Bluegrass: An Informal Guide

Recounts the history of bluegrass music and its leading performers, provides explanations of its most important characteristics, and recommends recordings and other resources

Although there has been plenty written about bluegrass over the years, Smith's guide so well mixes the wacky humor and the intelligence characteristic of the bluegrass scene with solid recording recommendations and a manageable number of resource listings that it should be reckoned the primer of choice on its subject. Smith centers each chapter on a particularly important band (e.g., Flatt and Scruggs, the Stanley Brothers, etc.) or a regional or topical subject (e.g., "Across the Mason-Dixon Line" about bluegrass up north and "Three Ways to Tomorrow" about "newgrass" and other late variations in the music), and he complements most of them with a sidebar on some bluegrass-related phenomenon (e.g., the importance of live radio in the music's history). Best of all, he explains in nonmusician-accessible language how and why the music sounds the way it does; once you've read and absorbed Smith on bluegrass, you'll know what it is and what it is not--and every bone-deep bluegrass fan will thank you for it. Ray Olson