Contemporary Authors

• The Bluegrass Music Cookbook John F. Blair Publishing (Salem, NC), 1997
• Foggy Mountain Troubadour: The Life and Music of Curly Seckler University of Illinois Press (Urbana, IL), 2016

1. The bluegrass music cookbook LCCN 97007346 Type of material Book Personal name Parsons, Penny. Main title The bluegrass music cookbook / by Penny Parsons, Ken Beck, and Jim Clark. Published/Created Winston-Salem, N.C. : J.F. Blair, c1997. Description xii, 251 p. : ill. ; 26 cm. ISBN 0895871629 (alk. paper) CALL NUMBER TX714 .P3763 1997 FT MEADE Copy 2 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms - STORED OFFSITE 2. Foggy Mountain troubadour : the life and music of Curly Seckler LCCN 2016003067 Type of material Book Personal name Parsons, Penny, author. Main title Foggy Mountain troubadour : the life and music of Curly Seckler / Penny Parsons. Published/Produced Urbana : University of Illinois Press, [2016] ©2016 Description xvii, 241 pages, 32 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm. ISBN 9780252040108 (hardcover ; alk. paper) 9780252081590 (pbk. ; alk. paper) CALL NUMBER ML420.S4446 P37 2016 Copy 1 Request in Performing Arts Reading Room (Madison, LM113)

• The News & Observer - http://www.newsobserver.com/entertainment/books/article92705162.html

  N.C.-born mandolin player Curly Seckler.
  N.C.-born mandolin player Curly Seckler. Courtesy of Copper Creek Records
  BOOKS
  Curly Seckler’s story is a front row seat to bluegrass history
  BY STACY CHANDLER

  Correspondent

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  JULY 30, 2016 11:29 AM

  UPDATED JULY 30, 2016 11:29 AM

  Curly Seckler isn’t necessarily a household name, not like fellow bluegrassers Bill Monroe, Ralph Stanley, Lester Flatt or Earl Scruggs. But at one point or another, Seckler, born near China Grove, in 1919, played with all those guys and many more, giving him a front-row seat to the entire history of bluegrass.

  Durham author Penny Parsons ushers us to a seat right next to Seckler, letting readers watch it all unfold in her book “Foggy Mountain Troubadour: The Life and Music of Curly Seckler,” published in May by the University of Illinois Press for its Music in American Life series.

  With a distinctive, rhythmic style on mandolin and a clear tenor voice perfectly suited for the plainspoken and heartbroken songs of bluegrass, Seckler earned a living – and respect – as a musician with Charlie Monroe (brother of Bill), Flatt and Scruggs, and the Nashville Grass, a key band in the 1970s traditional bluegrass revival. Until he took the role of Nashville Grass frontman when guitarist Lester Flatt died in 1979, though, Seckler didn’t get much spotlight.

  “Early in his career he was a sideman, and he was happy to be in that role,” said Parsons, who will be at Quail Ridge Books Sunday, July 31, to talk about the book and perform with her band. “His role was a supporting role, and that was fine with him.”

  The early days of Seckler’s music career make today’s tours, with their luxury buses and well-stocked green rooms, seem like a cakewalk. Up and coming bands would luck into regular radio shows (unpaid) that anchored them in a town – at least for a little while, until the area was “played out” and the band had to pick up and move. In those days, radio “prime time” was when the farmers and their families had a chance to listen: early morning and lunchtime. That left the evenings free for paying gigs in schoolhouses, theaters, under tents, wherever would have them within a drivable radius so they could be back for their early morning radio show the next day.

  Seckler’s first big break came when he was hired by Charlie Monroe for the band he was putting together as he moved on from a stint at Raleigh’s WPTF in 1939. As he learned more about music and all the hard work that comes with it, Seckler also got a lesson in fashion: “ ‘Don’t never let me catch you up here in the studio again without a white shirt and tie. That’s 50 percent of your show, is how you dress,’ ” Seckler recalls Monroe telling him after Seckler arrived at a gig at West Virginia’s WWVA in a sports shirt. “And I ain’t never forgot that.”

  In 1949, Lester Flatt asked Seckler to join him and Earl Scruggs in the Foggy Mountain Boys, a band whose star was rising fast and that would soon make bluegrass history with its recording of “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.” (If you’ve only heard one bluegrass instrumental song, this is probably the one. Most famously, it was used extensively in the 1967 Warren Beatty film “Bonnie and Clyde.”) In the 1950s, brother-like duets sung by Flatt and Seckler became another hallmark of the iconic bluegrass band.

  By the early 1960s, Flatt and Scruggs’ sound was taking a more pop direction, and the ever-changing lineup eventually shed its mandolin player. Seckler, with a family to feed, used his experience from shifts driving the tour bus to start his own trucking business. It was hard to lure him away from the good pay and steady work of truck driving, but eventually he started performing again and recorded an album that included songs he’d written over the years. In 1973, thanks in part to the persuasive powers of a teenaged Marty Stuart, Seckler joined the Nashville Grass, a band Flatt put together after splitting with Scruggs.

