Blind But Now I See:
The Biography of Music Legend Doc Watson
by Kent Gustavson, PhD

 This is a no-holds barred biography of a great bluegrass hero, a flatpicking guitar legend.
From the day he stepped off the bus in New York City, North Carolina music legend Doc Watson changed the music world forever. His influence has been recognized by presidents and by the heroes of modern music, from country stars to rock n' roll icons.

Still Inside:
The Tony Rice Story
by Tim Stafford & Caroline Wright

 A decade in the making, Still Inside delivers Tony’s tale in his own inimitable words, and in anecdotes and observations from his friends, family, fans, and fellow musicians.

He is one of the greatest acoustic guitar players of all time, yet he’s virtually unknown outside bluegrass music. Tony’s long road has taken him from coast to coast and around the world, through historic recordings and appearances that often profoundly move those who experience them. More than 100 people were interviewed for this book, sharing memories of Tony and discussing his indelible impact on their own music. Alison Krauss, J.D. Crowe, Sam Bush, Béla Fleck, Jerry Douglas, Ricky Skaggs, David Grisman, Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, Peter Rowan, and many others contribute intimate stories and frank observations of this private, enigmatic man.

Woven throughout the narrative are excerpts from a journal by co-author Caroline Wright, who went on the road with Tony in the summer of 2003 and again in 2005. Her discoveries will astonish and intrigue even his most knowledgeable fans.

People think they know you because of the way you play and sing. And I am so guilty of that with Tony. I think I know who he is because of his records. I think I know what kind of person he is ...
  ~ Alison Krauss

Every once in a while, there are seminal figures. They don’t come along even every five years. You might, by a fluke, get two of them in 20 years. Tony’s one of those guys.
  ~ Béla Fleck

Fiddler's Ghost
by Mitch Jayne

  As a founding member of The Dillards, one of the most innovative groups in bluegrass, Mitch played bass and regaled audiences with humorous stories of his beloved Ozarks. He wrote lyrics for numerous bluegrass standards: The Old Home Place, Dooley, There Is A Time, and The Whole World Round. The Dillards appeared in six episodes of The Andy Griffith Show as the perennially tongue-tied Darling Boys.

"Fiddler's Ghost is the rarest of books. I could hardly put it down. It's full of suspense and plot turns. Only Mitch Jayne could write a novel with a perfect understanding of the music and dialect of the Missouri Ozarks."   - Michael Patrick, Historian, Folklorist, University of Missouri

Mitch Jayne is also the author of acclaimed novels The Forest in the Wind (1966) and the Ozarks-set Old Fish Hawk (1969), which was adapted in the 1979 movie Fish Hawk. In 2000, Mitch's Home Grown Stories & Home Fried Lies was published, an autobiographical collection of Ozark humor.

Click here for more info on ordering Mitch's books

Man Of Constant Sorrow:
My Life And Times
by Dr. Ralph Stanley
as told and written to author Eddie Dean

  A legend in American music opens the book on his wrenching professional and personal journeys, paying tribute to the vanishing Appalachian culture that gave him his voice.

He was there at the beginning of bluegrass. Yet his music, forged in the remote hills and hollows of Southwest Virginia, has even deeper roots. In Man of Constant Sorrow, Dr. Ralph Stanley gives a surprisingly candid look back on his long and incredible career as the patriarch of old-time mountain music. It's a story of how a musical art now popular around the world was crafted by two brothers from a dying mountain culture, a life harmonized with equal measures of tragedy and triumph.

Marked by Dr. Ralph Stanley’s banjo picking, his brother Carter’s guitar playing, and their haunting and distinctive vocal harmonies, the Stanley Brothers began their career in 1946 and blessed the world of bluegrass with hundreds of classic songs. Rarely giving interviews, Ralph offers frank recollections, from his boyhood of dire poverty in the Appalachian coalfields to his early musical success with his brother, to years of hard traveling on the road with the Clinch Mountain Boys, to the recent revival of a sound he helped create.

Note: While this publication is not a stellar job by the publisher (and/or author?) -- with several typos, some misinformation and at least one repeated paragraph -- it is still a fine account by Ralph Stanley of an amazing life and is recommended nonetheless. With so much more for Ralph to tell, perhaps one day a longer version will come to fruition?