Earl Eugene Scruggs was an American musician noted for popularizing a three-finger banjo picking style, now called "Scruggs style", which is a defining characteristic of bluegrass music. His three-finger style of playing was radically different from the traditional way the five-string banjo had previously been played. This new style of playing became popular and elevated the banjo from its previous role as a background rhythm instrument to featured solo status. He popularized the instrument across several genres of music.
Country rock is a genre of music which fuses rock and country. It was developed by rock musicians who began to record country-flavored records in the late 1960s and early 1970s. These musicians recorded rock records using country themes, vocal styles, and additional instrumentation, most characteristically pedal steel guitars. Country rock began with artists like Buffalo Springfield, Michael Nesmith, Bob Dylan, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, the Byrds, the Flying Burrito Brothers, The International Submarine Band and others, reaching its greatest popularity in the 1970s with artists such as Emmylou Harris, the Eagles, the New Riders of the Purple Sage, Linda Ronstadt, Poco, Charlie Daniels Band, and Pure Prairie League. Country rock also influenced artists in other genres, including The Band, the Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Rolling Stones, and George Harrison's solo work, as well as playing a part in the development of Southern rock.
Al Perkins is an American guitarist known primarily for his steel guitar work. The Gibson guitar company called Perkins "the world's most influential dobro player" and began producing an "Al Perkins Signature" Dobro in 2001—designed and autographed by Perkins.
Vincent Grant Gill is an American country music singer, songwriter and musician. He has achieved commercial success and fame both as frontman of the country rock band Pure Prairie League in the 1970s and as a solo artist beginning in 1983, where his talents as a vocalist and musician have placed him in high demand as a guest vocalist and a duet partner.
Roots rock is a genre of rock music that looks back to rock's origins in folk, blues and country music. It is seen as responses to the perceived excesses of the dominant psychedelic and the developing progressive rock. Because roots music (Americana) is often used to mean folk and world musical forms, roots rock is sometimes used in a broad sense to describe any rock music that incorporates elements of this music. In the 1980s, roots rock enjoyed a revival in response to trends in punk rock, new wave, and heavy metal music.
Diamond Rio is an American country music band. The band was founded in 1982 as an attraction for the Opryland USA theme park in Nashville, Tennessee, and was originally known as the Grizzly River Boys, then the Tennessee River Boys. It was founded by Matt Davenport, Danny Gregg, and Ty Herndon, the last of whom became a solo artist in the mid-1990s. After undergoing several membership changes in its initial years, the band consisted of the same six members from 1989 to 2022: Marty Roe, Gene Johnson, Jimmy Olander, Brian Prout (drums), Dan Truman (keyboards), and Dana Williams. After Prout and Johnson both departed in 2022, they were replaced by Micah Schweinsberg and Carson McKee respectively.
Clarence White was an American bluegrass and country guitarist and singer. He is best known as a member of the bluegrass ensemble the Kentucky Colonels and the rock band the Byrds, as well as for being a pioneer of the musical genre of country rock during the late 1960s. White also worked extensively as a session musician, appearing on recordings by the Everly Brothers, Joe Cocker, Ricky Nelson, Pat Boone, the Monkees, Randy Newman, Gene Clark, Linda Ronstadt, Arlo Guthrie, and Jackson Browne among others.
Joe Logan Diffie was an American country music singer and songwriter. After working as a demo singer in the mid 1980s, he signed with Epic Records' Nashville division in 1990. Between then and 2004, Diffie charted 35 singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, five of which peaked at number one: his debut release "Home", "If the Devil Danced ", "Third Rock from the Sun", "Pickup Man" and "Bigger Than the Beatles". In addition to these singles, he had 12 others reach the top 10 and ten more reach the top 40 on the same chart. He also co-wrote singles for Holly Dunn, Tim McGraw, and Jo Dee Messina, and recorded with Mary Chapin Carpenter, George Jones, and Marty Stuart.
Bernard Matthew Leadon III is an American singer, musician, songwriter and founding member of the Eagles, for which he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998. Prior to the Eagles, he was a member of three country rock bands: Hearts & Flowers, Dillard & Clark, and the Flying Burrito Brothers. He is a multi-instrumentalist coming from a bluegrass background. He introduced elements of this music to a mainstream audience during his tenure with the Eagles.