  “There was just this oak-tree-like presence that Curly brought back to that band,” Stuart, who played mandolin and guitar with the Grass, recalls in the book. “ …He hadn’t lost an inch of ground musically. He just sounded rested and revved and charged up, ready to go.”

  In 2004, Seckler was inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Hall of Fame, but he wasn’t resting on that or any other laurel – at that time, at the age of 84, he was in the midst of recording a new album, “Down in Caroline.” He would perform on friends’ albums and at festivals and other venues for nearly another decade, until age and health problems kept him home.

  Parsons’ book is rich with detail, as much from her own diligent research as from Seckler’s own sharp memories and stories from people who have known him.

  Parsons, who set out to interview Seckler for a magazine article in 2003 and ended up embarking on a book project and working as his manager, had her subject’s help throughout the book’s writing. He shared stories from his assisted living apartment in Hendersonville, Tenn., near Nashville, where he lives with his wife, Eloise.

  “He enjoys telling stories, and he’s good at it,” Parsons says. You can almost hear him laughing through some of the stories Parsons relates in the book. “He always had a sense of humor about things. He went through a lot of adversity in his life, and the way he coped with that was with his sense of humor.”

  Parsons says she hopes people reading “Foggy Mountain Troubadour” will learn about Seckler, the man, as well as his music. But she sees value in his stories beyond that, too.

  “I want people to realize what this generation of musicians went through to pave the way for folks who are doing it now. They were creating this music,” she says, pointing out that most people peg bluegrass’ birth to 1945, when Earl Scruggs joined Bill Monroe’s band. “Curly, of course, had already been playing music for about 10 years before that as a professional. He was there and saw all of this and can tell about it. Pretty soon there won’t be anybody left who can do that.”

  newsgirlstacy@gmail.com

  MEET THE AUTHOR

  Penny Parsons will read from “Foggy Mountain Troubadour: The Life and Music of Curly Seckler” and perform songs from Seckler’s career with her band, Four County Grass, at 2 p.m., Sunday, July 31, at Quail Ridge Books, now in its new location at North Hills, 4209-100 Lassiter Mill Road, Raleigh.

• Bluegrass Today - https://bluegrasstoday.com/arsc-recognizes-curly-seckler-book/

  ARSC recognizes Curly Seckler book
  Posted on October 5, 2017 By Richard Thompson

  The Association for Recorded Sound Collections recently announced the winners of their 2017 ARSC Awards for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research.

  Among those winners was the much-heralded biographical work by Penny Parsons, for the book Foggy Mountain Troubadour, The Life and Music of Curly Seckler, published by University of Illinois Press.

  “In recognition of exceptional achievement and significant contribution to the advancement of knowledge of the history of recorded sound” the ARSC has presented her with a 2017 Certificate of Merit in the category Recorded Country Music.

  Penny Parsons
  Parsons declared, “I am honored to have been recognized by them”.

  The main award in this category this year was given to Peter Cooper and Bill Anderson for Anderson’s biography, Whisperin’ Bill Anderson: An Unprecedented Life in Country Music.

  The Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) was founded in 1966 and is run as a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and study of sound recordings, in all genres of music and speech, in all formats, and from all periods.

  The 52nd annual ARSC conference will be held in Baltimore, Maryland, May from 9th to 12th, 2018, at the Radisson Baltimore Downtown-Inner Harbor, 101 W Fayette Street, Baltimore 21201, situated near the city’s historic seaport.

  Information about the presentation of these awards and other will be available in March 2018.

  Gary B Reid’s excellent The Music of the Stanley Brothers discography, also published by University of Illinois Press, won the Best Discography in the Best Historical Research in the Recorded Country Music category.

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  About the Author

  Richard Thompson
  Richard F. Thompson is a long-standing free-lance writer specialising in bluegrass music topics.

  A two-time Editor of British Bluegrass News, he has been seriously interested in bluegrass music since about 1970. As well as contributing to that magazine, he has, in the past 30 plus years, had articles published by Country Music World, International Country Music News, Country Music People, Bluegrass Unlimited, MoonShiner (the Japanese bluegrass music journal) and Bluegrass Europe.

  He wrote the annotated series I’m On My Way Back To Old Kentucky, a daily memorial to Bill Monroe that culminated with an acknowledgement of what would have been his 100th birthday, on September 13, 2011.

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• North Carolina Music Hall of Fame - https://northcarolinamusichalloffame.org/event/meet-the-author-penny-parsons/

  Meet The Author Penny Parsons
  June 11, 2016 @ 1:00 pm - 4:00 pm - Free
  Meet the Author 2016
  Join us at the NCMHOF Museum on June 11, 2016 for a meet-the-author event! Meet The Author Penny Parsons and pick up an autographed copy of her brand new biography: “Foggy Mountain Troubadour: The Life and Music Of Curly Seckler”.

  Brand new for Summer 2016 is Penny Parsons’ book “Foggy Mountain Troubadour: The Life and Music Of Curly Seckler”. The book details the life of one of the true pioneers of the first generation of bluegrass artists, Curly Seckler.

  Penny is a music industry journalist and manager for NC Music Hall of Fame inductee Curly Seckler. Her book, “Foggy Mountain Troubadour”, is the first full-length biography of an American original. Throughout, she captures the warm humor, hard choices, and vivid details of a brilliant artist’s life as he crisscrosses a nation and a century making music. This 272-page biography follows Curly’s journey from North Carolina cotton fields to legendary status as one of the greatest tenor singers in bluegrass music history.

