Bluegrass: A History (Music in American Life)

Beginning with the musical cultures of the American South in the 1920s and 1930s, "Bluegrass: A History" traces the genre through its pivotal developments during the era of Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys in the forties. It describes early bluegrass' role in postwar country music, its trials following the appearance of rock and roll, its embracing by the folk music revival, and the invention of bluegrass festivals in the mid-sixties. Neil V. Rosenberg details the transformation of this genre into a self-sustaining musical industry in the seventies and eighties is detailed and, in a supplementary preface written especially for this new edition, he surveys developments in the bluegrass world during the last twenty years. Featuring an amazingly extensive bibliography, discography, notes, and index, this book is one of the most complete and thoroughly researched books on bluegrass ever written.