Patty Loveless is an American country music singer. She began performing in her teenaged years before signing her first recording contract with MCA Records' Nashville division in 1985. While her first few releases were unsuccessful, she broke through by decade's end with a cover of George Jones's "If My Heart Had Windows". Loveless issued five albums on MCA before moving to Epic Records in 1993, where she released nine more albums. Four of her albums—Honky Tonk Angel, Only What I Feel, When Fallen Angels Fly, and The Trouble with the Truth—are certified platinum in the United States. Loveless has charted 44 singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts, including five which reached number one: "Timber, I'm Falling in Love", "Chains", "Blame It on Your Heart", "You Can Feel Bad", and "Lonely Too Long".
Rhonda Lea Vincent is an American bluegrass singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist.
Flatt and Scruggs were an American bluegrass duo. Singer and guitarist Lester Flatt and banjo player Earl Scruggs, both of whom had been members of Bill Monroe's band, the Bluegrass Boys, from 1945 to 1948, formed the duo in 1948. Flatt and Scruggs are viewed by music historians as one of the premier bluegrass groups in the history of the genre.
Restless Heart was an American country music band established in 1984. The band's longest-tenured lineup consisted of Larry Stewart, John Dittrich, Paul Gregg, Dave Innis, and Greg Jennings. Record producer Tim DuBois assembled the band to record demos and chose Verlon Thompson as the original lead singer, but Verlon was replaced by Stewart in this role before the band had recorded any material. Between 1984 and 1998, Restless Heart recorded for RCA Records Nashville, releasing the albums Restless Heart, Wheels, Big Dreams in a Small Town, Fast Movin' Train, Big Iron Horses, and Matters of the Heart. Stewart left for a solo career before Big Iron Horses, which resulted in Dittrich, Innis, and Gregg rotating as lead vocalists in his absence. Innis also departed before Matters of the Heart, and the band went on hiatus in 1995. During this time, Jennings became a member of Vince Gill's road band and Dittrich recorded one album in the band The Buffalo Club. Outside a brief reunion for new tracks on a Greatest Hits album in 1998, the band remained inactive until 2001 when Dittrich, Gregg, Innis, Jennings, and Stewart reunited. This was followed by the release of Still Restless in 2004 and a number of concerts afterward. The band dissolved in 2021, shortly after Stewart began touring as a member of The Frontmen.
Byron Douglas Berline was an American fiddle player who played many American music styles, including old time, ragtime, bluegrass, Cajun, country, and rock.
Rickie Lee Skaggs, known professionally as Ricky Skaggs, is an American neotraditional country and bluegrass singer, musician, producer, and composer. He primarily plays mandolin; however, he also plays fiddle, guitar, mandocaster, and banjo.
Andrew Edward Statman is a noted American klezmer clarinetist and bluegrass/newgrass mandolinist.
Nashville West was a short-lived American country rock quartet, that was briefly together in the late 1960s. The group comprised multi-instrumentalist Gene Parsons, guitarist Clarence White, singer-guitarist-fiddler Gib Guilbeau and bassist Wayne Moore. Parsons and White left the band to join The Byrds while Guilbeau and Parsons later joined the Flying Burrito Brothers.
David Harvey is an American bluegrass mandolin player and luthier, responsible for the mandolins, banjos, and dobros produced by Gibson.
Christopher Alvin Stapleton is an American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and record producer. He was born in Lexington, Kentucky, and grew up in Staffordsville, Kentucky. In 2001, Stapleton moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to pursue an engineering degree from Vanderbilt University but dropped out to pursue his career in music. Subsequently, Stapleton signed a contract with Sea Gayle Music to write and publish his music.
Beatle Country is the fourth and final studio album by the American bluegrass band Charles River Valley Boys, released in November 1966 by Elektra Records. Where the Charles River Valley Boys' previous albums consisted of traditional and new bluegrass and some early country songs, Beatle Country contains only covers of the Beatles. The band and several session musicians completed the album at Columbia's studio in Nashville, Tennessee, across four days in September 1966. Paul A. Rothchild and Peter K. Siegel produced the album, with Glenn Snoddy engineering.
