News from the USA’s Dove Awards is that Ricky Skaggs has been nominated for a 2010 Dove Award in the Bluegrass Recorded Song of the Year category. The song This World Is Not My Home by Albert Brumley is on his newest album Solo: Songs My Dad Loved.
Also nominated is Dailey & Vincent for Bluegrass Recorded Song of the Year for On the Other Side, from their Rounder Records album, Brothers From Different Mothers.
In addition, Darrin Vincent has received a nomination as producer of Lord, Bless This House by Nothin’ Fancy, which is up for Bluegrass Album of the Year.
The 41st Annual GMA Dove Awards Show will take place on April 21.
On his latest album, Songs My Dad Loved, bluegrass master Ricky Skaggs revisits the Appalachian folk ballads and country gospel tunes that his father Hobert used to play around the house during his formative years in Kentucky.
To call it a deeply personal collection would be underestimating the emotion and effort Skaggs poured into this project – he sang and played every instrument himself, painstakingly overdubbing acoustic and electric guitars, banjos, piano, bass, mandocello and, of course, his signature mandolins.
The November issue of The Bluegrass Special now in Cyberspace.
This month Rosanne Cash, Patty Loveless and Maria Muldaur talk at length about their new albums. Reviews this month include a Gospel Set pairing of the Issac’s – Naturally, and the Gaither Vocal Band’s – Reunited.
Other articles in this month’s issue include a main feature on the desperate situation in the Coal River Valley of West Virginia, where mountaintop removal coal mining is destroying the Appalachian Mountain range, the culture of Appalachia, and endangering the lives of people in the valley.
America adores its Adirondacks and reveres the Rockies, while the Appalachian Mountains – with their impoverished and alienated population – are dismantled by coal moguls who dominate state politics and have little to prevent them from blasting the physical landscape to smithereens - Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Album reviews include:
Sam Bush – Circles Around Me
Emmitt-Nershi Band – New Country Blues
Ricky Skaggs – Songs My Dad Loved
Ralph Stanley – Can’t You Hear The Mountains Calling
Ricky Skaggs has announced his first-ever solo album due for release on 15th September. Ricky Skaggs Solo (Songs My Dad Loved), is exactly what the title implies. Ricky Skaggs, solo, no studio musicians and no guest artists, just Ricky Skaggs doing what Ricky Skaggs does best.
Highly regarded as an award winning country and bluegrass music master, Skaggs is legendary for bringing renewed hope and vitality to the country music mainstream in the early 1980’s with scores of #1 hits and numerous awards and for his triumphant return to his first love, bluegrass, with his successful Skaggs Family Records label.
But the true story behind his remarkable career can be traced back to the first music he remembers hearing – the songs his dad loved. When Hobert Skaggs’ brother and musical partner died in World War II, he vowed that if one of his children ever showed interest in music, he would teach them to how to play the mandolin. Now, fifty years after picking up that mandolin, Ricky Skaggs celebrates the man who caused him to fall in love with music.
Skaggs plays every instrument on the album. Fiddle and clawhammer banjo are prominent. From a child prodigy to one of today’s musical heroes, Ricky Skaggs continues to inspire his audiences with the heritage and the history of the old time songs embedded deep in his soul by his father.
Tom Conway, correspondent for the South Bend Tribune writes:
Ricky Skaggs found fame in the 1980s playing country music, but in the 1990s he returned to his first love, bluegrass music, and he hasn’t looked back since. Well, that’s not entirely true, in fact, the multiple Grammy Award-winning singer did look back into the past — both his own and the bluegrass genre — for his two latest albums, “The High Notes” and “Honoring the Fathers of Bluegrass: Tribute to 1946 and 1947.”
Bluegrass music, which has enjoyed a recent resurgence in popularity, was fashioned by Monroe, Flatt and Scruggs, as well as the Stanley Brothers, in the mid-’40s, and the advent of radio and television helped expand the reach of the music.
Skaggs, sometimes known as bluegrass music’s official ambassador, forms the bridge from its past to its future, having performed with the “fathers” as well as the new generation of bluegrass artists.
For the uninitiated, bluegrass is acoustic music, that features the five string banjo, mandolin, guitar, upright bass and fiddle and noted for its lightning-fast picking and vocal harmonies.
While there are now thousands of bluegrass musicians in all parts of the world, some 50 years ago, there was only one bluegrass band - Bill Monroe and The Bluegrass Boys. Bill Monroe came to be known as the Father of Bluegrass Music because he invented the musical sound during in the 1940s.
While there were many many musicians who had, at one time or another, featured in Monroe's band, the most notable line up (from 1946) featured Bill on his mandolin, Lester Flatt on guitar, Howard Watts on bass, and Earl Scruggs on banjo and Chubby Wise on fiddle. It was the hard driving sound of Scrugg's banjo that finally brought Monroe's search for his bluegrass sound to conclusion.
Bluegrass music - uniquely American - has now been a part of global music scene for some 60 years. While bluegrass fans are on the increase and remain loyal to the music form, it is likely that most folk are only familiar with the genre through a handful of songs that have become popular through mainstream media. Most of the music or bands have been featured on television shows such as The Beverly Hillbillies, The Andy Griffith Show and Dukes of Hazard or movies such as Deliverance, and Bonnie and Clyde, which featured Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs performing the classic Foggy Mountain Breakdown. The biggest influence on brand recognition in recent times has been the movie and the soundtrack of the same name: O Brother Where Art Thou?.
Today, the popularity of bluegrass has spread far beyond the United States, with fans and musicians, popping up in Great Brittan, Japan, Australia, Europe, South America and many more countries.
News from the USA’s Dove Awards is that Ricky Skaggs has been nominated for a 2010 Dove Award in the Bluegrass Recorded Song of the Year category. The song This World Is Not My Home by Albert Brumley is on his newest album Solo: Songs My Dad Loved.
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