Highways and Heartaches

Starred review from July 17, 2023
Like Marty Stuart’s straight-ahead rockabilly guitar licks and Ricky Skaggs’s lightning-fast mandolin runs, this tour de force from documentarian Streissguth (Outlaw) scampers through the musical landscape that shaped and was shaped by the two country artists. Kentucky country boy Skaggs got his start with one of the fathers of bluegrass, Ralph Stanley, while Mississippi picker Stuart began performing with another bluegrass giant, Lester Flatt, as a teen. By the mid-1980s, Skaggs had cycled through a series of progressive bluegrass groups before starting his own band, Boone Creek; playing briefly in Emmylou Harris’s Hot Band; and eventually launching his solo career with the chart-topping 1982 album Highways and Heartaches. Meanwhile, Stuart cycled through bluegrass, country, and folk groups including stints with master guitarist Doc Watson, the Nashville Grass, and Kentucky Colonels. While the musicians traveled along separate paths for much of their careers—they did join forces on “Rawhide” at the 1996 memorial for one of their beloved mentors, Bill Monroe—each was instrumental in bringing “the spirit of bluegrass into their hard-wrought experiments in mainstream country music... fueling the profitability and, more important, the credibility of the fabled genre.” In fine-grained prose, Streissguth sketches a nuanced portrait of two musicians who both preserved bluegrass tradition and innovated within it. The result is a rich and revealing outing sure to delight country music fans.

July 14, 2023

The 1964 murder of three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, MS, might seem like an odd bookend for a history of the careers of country and bluegrass mainstays Ricky Skaggs and Marty Stuart. But Philadelphia is the latter's birthplace, and if the political, cultural, and spiritual currents of the ensuing 60 years otherwise linger lightly in Streissguth's (Outlaw: Waylon, Willie, Kris, and the Renegades of Nashville) narrative, this framing is an acknowledgment that no music occurs in a vacuum. The book's title is taken from Skaggs's 1982 album and is a mosaic, or perhaps a map, with Skaggs's and Stuart's careers as navigational threads through an important and tumultuous period of country and bluegrass music history. Though even casual fans will recognize some of the stars with whom both players have been associated--Emmylou Harris and Johnny Cash, most famously--it's unsurprisingly a who's who of significant names, with mandolinist/singer/songwriter Bill Monroe's long shadow cast over all. VERDICT An absorbing and richly detailed retrospective that will especially appeal to country and bluegrass aficionados.--Genevieve Williams

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2023
Streissguth has written about some of country music's most acclaimed artists, including Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, and Waylon Jennings. Here he explores the fascinating careers of Ricky Skaggs and Marty Stuart, Appalachian child prodigies who were discovered and mentored by legends. Skaggs began performing with Ralph Stanley's Clinch Mountain Boys when he was 16; Stuart hopped onto Lester Flatt's tour bus when he was just 13. Both have maintained vibrant careers ever since. Their overlapping trajectories allow Streissguth to trace the recent history of country music, from its interaction with folk music in the sixties to the seventies "newgrass" revival to Nashville's "new traditionalism" in the eighties, adding deft analysis of the social forces that shaped it. George Wallace's pro-segregation campaign (endorsed by many country stars) resurfaces in Ronald Reagan's call for "state's rights," which mapped onto a growing conservativism and traditionalism in Nashville. But Streissguth illustrates that there was--and is--more to the longing for old-time music than reactionary politics. An ambitious, meticulously researched biography for bluegrass and country music enthusiasts.

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