![]() |
|
Product Description
John Duffey’s Bluegrass Life: Featuring The Country Gentlemen, Seldom Scene and Washington, D.C. with a Foreword by Tom Gray is the definitive biography of one of bluegrass music’s most important artists of the genre. Through his work as a founding member of these two pioneering bands, John Duffey urbanized bluegrass and introduced it to a broad new audience. John’s quotes from a four-hour, never-before-published 1984 interview are italicized throughout and provide the book’s foundation.
The book begins with a profile of his father, John Humbird Duffey Sr, Metropolitan Opera star and chronicles Duffey’s earliest exposure to music, listening to opera on the radio with his dad. Childhood friends Bill Blackburn, Bill Emerson, and Sterling Ellsworth serve up memories of Duffey from the 2nd grade through high school.
Accounts of Duffey’s early musical career provide an overview of John’s first bands, leading up to how The Country Gentlemen were formed following a horrific car accident. The Country Gentlemen’s Bill Emerson, Charlie Waller, Eddie Adcock, and Tom Gray are profiled and interviewed.
For the first time, John’s biological daughter, Ginger “Sam” Allred, speaks candidly about her relationship with both Duffey, and her father, Pete Kuykendall. Duffey discusses why he quit The Country Gentlemen, setting up the complete story of The Seldom Scene, as told by Duffey, John Starling, Ben Eldridge, Dave Auldridge, Mike Auldridge, Phil Rosenthal, and Tom Gray.
More than 50 rare or never-before-seen photographs create a fascinating portrait of the complex, iconoclastic entertainer. Gary Oelze, the owner of the Birchmere music club where the Scene became stars, share his memories of John.
Sam Bush, Jonathan Edwards, Pete Kennedy, Martha Adcock, Akira Otsuka, Dick Cerri, Emmylou Harris, Jimmy Gaudreau, Bryan Bowers, Peter “Dr. Banjo” Wernick, Tom Travis, Cliff Waldron, and others are among the many voices that contribute informative and compelling interviews.
The book’s narrative is supplemented with a 43-page Discography that provides track listings, recording dates, producers, composers, and musicians for every time Duffey entered a recording studio. The book includes a Duffey genealogy and index.
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
- Earl Scruggs and Foggy Mountain Breakdown: The Making of an American Classic (Music in American Life)
- Bill Monroe: The Life and Music of the Blue Grass Man (Music in American Life)
- Don't Give Your Heart to a Rambler: My Life with Jimmy Martin, the King of Bluegrass (Music in American Life)
- Bluegrass Generation: A Memoir (Music in American Life)
- Epilogue: Tribute To John Duffey
- Changes
- Speed Bumps on a Dirt Road: When Old Time Music Met Bluegrass
- New Moon Over My Shoulder
- Lonesome Melodies: The Lives and Music of the Stanley Brothers (American Made Music Series)
- Bluegrass in Baltimore: The Hard Drivin' Sound and Its Legacy
*If this is not the "JOHN DUFFEY'S BLUEGRASS LIFE: FEATURING THE COUNTRY GENTLEMEN, SELDOM SCENE, AND WASHINGTON, D.C." product you were looking for, you can check the other results by clicking this link