For example:
◼︎ Seeing Bill Monroe's band for the first time in 1947, Bobby Osborne realized that banjo player Earl Scruggs was using finger picks, not a flat pick (p. 82)! And Osborne, a renowned mandolin player, actually played banjo on the Osborne Brothers' original recording of "Ruby" -- presumably, his one and only recording on that instrument (p. 19).
◼︎ Ralph Stanley, widely acclaimed for his banjo playing, played three-finger mandolin on his 1969 recording of "East Virginia Blues" (p. 62).
◼︎ There was a Springfield, Ohio band called "The Hagan Brothers" who weren't brothers, and none of them was actually named Hagan (p. 150).
◼︎ Flatt and Scruggs made their original recording of "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" in Cincinnati on December 11, 1949 (p. 46)
◼︎ Author Rick Good recounts a story about Earl Taylor, who at the time was living in Baltimore -- you wouldn't be likely to find this happening today:
As might be expected of an anthology, the writing quality is rather uneven. Lily Isaacs provides a captivating and improbable story about her evolution from a German-born Jewish child of Polish Holocaust survivors to a born-again Christian Southern gospel singer. Larry Nager offers vivid descriptions of rough Ohio bars that often featured live bluegrass bands and knife fights. There's also an interesting chapter on the role of local radio in promulgating bluegrass music throughout the area. At the other end of the spectrum, Mac McDivitt's chapter, which indefatigably catalogues a formidable list of record labels, record stores, and recording studios, can be saluted for its comprehensiveness, but to a normal reader it's about as interesting as a spreadsheet. And an appendix of "Recommended Southwestern Ohio Bluegrass Recordings" lists dates, artists, and song titles, but not the sources; consequently, finding any of those recordings would require a reader's effort that the editors could easily have spared.
There are various interesting nuggets to be mined here. For example:
◼︎ Seeing Bill Monroe's band for the first time in 1947, Bobby Osborne realized that banjo player Earl Scruggs was using finger picks, not a flat pick (p. 82)! And Osborne, a renowned mandolin player, actually played banjo on the Osborne Brothers' original recording of "Ruby" -- presumably, his one and only recording on that instrument (p. 19).
◼︎ Ralph Stanley, widely acclaimed for his banjo playing, played three-finger mandolin on his 1969 recording of "East Virginia Blues" (p. 62).
◼︎ There was a Springfield, Ohio band called "The Hagan Brothers" who weren't brothers, and none of them was actually named Hagan (p. 150).
◼︎ Flatt and Scruggs made their original recording of "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" in Cincinnati on December 11, 1949 (p. 46)
◼︎ Author Rick Good recounts a story about Earl Taylor, who at the time was living in Baltimore -- you wouldn't be likely to find this happening today:
When club owners rebuffed his band's efforts at nearly every turn, Taylor found a part-time job hanging drywall alongside fellow musician Charlie Waller, later of the Country Gentlemen. One afternoon the work crew sat in Waller's car on the way home from from a day's labor when they happened upon some bluegrass music on the radio. The two listened for a time before Earl looked around the car and said, "What those boys need is a tenor singer and a mandolin player. I won't be in to work tomorrow." He subsequently showed up at the radio station and joined the house band. [p. 162]Chapter notes and an extensive index increase the usefulness of this volume. I found one minor error on p. 89. Red Allen and Frank Wakefield's Folkways album titled Bluegrass was recorded in 1964, not 1963.
May 12, 2021
Fascinating history of and insights into music I'd known little about. Very well written and edited, and accessible to the non-musician, with great stories about fabulous characters.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews