Each week The Extraordinary Times catches up with friends from the historical community. This week’s guest is renowned bluegrass author, organizer, and broadcaster Fred Bartenstein. A native of Virginia and a graduate of Harvard College, Fred teaches courses on the history of country and bluegrass music at the University of Dayton’s Department of Music. His many roles have included magazine editor, broadcaster, musician, festival emcee, talent director, and scholar. In his previous professional life, Fred managed his own organizational consulting firm; the Foundation for Appalachian Ohio; Books & Co.; the Dayton Foundation; and the Victoria Theatre Association. He co-authored The Bluegrass Hall of Fame (Holland Brown, 2014) and edited Josh Graves: Bluegrass Bluesman (University of Illinois Press, 2012), Roots Music in America: Collected Writings of Joe Wilson (University of Tennessee Press, 2017), and Lucky Joe’s Namesake: The Extraordinary Life and Observations of Joe Wilson (University of Tennessee Press, 2017). * How have you been doing during the pandemic? My wife and I are mostly retired, so the stay-at-home program hasn’t affected us much. I taught bluegrass history this last term to eighteen University of Dayton undergraduates. They were sent home on March 11, and we finished the term using Zoom online software. That was a steep learning curve, but we all got pretty good at it by mid-April. * We got to know each other through the Southwestern Ohio Bluegrass Music Heritage Project. How did this project come into being? In 2002 I was invited to join the board of Bgrass, Inc. (an organization documenting the history of bluegrass in the Cincinnati-Dayton region) and ultimately became its chair. Notable accomplishments included a partnership with Miami University; creation of a website encyclopedia profiling significant individuals, organizations, and locations in bluegrass history; and a nationally distributed radio special on the history of the Osborne Brothers. Participants included Barbara Brady, Wayne Clyburn, Joe Colvin, Kevin Feazell, Bernie Fisher, Al Jamison, Grady Kirkpatrick, Tom Kopp, Katie Laur, Mary Jo Leet, Mac McDivvit, Joe Mullins, Lisa Mullins (no relation to Joe), and Jon Weisberger. After a period of inactivity, Bgrass, Inc. evolved into the Southwestern Ohio Bluegrass Music Heritage Project. Our project is a multifaceted, ongoing initiative. A coordinating committee includes Bgrass, Inc. stalwarts Mac McDivitt and broadcaster/ bandleader Joe Mullins, as well as artist and local historian Sam Ashworth (Middletown Historical Society), Valerie Elliott (Smith Library of Regional History in Oxford); Brian Powers (Public Library of Greater Cincinnati and Hamilton County), and Matthew Smith (Miami Appalachian Studies). I co-chair the project with Curt Ellison, a historian and author with a focus on country music and the previous director of Miami Appalachian Studies. Knowing that Curt was preparing to retire from Miami University, I tried convincing him to author a book on this region’s bluegrass heritage, offering my services as a researcher. He countered with an alternative proposal: a public lecture series that would commission multiple authors to each prepare a topic and then submit their work in chapters that could be anthologized. Miami University Regionals Appalachian Studies endorsed the project and became its primary sponsor. The resulting volume, Industrial Strength Bluegrass: Southwestern Ohio’s Musical Legacy (pictured), will be published by University of Illinois Press in January 2021. Curt and I serve as coeditors. Beyond the lecture series and book, project achievements to date include a live concert with Joe Mullins and the Radio Ramblers and guest Bobby Osborne, an updated online encyclopedia (swohiobluegrass.com), and an eight-panel traveling display supported by the Smith Library of Regional History and the Greene County Public Library. A permanent archive is housed at the Smith History Library in Oxford. With Miami’s support, Joe Mullins is spearheading a Smithsonian Folkways recording project to showcase important bluegrass songs associated with the region.
* What made the Greater Cincinnati-Miami Valley region a bluegrass hotbed in its heyday? First, let’s define the heyday. Our book spans the years 1947 to 1989. Bill Monroe brought his classic edition of the Blue Grass Boys to Dayton, and Middletown radio station WPFB went on the air, both in 1947. The Dayton Bluegrass Reunion retrospective concert was held in 1989, regathering a score of the essential musicians from earlier decades. By 1989 most of the local bluegrass labels and bars were gone, and the number of nationally prominent bluegrass acts in the region had dropped to a handful. Three factors accounted for the heyday: 1) a critical mass of recent Appalachian migrants drawn to the industrial economy of southwestern Ohio; 2) local entrepreneurs able to build an economic infrastructure of radio, recording, and live performance; and 3) a remarkably gifted core of musicians and singers who either already lived in the Cincinnati-Dayton corridor or who moved here for the rich musical opportunities. In roughly the same years and under the same conditions, a parallel bluegrass capital emerged in the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan region. While our Appalachian in-migrants were primarily from Kentucky and Tennessee, theirs were from Virginia, West Virginia, and North Carolina. * How has southwestern Ohio's bluegrass music scene changed since you first got involved? In Bluegrass: A History, Neil V. Rosenberg classifies musicians as apprentices, journeymen, and craftsmen. When I arrived in this region in 1975, the local bluegrass community still boasted one of the world’s densest populations of craftsmen—virtuosos whose recordings and appearances gained national and even international attention. It was a remarkable scene, analogous to New Orleans’ jazz heyday of the 1920s or Chicago’s blues heyday of the 1950s. Today Cincinnati, Dayton, Hamilton, Middletown, Springfield, and environs still support one of the world’s epicenters for bluegrass fandom, as well as hundreds of journeyman musicians. But we and Baltimore-Washington are no longer creative or music industry centers for bluegrass. That torch has passed to Nashville, Boulder, northern California, Asheville/ Bristol/ Kingsport/ Johnson City, and the Czech Republic. * What are your earliest musical memories? My father, by the time I came along a pharmaceutical executive in northern New Jersey, grew up on a Virginia apple orchard where he and his brother learned the traditional music that predated bluegrass. Among my earliest memories are my father singing those songs to me, tapping gentle rhythmic accompaniment on my stomach. Spending my first-grade year with relatives in the Shenandoah Valley, I encountered on the radio the very sound that would soon be named “bluegrass” (we called it “mountain music” then). I fell in love with it and my passion and involvement have grown over the succeeding six decades. * Do you have a favorite southwestern Ohio bluegrass recording? The album Country Pickin’ and Hillside Singin’, by the Osborne Brothers and Red Allen (Dayton residents at the time), came out in 1959. The repertoire, performances, and vocal harmonies of that album are, to my ears, celestial. The tracks include "Ruby, Are You Mad?,” "She’s No Angel,” “Is This My Destiny?,” "Once More,” "Down In The Willow Garden,” "Lost Highway,” and six others. * Any projects on the go? Curt and I are still checking copyedits and proofs on the Industrial Strength Bluegrass book. I’ll teach country music history in the fall, online and/or in person; that remains to be seen.
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AuthorMatthew Smith, PhD (History). Public Programs at Miami University Regionals. Historian of Appalachia, the Ohio Valley, & the early American republic. Archives
February 2024
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