  With his trademark mandolin style and unequaled tenor harmonies, Curly Seckler has carved out a seventy-seven-year career in bluegrass and country music. His foundational work in Flatt and Scruggs’s Foggy Mountain Boys secured him a place in bluegrass history, while his role in The Nashville Grass made him an essential part of the music’s triumphant 1970s revival.

  Written in close collaboration with Mr. Seckler and those who know him, Foggy Mountain Troubadour is the first full-length biography of an American original. Penny Parsons follows a journey from North Carolina schoolhouses to the Grand Ole Opry stage and the Bluegrass Hall of Fame, from boarding houses to radio studios and traveling five to a car on two-lane roads to make the next show. Throughout, she captures the warm humor, hard choices, and vivid details of a brilliant artist’s life as he crisscrosses a nation and a century making music.

  To learn more about Curly Seckler and purchase a copy of the book, visit:www.CurlySeckler.net

  FOR MORE INFORMATION:

  N.C. Music Hall of Fame Museum
  600 Dale Earnhardt Blvd.
  Kannapolis, NC 28081
  Phone: (704)-934-2320
  Email: info@northcarolinamusichalloffame.org

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Print Marked Items
Foggy Mountain Troubadour: The Life and
Music of Curly Seckler
Ronald D. Cohen
Journal of Southern History.
83.3 (Aug. 2017): p753+.
COPYRIGHT 2017 Southern Historical Association
http://www.uga.edu/~sha
Full Text:
Foggy Mountain Troubadour: The Life and Music of Curly Seckler. By Penny Parsons. Music in American
Life. (Urbana and other cities: University of Illinois Press, 2016. Pp. xviii, 241. Paper, $22.95, ISBN 978-0-
252-08159-0; cloth, $95.00. ISBN 978-0-252-04010-8.)
Dwight Diller: West Virginia Mountain Musician. By Lewis M. Stern. Contributions to Southern
Appalachian Studies. (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland and Company, 2016. Pp. xii, 203. Paper, $35.00, ISBN
978-1-4766-6476-7.)
There has been a flood of studies of country music since the original publication of Bill C. Malone's
groundbreaking Country Music. U.S.A. (Austin, 1968). Since that book's influential appearance, Malone
has followed with updated editions as well as numerous more specialized studies, focusing on country
music's southern commercial musicians and the genre's broader developments. Penny Parsons's biography
of Curly Seckler, based on extensive interviews, follows in this tradition, while Lewis M. Stem's study of
Dwight Diller deals mostly with a musician who had a brief professional career but had much more
grassroots influence.
Born on Christmas Day, 1919, in China Grove, North Carolina, John Ray "Curly" Seckler has over the last
century mostly led a professional country music life, with a few detours. Raised on a farm with few
amenities, the Sechler (the original spelling) family struggled through the seemingly prosperous 1920s into
the Depression of the 1930s. Listening to country music over various radio stations, particularly WBT in
Charlotte, Seckler and his brothers were influenced by the Mainer's Mountaineers and the Tennessee
Ramblers. Their family band, the Yodeling Rangers, began performing on Salisbury's WSTP in April 1939,
one of the many stations (North and South) that featured string bands and other country-style performers.
Within a few months Charlie Monroe hired Seckler, mostly because of his distinctive tenor voice, to appear
on WWVA in Wheeling, West Virginia, with his new band the Kentucky Partners. Seckler, however, was
soon back with his brothers, forming a new group called the Trail Riders, and then he moved to WAIM to
perform with Tommy Scott on the mandolin, which became Seckler's standard instrument. There were
scores of country music stations, mostly in the South, that featured musical groups and programs, and
Foggy Mountain Troubadour: The Life and Music of Curly Seckler includes fascinating details about them
as Seckler's career accelerated. World War II briefly inteirupted, but Seckler rejoined Charlie Monroe and
the Kentucky Partners, and they began recording for RCA Victor in 1946. For the remainder of the 1940s
Seckler performed with various noted musicians, including Malcolm B. "Mac" Wiseman, Lester Flatt and
Earl Scruggs in the highly influential Foggy Mountain Boys, and the popular Stanley Brothers.
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Foggy Mountain Troubadour contains interesting aspects of the history of country music throughout the
1950s, focusing on the Foggy Mountain Boys. Parsons gives their detailed history, particularly following
Seckler's return in 1952 after a brief respite; the group settled in Nashville in 1955, but they continued their
extensive touring. Seckler was dismissed from the band in 1962, although he performed extensively with
various partners until joining Flatt and the Nashville Grass in 1972, playing until the 1990s (though Flatt
had died in 1979). While reaching an advanced age, Seckler continued to record and perform well into the
twenty-first century, earning many awards along the way. Parsons started working with Seckler in 2005 as
his manager and booking agent, although she had begun interviewing him two years earlier. She has
produced a fascinating, personal history of almost a century of country music and its countless professional
musicians.
Stern's biography of Dwight Diller, based on extensive quotations from Diller's autobiographical writings,
focuses on an influential banjo instructor who had a scant professional life but who represents a much wider
swath of country music history than Curly Seckler. Born in Charleston, West Virginia, in 1946, Diller began
learning the five-string banjo from Hamp Carpenter in 1968. He soon began making home recordings with
the Hammons family, particularly the old-time fiddler and banjo player Burl Hammons. Diller soon learned
traditional musical styles and stories from the hill country of central West Virginia; he shared his 1969-1970
Hammons tapes with West Virginia University professor Patrick Gainer. Along with ihe work of Alan
Jabbour and Carl Fleischhauer. these recordings became the core of the Library of Congress Archive of
American Folk Song Hammons Family project that led to the two LP set The Hammons Family: A Study of
a West Virginia Family's Traditions (1973). Diller's next step in discovering vernacular southern music
came in 1970 when he entered the banjo competition at the fourth annual Old Time Fiddlers and Bluegrass
Convention in Hillsville, Virginia. Such festivals had a long history in the South and proliferated over the
following decades. Hillsville was the first of the many festivals Diller attended. While becoming immersed
in the old-time music scene. Diller joined the Black Mountain Bluegrass Boys as a bass player in 1971,
remaining with them until 1977. During 1972 and 1973 he also performed with the Morris Brothers Band.
Diller's life took a detour from music in 1984 when he entered the Eastern Mennonite University seminary;
he focused on his role as a minister for a few years, until returning to his first love, the banjo. He had long
taught banjo classes, such as at the Augusta Heritage Center in Elkins, West Virginia, but teaching now
became his passion, at which he excelled. Well into the twenty-first century Diller taught at numerous banjo
retreats and camps around the country, as well as in England beginning in the late 1990s. He also appeared
in the feature film The Fifth String, which was released in 2004. A most influential banjo and fiddle
instructor, "Dwight taught his students that the old music was brittle, breakable, and required care in playing
it, listening to it, and learning it" (p. 113). Stern describes in detail Diller's teaching techniques, spread
widely through his instructional videos (and through YouTube), which are listed in the discography and
ftlmography.
Country music, broadly defined, has mostly been associated with the South, where hillbilly music (its
original commercial label) had a complex mix of Anglo-Saxon and African American roots. The
biographies of Curly Seckler and Dwight Diller present a wealth of information on country music's
commercial and grassroots aspects, along with regional differences, throughout much of the twentieth and
into the twenty-first centuries. Country music has touched the lives of southerners in various ways, as these
two books well demonstrate, while spreading worldwide.
Ronald D. Cohen
Indiana University Northwest
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Cohen, Ronald D. "Foggy Mountain Troubadour: The Life and Music of Curly Seckler." Journal of
Southern History, vol. 83, no. 3, 2017, p. 753+. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A501078191/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=4418a7cd.
Accessed 18 Dec. 2017.
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Gale Document Number: GALE|A501078191

