Visiting Crowne Plaza Hotel Restaurant Bar
The Crowne Plaza Atlanta Airport Hotel Restaurant offers exquisite bar amenities complete with 2 full-time employees - bartenders, working on 12-hr shifts and replete with all kind of wines, liquors, spirits and vodkas. They even offer margaritas and Mexican beer - Cerveza Corona ...
Donna Hughes at the Redlight Cafe Atlanta
The Donna Hughes Band has been chosen as a 2009 IBMA Showcase Performer at the 2009 IBMA World of Bluegrass Sept 28-Oct 4, 2009) Nashville, TN ...
Who is Donna Hughes
Graduate of High Point University, Donna holds a B.A degree in History, and a Real Estate license in the state of North Carolina. She has a love for gymnastics, and has coached many State and National Champions. You will still find her coaching today, to stay in a good shape. Donna loves pets, and has 4 horses, two parakeets, a cat, and two basset hounds. An avid listener of all types of music, from Classical, R & B, Jazz, to Country, Bluegrass & Acoustic Music is where she feels most inspired.
Donna Hughes proudly comes from a long line of professional musicians: Donna's grandfather taught music lessons of all sorts from piano to guitar, and owned and operated a music conservatory many years ago. Donna's mother learned from him and became very accomplished on piano. Donna's mother has played for churches, weddings, and many other occasions. Donna learned how to play Classical music on the piano by listening to her mother play countless pieces from Bach to Beethoven, asking her to play them over & over again, to later play them back to her mother by ear.
New Clips from Acworth Opry
Tucker Station String Band recently was invited at a local favorite venue for bluegrass musicians: Acworth Opry, just near the Lake Allatoona. With this clip I starting a series of videos about this remarcable event...
Old Tucker - February 3, 2008 Concert
Blue Grass Music Concert in Tucker GA - Tony Salazar, Lead Guitar
Old Tucker Fountain Cafe Owner - Kathryn Dunaway
What is Blue Grass Music?
What is Blue Grass Music?
Bluegrass music is a form of American folk music. Its roots are stemming from Irish, Scottish and English traditional music. Bluegrass was inspired by the music of the Scots-Irish immigrants in Appalachian Mountains and blues. Bluegrass is acoustic music style, rarely using any electrical instruments. While bluegrass is not folk music in the strict sense, there is much interplay between bluegrass music and american folk music.
Bluegrass performers use stringed instruments to create a unique sound. Unlike mainstream country music, bluegrass relies mostly on acoustic stringed instruments. The fiddle, five string banjo, acoustic guitar, mandolin, and upright bass are often joined by the resonator guitar also known by the Dobro brand name. Since the term bluegrass came from Bill Monroe's band, The Blue Grass Boys, many consider the instruments used in his band the traditional template for bluegrass instruments. These were the mandolin (played by Monroe), the fiddle, guitar, banjo and upright bass. At times the musicians may perform gospel songs, singing four-part harmony. Bluegrass bands have included instruments as diverse as the resonator guitar (Dobro), accordion, harmonica, jaw harp, piano, drums, washboard, electric guitar, and electric versions of all other common bluegrass instruments.
Besides instrumentation, a peculiar characteristic of blue-grass is vocal harmony featuring two, three, or four parts, often featuring a dissonant or modal sound in the highest voice. This vocal style has been characterized as the "high lonesome sound." The "High Lonesome" sound can be credited to Shape-Note music where a high-pitched harmony, that can generally be characterized as having a nasal timbre, is sung over the main melody.
Bluegrass as a folk-music style developed during the mid 1940s. Bill Monroe is referred to as the "founding father" of bluegrass music; the bluegrass style was named for his band, the Blue Grass Boys, formed in 1939. The 1945 addition of banjo player Earl Scruggs, who played with a three-finger roll originally developed by Snuffy Jenkins but now almost universally known as "Scruggs style", is considered the key moment in the development of this genre. Monroe's 1945 to 1948 band, which featured Scruggs, singer-guitarist Lester Flatt, fiddler Chubby Wise and bassist Howard Watts, also known as "Cedric Rainwater," created the standard sound and instrumental configuration.
Blue-Grass Musicians and Performers
First generation bluegrass musicians were playing during the "Golden Age" in the 1950s, including Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys, the Stanley Brothers, Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs with the Foggy Mountain Boys, Reno and Smiley, Lonesome Pine Fiddlers, Jim & Jesse, Jimmy Martin and the Osborne Brothers, Mac Wiseman, Mac Martin and the Dixie Travelers, Carl Story and his Rambling Mountaineers, Buzz Busby, The Lilly Brothers, Jim Eanes and Earl Taylor.
In the mid- to late-1960s came so-called second generation of blue-grass musicians. Among the most notable of them all are The Dillards, J. D. Crowe, Doyle Lawson, Sam Bush, John Hartford, Norman Blake, Frank Wakefield, Harley "Red" Allen, Bill Keith, Del McCoury and Tony Rice. With the second generation came a growth in progressive bluegrass, as exemplified by second generation bands such as the New Grass Revival, Seldom Scene, The Kentucky Colonels. In that vein, first-generation bluegrass fiddler Vassar Clements, mandolin virtuoso David Grisman, Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Garcia (on banjo) and Peter Rowan as lead vocalist collaborated on the album Old and in the Way; the Garcia connection helped to expose progressive and traditional bluegrass to a rock music audience.
The third generation in bluegrass came in the mid-80s. Increased availability of high-quality sound equipment led to each band member being miked independently, and a "wall of sound" style developed (like IIIrd Tyme Out and Lonesome River Band). An electric bass became a generally accepted alternative to the traditional acoustic bass, though electrification of other instruments continued to meet resistance outside progressive circles. The Johnson Mountain Boys were one of the decade's most popular touring groups, and played strictly traditional bluegrass.
[Information based on Wikipedia sources]