This author appeared at the Charlottesville Festival of the Book and I was drawn to hear about someone who made their way in the world playing Bluegrass and Old Time Music. Over the years I have known people whose lives are centered on Old Time music, especially people that we knew in Bloomington, Indiana where we lived in the 1970s. So of course I was interested in seeing a woman born in 1934 talk about her experience in that world.
Her story is remarkable: she attended Antioch College for a few years until she moved to Washington, DC with her husband. She was immersed in the Bluegrass music there and otherwise was busy with the four children she and Jeremy Foster had. Jeremy died in a car accident in 1964, a shocking tragedy. She later married their friend and fellow musician, Mike Seeger; their marriage ended after about 10 years, but their music connections continued. It was interesting to note that her description of Mike Seeger mentions his parents, but not his very famous brother Pete.
My copy of the book is bristling with post-it notes, marking the times she mentions musicians I have encountered, beginning with the Bluegrass years. It has been a joy to remember those connections and to read more about them online.
After moving to Indiana, we learned that Bill Monroe (the founder of Bluegrass) had an annual festival in Bean Blossom each year. We went to two of them and I became a fan of Kenny Baker, an amazing fiddler, and Tex Logan, who both played with Bill Monroe. Tex had another life, working as an engineer for Bell Labs. Alice and her singing partner Hazel Dickens were joined sometimes by Bill Monroe and performed at Bean Blossom. Kenny Baker made an album with another fiddler, Joe Green, called High Country, that I listened to many times. The Bean Blossom festival lives on.
Throughout the book there are many references to musicians she has played with over the years. One of them she mentions is someone we knew from our days at the University of Tennessee, Sparky Rucker. He was one of the first Black students at the University and that must have been in the mid-1960s as my sister Becky and he were pals in the art course they were both in. Mr. Booklog knew him too and he stayed at our house once in Bloomington while on tour. We both saw him perform here in Charlottesville within the last decade. He and his wife Rhonda performed in Knoxville as recently as February of this year.
Alice was a founder and writer of the Old-Time Herald, the magazine she created to promote Old Time music in 1987. It is fun to read about someone starting from scratch and learning how to use the computer to do this. She mentions that someone we knew from Bloomington, Linda Higgenbotham, who had moved to Mr. Airy, North Carolina, wrote an article for the magazine that attempted to define Old Time music that, not surprisingly, became somewhat controversial. Linda is married to a much-respected fiddler, Brad Leftwich, who performed with Alice Gerrard in the mid-1990s.
Much of the book is devoted to short descriptions of performers she revered and wanted to honor who were her elders. I sure have enjoyed seeing all photos taken over the years and reading about these folks.
Alice Gerrard, Custom Made Woman, University of North Carolina Press, 2025, 176 pages. Available in the public library.