Cohen, Ronald D. "Foggy Mountain Troubadour: The Life and Music of Curly Seckler." Journal of Southern History, vol. 83, no. 3, 2017, p. 753+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A501078191/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 18 Dec. 2017

• Bluegrass Today
  https://bluegrasstoday.com/foggy-mountain-troubadour-the-life-and-times-of-curly-seckler/
  Word count: 733

  Foggy Mountain Troubadour – The Life and Music of Curly Seckler
  Posted on June 30, 2016 By Dick Bowden

  Those who are interested in the history of bluegrass and old country music must buy and read this wonderful book, Foggy Mountain Troubadour – The Life and Music of Curly Seckler, by Penny Parsons. Much like in the earlier Mac Wiseman autobiography, you’ll enjoy the extremely sharp, detailed memories of John R. “Curly” Seckler, “the Old Trapper from China Grove,” who served gallantly with Flatt & Scruggs’ Foggy Mountain Boys for a dozen years; who returned to Lester Flatt’s Nashville Grass in the 1970s; and who carried on the Nashville Grass for over a decade after Lester’s passing. Curly Seckler is a key figure in the birth and growth of bluegrass.

  Penny Parsons has worked for years with Curly himself, and she has enriched his fine stories with secondary research at many locations. She deserves great credit for this labor, and for producing a VERY readable, enjoyable tome.

  Of course there are the requisite old snapshots. They tell quite a story, too.

  Right off the bat, we’re treated to the Seckler family’s genealogy. Good to see another nationality added to the British, “Scotch-Irish,” Dutch (Vandiver), and African antecedents of the founders of bluegrass.

  From the earliest days of Curly’s youth right up to the end of his stint with Flatt & Scruggs in the early 1960s, it is very unnerving, even shocking, to read of the trials and tribulations of Curly’s life. In his later decades he seems to have achieved some peace.

  Additionally, Curly’s reminiscences flesh out our view of the originators – Charlie Monroe, Bill Monroe, Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs and many others. These “sainted” old timers become MUCH more human when viewed through Curly’s experiences!

