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<\/a>The title of Aaron Parrett\u2019s new book, \u201cMontana Americana Music: Boot Stomping in Big Sky Country,\u201d published this summer\u00a0by The History Press, was more than enough to draw me in.<\/p>\n<\/a>The title of Aaron Parrett\u2019s new book, \u201cMontana Americana Music: Boot Stomping in Big Sky Country,\u201d published this summer\u00a0by The History Press, was more than enough to draw me in.<\/p>\n
What made it irresistible was to see that the foreword was written by Smith Henderson, the Montana native whose first novel, \u201cFourth of July Creek,\u201d published in 2014, was so uncommonly good.<\/p>\n
I wonder whether any other volume from The History Press\u2014which has issued a great stream of local history books from all over the country in recent years\u2014has been endorsed by a writer of Henderson\u2019s stature.<\/p>\n
Which means, I suppose, that it doesn\u2019t need an endorsement from me. I would like to give it anyway, in the hope that a few others might enjoy it as much as I did.<\/p>\n
There is so much here, beginning with an attempt to define just what Americana music is. A definition acceptable to all is probably impossible, but a roll call of names summoned in the introduction is something of a definition in itself: Merle Haggard, Buck Owens, Gram Parsons, Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers, Bill Monroe and Bob Dylan.<\/p>\n
\u201c(W)hile Americana in the abstract covers an immense amount of territory,\u201d Parrett writes, \u201cI focus mainly on hillbilly, country, country-blues and old-time folk music, as well as its modern offspring, bluegrass.\u201d<\/p>\n
And though he does try to achieve some geographical diversity, this book spends a lot of time in Missoula, for good reason. I was lucky enough to have lived there in the golden age of Aber Day keggers and the Top Hat and Park Hotel bars, when bands like the Mission Mountain Wood Band, the Lost Highway Band, the Big Sky Mudflaps and Live Wire Choir were at their peak.<\/p>\n
Parrett captures the excitement of those days, when Missoula was crawling with crackerjack musicians, and where countless jam sessions were sharpening the skills of pickers and singers who would branch out into explorations in half a dozen musical genres.<\/p>\n
In addition to the big-picture stuff, oddball nuggets of gold are scattered throughout the text. I was previously unaware that gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson wrote the liner notes for a 1964 album by the Big Sky Singers, a group that Thompson first heard performing at the Gun Room of the Finlen Hotel in Butte.<\/p>\n
Nor did I know that it was Paul Stanton, the genius behind the Duckboy postcards, who told an accomplished no-name band in Missoula that they ought to call themselves the Big Sky Mudflaps. Would they still be performing all these years later if not for that perfect name?<\/p>\n
Parrett also mentions a Montana musical moment I hadn\u2019t thought of in years, when the late Tim Isher appeared on the \u201cThe Gong Show\u201d in 1976, when he was just 17, and astounded all present with a rendition of \u201cDueling Banjos\u201d\u2014by himself on the banjo and Dobro.<\/p>\n
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<\/a><\/div><\/div>What Parrett doesn\u2019t mention is that during the same week, perhaps on the same day, a young woman from Missoula, a classical pianist I believe, was making her premiere on some major stage. The Missoulian did a big front-page spread on Isher and relegated the pianist to a few paragraphs deep inside the paper.<\/p>\n