Two Exhibits Cruise Down the Crooked Road Music Trail
For immediate release:
June 23, 2008
June 23, 2008
Contact: Natalie Faunce, (540) 365-4301
nfaunce@ferrum.edu
nfaunce@ferrum.edu
Southwest Virginians have an ear for music, and two new exhibits at the Blue Ridge Institute & Museum of Ferrum College showcase the long history of picking and singing in the mountains. Crooked Road Royalty and Musical Styles Along the Crooked Road are open daily in the museum’s galleries on the Ferrum College campus through February of 2009. The museum is the State Center for Blue Ridge Folklore and a major venue along the Crooked Road: Virginia’s Heritage Music Trail. Gallery admission is free.Crooked Road Royalty highlights the careers of the Hill Billies, the Stoneman Family, the Carter Family, and the Stanley Brothers, four Virginia powerhouse groups that helped build the American country music industry. Musical Styles Along the Crooked Road presents the rich variety of roots music western Virginians sing and play—fiddle-and-banjo tunes, bluegrass, ballads of love and death, sentimental mountain songs, blues, and gospel. Both exhibits include rare film footage and photographs of historic Crooked Road musicians.
Today’s country musicians know their debt to Southwest Virginia’s musical royalty. In the 1920s the Hill Billies gave their name to an entire form of American music, and the Stoneman Family added over 200 recordings to the nation’s song bag. In the 1930s and early ‘40s the Carter Family’s sentimental songs soothed the country in hard times, and the Stanley Brothers put an old-time mountain legacy on bluegrass.
Roni Stoneman, performing here at the 2006 Wayne Henderson Music Festival, is one of three of
Ernest Stoneman's daughters who carry on country music's longest family legacy. (Credit: H. W. Smith)
"The story of American country music is filled with singers and pickers from the Crooked Road region," says Andrew Pauly, exhibit researcher. "Even today’s young country music stars know songs that were first recorded by the early Southwest Virginia artists."
Crooked Road Royalty and Musical Styles Along the Crooked Road will travel to numerous venues in Southwest Virginia in the coming years. The exhibits have been produced by the Blue Ridge Institute & Museum, for the Crooked Road: Virginia’s Heritage Music Trail with funding from the Virginia Tobacco Indemnification & Community Revitalization Commission.
Crooked Road Royalty and Musical Styles Along the Crooked Road will run at the Blue Ridge Institute & Museum through February 2009. Located on the campus of Ferrum College, the Institute is open Mondays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., year-round; and Sundays, 1 to 4:30 p.m., mid-May through mid-August. For more information call 540-365-4416 or visit blueridgeinstitute.org.
Image top right: With their recordings and radio broadcasts of country hymns and sentimental lyric songs, Scott County's Carter Family soothed the nation through the Great Depression and the early years of World War II.
About Ferrum College
Ferrum College is a four-year, private, co-educational, liberal arts college affiliated with the United Methodist Church. Ferrum offers a choice of nationally recognized bachelor’s degree programs at a cost well below the national average for private colleges.
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