  Here are a few teases – Curly started out playing tenor banjo (for years) and his Gibson Mastertone banjo was so loud he was made to lay it down and switch to mandolin! He increased his Foggy Mountain Boys salary by several multiples after he left the group and went into private business. It’s surprising just how many of the early musicians lived in very small trailers for years – not today’s house trailers or mobile homes — what today we would call camper trailers. The Gibson Southern Jumbo guitar Earl Scruggs played in the early 1950s was actually Curly’s – and it met a sad end.

  I was particularly pleased to read again, in Curly’s own words, about his famed festival duet with Bill Monroe. Curly insisted he (Seck) must sing tenor, so Monroe pitched the song up in the key of D, where none of the Blue Grass Boys had ever heard him do it. All a test of just how stout Curly’s voice (and spirit) would be. In a wonderful coincidence, Mac Wiseman’s Facebook page recently posted an audio tape of that duet! Wow, it was really something, and Curly’s voice was just sailing!

  I could have read many more chapters and pages about Curly’s return to bluegrass, first with the Shenandoah Cutups for his first LP, and later with the Nashville Grass.

  I’ve always admired Curly’s tenor and mandolin work, from the late 1930s right up to his latest recordings. I find this book REALLY satisfying. I had the opportunity to communicate recently with Jeff White, who is filling the “Seck” spot in The Earls of Leicester. I had one question for him – had he visited Curly to get any tips? The satisfying answer was yes! Curly, now rapidly approaching 100 years of age, remains interested in the music, and in his place in its history.

  Read this book, and marvel that this music ever got off the ground in the first place, and prospered. They had it HARD – perhaps not as hard as pickin’ cotton, but I doubt there’s a bluegrass band today that would live through what the pioneers endured.

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  About the Author

  Dick Bowden
  Dick Bowden is a VERY traditional bluegrass picker and fan from New England, who makes occasional contributions to Bluegrass Today representing the old timers’ viewpoints.

• Country Standard Time
  http://www.countrystandardtime.com/d/bookreview.asp?xid=68
  Word count: 1093

  Foggy Mountain Troubadour
  By By Penny Parsons
  University of Illinois Press, 272 pages, $22.95 paperback
  Reviewed by Fred Frawley, June 2016
  Find it on Amazon
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  Curly Seckler was a key contributor to one of the iconic "first generation" bluegrass groups - The Foggy Mountain Boys. The group, formed by Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, after their nasty split from Bill Monroe and His Bluegrass Boys in the later 1940s, featured Seckler on and off for nearly 15 years. Seckler's tenor complimented Flatt's lead on countless recordings, live shows and television appearances during the years of the Flatt/Scruggs sound.
  Seckler may seem an unlikely subject of a full biography, but this book shows more than the arc of his career. Author Penny Parsons has done a meticulous job cataloging gigs, radio and televisions appearances, personnel changes and the odd story from the road. Telling Seckler's story enables Parsons to revisit the barnstorming spirit of bluegrass music at its beginnings with astonishing detail.

  Seckler (born John Ray Sechler) came from humble beginnings, to say the least. He was born on Christmas Day 1919 on a farm near China Grove, N.C. He played music with his brothers and first caught on with a touring band playing mountain music (as it was called then) when he met Charlie Monroe, who had recently stopped touring with his brother, Bill, in The Monroe Brothers. Seckler's tenor voice called to mind brother Bill's, and Charlie offered a job to Curly to emulate the Monroe Brothers sound.

  From there, "Foggy Mountain Troubadour" embarks on a dense, detailed and ultimately fascinating recounting of Seckler's musical affiliations and performances over the next 75 years. Seckler, age 96 at the time of this book's publication, quite literally has been there, and done that, in the bluegrass industry for nearly a century, and Parson's narrative leaves few stones unturned.

  The detail (if not minutiae) of Seckler's career is part of the appeal of this book. Parson's research included oral interviews with Seckler, his musical brethren (those that survive) and extended bluegrass family members. She also spent a great deal of time in old newspaper archives and other historical records of the day piecing together who played with who, and when and where. The why of all this is generally in the background, assumed to be, variously, the need to be paid, the need to promote the next show and the love of the music. These were hardworking fellows, who played a circuit extending from North Carolina, Virginia, East and Middle Tennessee and West Virginia. They played as many "schoolhouses" and "courthouses" as they could, played live radio (and later, television) shows to get the word out and travelled countless miles on the circuit.

  Parsons can be forgiven for the density of her reporting: there is something revealing and comforting in the endless detail of her narrative:

  "Since Curly was unable to rejoin (Charlie Monroe's) Kentucky Partners in Knoxville that winter (1946), Charlie replaced him, possibly with Lavelle Coy or Slim Martin, who was listed as the tenor signer on Charlie's next recording session, on March 24, 1947. By that time Ira Louvin had also joined the band on mandolin. Ira had moved from Knoxville from Chattanooga in the summer of 1945, after his brother Charlie's enlistment in the army interrupted their career as a singing duo. Not long after Ira recorded with Charlie Monroe, Charlie Louvin was discharged from the army, and the brothers reunited in Knoxville. Charlie Monroe apparently disbanded his group and returned to Beaver Dam at the end of March; at least he placed no more window card orders with Hatch Show Print until August."

