Crooked Road Royalty and Crooked Road Musical Styles showcase the long history of picking and singing in the mountains. Crooked Road Royalty highlights the careers of the Hill Billies, the Stoneman Family, the Carter Family, and the Stanley Brothers, four western Virginia powerhouse groups that helped build the American country music industry. In Crooked Road Musical Styles visitors can explore 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. The exhibitions include rare film footage and photographs.
“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 styles and songs that were first recorded by these early Southwest Virginia artists.”
(Underwritten by The Crooked Road: Virginia’s Heritage Music Trail)
