Thomas Goldsmith, Laurent Dubois, Joe Newberry

PRESS RELEASE:

The Regulator Bookshop welcomes Thomas Goldsmith, author of Earl Scruggs and Foggy Mountain Breakdown: The Making of an American Classic, for a reading and signing with Duke professor Laurent Dubois (Banjo) as conversant. Award-winning musician Joe Newberry will provide musical accompaniment on the banjo. This Community & Scholars event is co-sponsored by Duke’s Forum for Scholars & Publics. Free and open to the public. Books will be available for purchase and signing.

Recorded in 1949, "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" changed the face of American music. Earl Scruggs's instrumental essentially transformed the folk culture that came before it while helping to energize bluegrass's entry into the mainstream in the 1960s. Goldsmith explores the origins and influence of "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" against the backdrop of Scruggs's legendary career. Interviews with Scruggs, his wife Louise, disciple Bela Fleck, and sidemen like Curly Seckler, Mac Wiseman, and Jerry Douglas shed light on Scruggs's musical evolution and his working relationship with Bill Monroe. "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" helped bring back the banjo from obscurity and distinguished the low-key Scruggs as a principal figure in American acoustic music.

Thomas Goldsmith is a journalist and musician. For more than 30 years, he has worked both in daily newspapers in North Carolina and Tennessee and as a freelance writer. He is the editor of The Bluegrass Reader, and winner of the International Bluegrass Music Association’s best journalist award.

Laurent Dubois is Marcello Lotti Professor of Romance Studies and History at Duke University who is a specialist on the history and culture of the Atlantic world, with a focus on the Caribbean and particularly Haiti. He is the author of several books, including Banjo: America’s African Instrument (Beknap Press/Harvard).

Known around the world for his clawhammer banjo playing, Joe Newberry is also a powerful guitarist, singer and songwriter. A longtime and frequent guest on A Prairie Home Companion, he sang with the 2016 Transatlantic Sessions, and at the Transatlantic Session's debut at Merlefest in 2017. The Gibson Brothers’ version of his song “Singing As We Rise” won the 2012 IBMA “Gospel Recorded Performance” Award, and with Eric Gibson, he shared the 2013 IBMA “Song of the Year” Award for “They Called It Music.”

Earl Scruggs and Foggy Mountain Breakdown: The Making of an American Classic (Music in American Life), 9780252084782, University of Illinois

Banjo: America’s African Instrument by Laurent Dubois, 9780674047846, Belknap Press/Harvard