  And that's just one paragraph on page 51 of Parsons' book. It's not name-dropping if you were really there, and Seckler was. Parsons, through painstaking research, has reconstructed a life and time that was probably never intended to be recorded, Note the reference to "Hatch Show Print" in the quote above. Throughout "Foggy Mountain Troubadour" Parsons is able to confirm dates, shows, lineups and locations from where and when band leader ordered their window cards to promote each show.

  What emerges from "Foggy Mountain Troubadour" is the echo chamber of radio shows and television shows performed live daily to promote the touring of the bands. A band would have a regular gig (say, the "Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round" on WNOX in Knoxville, Tenn.), play shows within the signal of the station, and then, once an area was, in Parsons' words, "played out" go on to a station in Roanoke, Va. or Bristol, Va. or Raleigh. The performers weren't riding an Airstream or playing with symphonies: this was a road of station wagons, eating on the fly and driving all night from a gig to get back to do a live radio show.

  Parsons, in doing this research, has contributed greatly to the ability to understand, or at least, appreciate the barnstormers of the first generation of bluegrass music. Seckler never played with Bill Monroe until later in life, but Monroe looms over this narrative as the progenitor of the bluegrass form and also as the force against which Flatt and Scruggs sought to expand its reach.

  Parsons has a light touch on details of Seckler's personal life. His second wife was beset with physical and mental issues, according to "Foggy Mountain Troubadour," after a bout with diphtheria. Seckler's two children appear here and there, but there's little effort to tie together his personal life and the performer's life. But "Foggy Mountain Troubadour" does not suffer for these gaps. There is a wealth of facts, stories, tales of personnel changes, and recording projects to fill the biographies of several men in "Foggy Mountain Troubadour." Seckler just happens to have lived it all, and Parsons has admirably shared it with the rest of us.

• Bluegrass Unlimited
  http://bluegrassmusic.com/content/2016/reviews/foggy-mountain-troubadour/
  Word count: 545

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  FOGGY MOUNTAIN TROUBADOUR
  FOGGY-MOUNTAIN-TROUBADOURFOGGY MOUNTAIN TROUBADOUR: THE LIFE AND MUSIC OF CURLY SECKLER
  BY PENNY PARSONS
  University of Illinois Press 9780252081590. Paperback, 304 pages, b&w photos, chapter notes, index, song index, $22.95. (University of Illinois Press, Chicago Distribution Ctr., 11030 S. Langley Ave., Chicago, IL 60628, www.press.uillinois.edu.)

  When it comes to books, it is the best of times for bluegrass. Biographies, autobiographies, and annotated discographies are beginning to tell us the rest of the bluegrass story. Foggy Mountain Troubadour: The Life And Music Of Curly Seckler by music journalist Penny Parsons is a welcome addition to the canon. Penny has done a thorough job of documenting the history of Curly’s long life (96 years) and musical career (77 years) with detailed research and countless interviews. She skillfully gives us as much bluegrass history as we need to know, while constantly weaving in Curly’s own colorful memories of those times. Of Charlie Monroe, he said, “He’d fight a circle saw if you messed with him!”

  Curly’s early forays into music included playing with his brothers in China Grove, N.C. He would also work with Charlie Monroe, Tommy Scott, and Mac Wiseman. Finally, in 1949, Flatt & Scruggs came calling. He would remain with them almost continuously until 1962, lending his powerful tenor voice to songs like “Some Old Day,” “Why Did You Wander,” and “Roll In My Sweet Baby’s Arms.” Because of Curly’s long tenure with the Foggy Mountain Boys, this book also provides an amazing amount of information about that band. Many of those delicious details come from Paul Warren’s date book, which now belongs to his widow Eloise. She would marry Curly in 1998. Friends called their courtship the “Foggy Mountain romance.”

  Curly’s dismissal from the Foggy Mountain Boys in 1962 came as a surprise. He thought, “Good Lord a-mercy, what am I gonna do? Me with four hungry mouths to feed and not even a job.” Resourceful as always, Curly bought a truck and began long-distance hauling. But he never gave up his music. Over the next ten years, he appeared at many of the burgeoning bluegrass festivals and released the album Curly Seckler Sings Again. Then, in 1973, Lester Flatt came calling again, asking “Seck” to join the Nashville Grass. Curly stayed until Lester’s death in 1979 and then assumed leadership of the band, which continued on for another 15 years. For his many contributions to bluegrass music, Curly was inducted into the IBMA Hall Of Fame in 2004.

  Penny Parsons doesn’t shy away from the sorrow in Curly’s life—he had to put his young sons in an orphanage and he, himself, had a nervous breakdown—but these incidents don’t define his life. They are part of the fabric. I highly recommend this well-written, highly readable book about a long life well-lived.MHH

  This entry was posted on Thursday, September 1st, 2016 at 12:01 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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• Journal of Folklore Research
  http://www.indiana.edu/~jfr/review.php?id=2031
  Word count: 1203

  Foggy Mountain Troubadour: The Life and Music of Curly Seckler
  By Penny Parsons. 2016. Champaign: University of Illinois Press. 272 pages. ISBN: 978-0-252-40108-8 (hard cover), 978-0-252-08159-0 (soft cover).

  Reviewed by Ken Perlman, Independent Scholar

  [Review length: 1117 words • Review posted on November 14, 2017]

  John “Curly” Seckler’s musical career spanned nearly eighty years. In the mid-1930s while still a teenager he formed a band with his brothers that played what was then referred to as “hillbilly” music; he was still going strong in the first decades of the twenty-first century and was “laying down tracks” in a recording studio as recently as 2013 at the age of ninety-four. He is best known as a long-term member of the iconic bluegrass band, Flatt and Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys, with whom he played on and off from 1949 to 1962; along the way he also played in bands with such “first-generation” bluegrass stars as Charlie Monroe, the Stanley Brothers, Jim and Jesse McReynolds, and Mac Wiseman. An appendix that lists the recordings he appeared on fills five pages.

  To make sense of the constantly shifting bands and band personnel mentioned in the book it is important to know several aspects of bluegrass history that read almost like a biblical narrative. “In the beginning” there was the Monroe Brothers, a hillbilly band featuring Bill and Charlie Monroe, that influenced nearly everybody. They split up in 1937 and went their separate ways. In 1946, Bill Monroe’s new band, the Bluegrass Boys, which by that time included guitarist/lead vocalist Lester Flatt and 3-finger banjoist Earl Scruggs, crystallized the sound that was eventually named for them and is now known as bluegrass music. In 1948, Flatt and Scruggs left the Bluegrass Boys and founded their own band, an act for which Monroe never forgave them. In 1969, Flatt and Scruggs themselves parted company, and not on the best of terms.

  Seckler’s main talent was his ability to sing the “high-tenor” harmony part with power and great emotion, and to effortlessly match the lead singer’s note-rhythm, syntax, and phrasing. High-tenor harmony—taking a conventional tenor part and raising it up an octave so that it is positioned above the melody—was popularized by Bill Monroe while he was still in the Monroe Brothers band. Bill Monroe also created a distinctive approach to mandolin while in the band that would be widely emulated.

  In 1939, Charlie Monroe invited Seckler to join his new band, eventually known as the Kentucky Partners, and fill the vocal void created by Bill’s departure. Seckler played with the Kentucky Partners and several other bands through the 1940s; then in 1949, Lester Flatt invited him to join the Foggy Mountain Boys in the role of high-tenor singer. Seckler’s vocal duets with Flatt during the dozen or so years that he worked with the band are considered some of the finest examples of bluegrass singing ever recorded.

  Seckler was never considered a virtuoso instrumentalist but he always played well enough to get by in the highly competitive bluegrass music scene. He started out on tenor (4-string) banjo, abandoned it during the 1940s in favor of mandolin (probably with Bill Monroe in mind), and also taught himself to play rhythm guitar. He is credited for creating a highly rhythmic approach to mandolin—known as “the chop”—that helped to drive the sound of the Foggy Mountain Boys, and which in turn has been widely emulated since then by bluegrass mandolinists.

  Seckler had quite a varied musical career after departing from the Foggy Mountain Boys in 1962. He played with various bluegrass luminaries and recorded several projects for which he was the featured vocalist. He also played for over twenty years with a band of all-stars called Nashville Grass, which was founded and originally led by Lester Flatt. After Flatt’s passing in 1979, Seckler took on the role of band leader.

  Foggy Mountain Troubadour is above all a vivid portrait of the musical milieu in which Seckler and his musical colleagues operated. From the mid-1930s through the mid-1950s, bands would get hired to do live weekly shows for local radio stations; this notoriety enabled then to pull in audiences for performances and dances within a radius of a few hundred miles. After a few months a band would saturate the market and have to move on to another city. By the mid-1950s better-known bands like Flatt and Scruggs were doing live television performances that would be broadcast in local markets; when performances could be taped for later broadcast, it freed bands to engage in extended concert tours. Finally, by the mid-1960s, as these kinds of venues were drying up, the modern bluegrass performance scene was developing, featuring weekend festivals and large concert venues sponsored by universities, private promoters, and arts councils.

  There are many “juicy” tidbits in this book for the diehard bluegrass fan to feast on. For example, we find out that the Foggy Mountain Boys always kept their instruments tuned up half a step (relative to “concert pitch”) because Scruggs liked the way his banjo sounded in that register. We learn that they introduced the resonator guitar, or dobro, to bluegrass music—and de-emphasized mandolin—in an effort to further differentiate their band from Bill Monroe’s. It turns out that for many years Bill Monroe used his influence to keep the Foggy Mountain Boys from appearing on WSM’s prestigious Grand Ol’ Opry show. And when Flatt and Scruggs parted company, a musical dispute was at the root of it; apparently, Earl wanted to inject modern influences into the ensemble, but Lester wanted to keep the old sound.

  Although Seckler seemed to give Bill Monroe a fairly wide berth throughout much of his career, the latter seems to have regarded him as somewhat of a rival. On at least two occasions at festivals held around 1970, the two of them were thrust on stage to sing a duet. Both times, Monroe directed the band to raise up the pitch of the song a couple of notches, hoping to force Curly to go beyond his comfortable vocal range (according to witnesses, Monroe was unable to throw Seckler off his stride).

  Most of the focus in Parsons’s meticulously researched volume is on the musical activities of Seckler and his bands—where they played, how their fortunes fared, shifts in lineup, and so on. We don’t really get to hear this singer’s inner voice, however, or get much of a glimpse into his personality. We are told of his hardscrabble childhood in rural North Carolina and his struggles throughout much of his life to make ends meet; there is also brief mention of two difficult marriages (one contentious, the other marred by a spouse’s severe illness and subsequent mental deterioration). At the very end of the book, a friend of Seckler describes him as “warm, congenial, respectful, proud, compassionate, generous, and spiritual” (205). Although, we have no reason to doubt this assessment, I would have liked to see more of this person revealed in the narrative.

• Greensboro.com
  http://www.greensboro.com/go_triad/review-foggy-mountain-troubadour-the-life-and-music-of-curly/article_f68b2c2a-284a-521f-87da-bb1affd42c38.html
  Word count: 921

  Review: “Foggy Mountain Troubadour: The Life and Music of Curly Seckler,”
  By Eddie Huffman Special to the News & Record Sep 11, 2016 (0)
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  Foggy Mountain Troubadour: The Life and Music of Curly Seckler
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  Curly Seckler’s name may not be well-known outside bluegrass circles, but he played and held his own with all its legends — including Bill Monroe, the man who gave the genre its name.

  In “Foggy Mountain Troubadour: The Life and Music of Curly Seckler,” Penny Parsons recounts a couple of instances where the fiercely competitive Monroe tried to sing too high for Seckler to provide harmonies. But Seckler and his storied tenor voice always rose to the challenge, including a 1970 appearance with Monroe at a bluegrass festival in Caswell County.

  “I went across them treetops like a jet!” Seckler told the author. “Back then I didn’t care how high they got it.”

  Seckler is best known as a member of Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs’s Foggy Mountain Boys, where he sang harmony and duets with Flatt and provided rhythmic backing on mandolin. Flatt liked to joke with Seckler, “You’re not the greatest mandolin player in the world, but I always liked the way you hold it.”

  Parsons, a Greensboro native and Guilford College grad, is a veteran music journalist and publicist who has served as Seckler’s manager in recent years. He was born on Christmas day in 1919 and finally played his last show in 2012 after nearly 80 years as a professional musician. The author drew from more than 40 hours’ worth of interviews with Seckler for her book, along with interviews with his peers in the music world, relatives and fans. She conveys the stories she picked up in lively, conversational prose. The book also shows Parsons’ ingenuity in tracking down performance dates and schedules from Seckler’s decades in show business, including records of promotional posters ordered for shows from Hatch Show Print, a legendary Nashville poster company.

  The result is an exhaustive overview of Seckler’s career, which began with a family band in China Grove, the small town south of Salisbury where he was born and raised. The book chronicles the rise of popularity for bluegrass in the 1940s and ’50s, when live radio shows were used to promote regional performances. The genre peaked when Flatt and Scruggs became stars of a national television show, faded with the predominance of rock ’n’ roll and heavily orchestrated country music in the 1960s, then bounced back in the 1970s and beyond.

  The book includes plenty of entertaining anecdotes about those ups and downs, giving glimpses into lost pockets of American culture. Seckler frequently performed with Flatt and Scruggs at drive-in movie theaters, which exploded in popularity in the 1950s.

  “Patrons would honk their car horns at the end of each song rather than applaud,” Parsons writes.

  The resurgence of traditional music in the ’70s sometimes resulted in cultural clashes between veteran bluegrass pickers and hedonistic young fans. Concert organizers accustomed to working with rock bands frequently asked Flatt and Scruggs what kind of drugs they wanted backstage.

  “Lester said, ‘We just want some six-packs of Coke, that’s it,’ ” Seckler told Parsons.

  The book details the hardships of life as a working musician, even one working for such successful musicians as Flatt and Scruggs: endless hours on the road, low pay and sketchy accommodations in a succession of boarding houses and trailer parks.

  It also details the unique hardships of Seckler’s personal life, including chronic health problems, two marriages that ended badly and a traveling life that made him a virtual stranger to his sons for years at a time.

  Seckler’s second wife, Mable, suffered brain damage and years of severe mental health problems triggered by high fevers during a bout with diptheria.

  Seckler seemed to find some measure of peace as his finances stabilized and he embraced Christianity in his late 50s. It would be nice to hear more about Seckler’s emotions and coping methods through some of his harrowing life experiences, but the quotes in the book don’t indicate a man much given to self-reflection — or at least not for public consumption.

  It would also have been nice to get a bit more context for some of the cultural events paralleling Seckler’s long career and a bit less information about performance dates and personnel changes in bands, which aren’t likely to mean much to people outside the world of dedicated bluegrass fans.

  Parsons sticks very close to the timeline of Seckler’s life and rarely offers a glimpse at the larger world around it.

  Shortcomings aside, “Foggy Mountain Troubadour” offers a fascinating look at a long and storied life in music.

  Bluegrass is one of America’s defining art forms, and Parsons uses spirited prose and anecdotes drawn from her adept research to illustrate how Seckler witnessed and helped shape it from the beginning.

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  Eddie Huffman is a freelance writer based in Greensboro and the author of “John Prine: In Spite of Himself.”
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