In honor of Sunday's beautiful (starting out, anyway) Spring weather, we adopted "S" as our Letter of the Week during the majority of this day's Bluegrass Cafe.    SONG / PERFORMER / ALBUM / LABEL [Requests are RED] Katy Hill / Del McCoury Band / RockyGrass / Blue Planet Tragic Love / Stanley Brothers / Selected Cuts, 1955-1956 / JSP Records It's A Good Day / Shelton & Williams / So Much Time, So Much Love / Grass Tank Music That Kind Of Lonesome / Eddie Sanders / That Kind Of Lonesome / Engelhardt Music Group Little Maggie / Ralph Stanley & the Clinch Mountain Boys / Ralph ..read more

During this day's Bluegrass Cafe, we put the main focus on ht music of Ben Eldridge -- the banjo playing co-founder of The Seldom Scene -- who died one week ago at the age of 85.  Along with his Scene bandmates, Ben was inducted into the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame in 2014.  He was the last of the original members of the Scene to retire from the band after 44 years of holding down the banjo role.  By all accounts, Ben Eldridge was an incredibly nice and funny man, and we will always be grateful for his contribution to the Bluegrass lexicon.  To celebrate his life and his c ..read more

Our Tax Day Eve Bluegrass Cafe broadcast on April 14th started with several songs about money (or lack of it) and, of course, taxes.  Other sets of music from Sunday's show focused on newer tracks, and there were several April birthdays to remember.  Hope you were able to join us, but if not, read on for the recap... For April birthdays, we remembered the 60th birthday of Stuart Duncan (born April 14, 1964), as well as the 80th birthday of Doyle Lawson (born April 20, 1944).  We also celebrated the birthdays (or birth anniversaries) of Delia Bell, Bob Dick, and Hylo Brown. There ..read more

Our first Bluegrass Cafe for the month of April started with nearly an hour's worth of songs featuring "A" performers (requirement:  the performer's last name or band name began with the letter "A").  We also honored a New England Bluegrass pioneer who recently passed, shared a little bit of new music, remembered the great Merle Haggard's birth anniversary with lots of covers of his music, and included a telephone visit with Alex MacLeod of Rock Hearts.  It was a stuffed three hours -- hope you were able to join us! A few weeks ago, old friend Dave Shaw asked me if I was aware t ..read more

For a Bluegrass Cafe that aired on Easter Sunday, you might expect to hear all sorts of Easter-themed Bluegrass songs...and you would be absolutely right!  We included Easter music performed by everybody from the Stanley Brothers to the Old Time Bluegrass Singers to the Country Gentlemen Tribute Band to Paul Adkins & the Borderline Band.  And there were many more songs that we could have played, but we just ran out of time.  Hope you enjoyed this blessed day!   Sunday was the last day of March, which is known as Women's History Month.  To that end, we shared ..read more

We celebrated a few March birthdays during Sunday's Bluegrass Cafe, including those of Bluegrass Hall of Fame members John Starling, Dean Webb, and Paul Williams.  We also remembered a banjo playing Blue Grass Boy of the early 1950s, Rudy Lyle (March 17, 1936 - February 11, 1985), with several songs on which he played an active part.  This included music (of course!) from Bill Monroe & His Blue Grass Boys, as well as Uncle Joe Johnson and Jimmy Skinner, too.  If you would like to know more about Rudy Lyle, there was a biography published about him in 2022:  Rudy Lyle ..read more

Sunday's Bluegrass Cafe included a three-hour mix of Bluegrass songs old and new.  We included two separate song sets celebrating both St. Patrick's Day and the First Day of Spring.  Around the midway point, we had a telephone visit with Michelle Canning, a Massachusetts-born musician/songwriter who now makes her home in Nashville, and this coming weekend, is hosting her 13th annual Night On The Edge benefit for the Alzheimer's Foundation of America.  If you would like to know more about this worthy cause, please click on this link. Marti & Jim at WHUS - November 2 ..read more

Sunday's Bluegrass Cafe got an unexpected (to me) delayed start due to the WHUS broadcast of a UConn Women's Basketball semifinal game in the 2024 Big East Tournament.  In the days before COVID, it was not at all unusual for our showtime to be preempted during basketball season at UConn, but that hasn't happened all that often in recent years...until yesterday.  We began the show around 4:30PM, so hope you were still able to enjoy 150 minutes of Bluegrass music on Sunday afternoon. We began our delayed program with a belated birthday tribute to the great Bluegrass Hall of Fame banjo ..read more

Our Bluegrass Cafe on Sunday was a day to celebrate two important banjo innovators who both happened to be born on February 25th -- Bluegrass Hall of Famer Ralph Stanley (February 25, 1927 - June 13, 2016) and Peter Wernick (born February 25, 1946).  To that end, we shared loads of music from both of these performers throughout the course of our three hour visit.  And, since it only happens once every four years, we couldn't forget to celebrate the birthday of mandolin master, Mike Compton (born February 29, 1956). Veronica "Roni" Stoneman (May 5, 1938 - February 22, 2024) ma ..read more

For the Sunday before Valentine's Day, our Bluegrass Cafe was (mostly) filled with love songs -- and most of them were of the positive variety.    In addition, we celebrated birthdays for three members of the Bluegrass Hall of Fame -- Red Allen, David McLaughlin, and Jim McReynolds -- as well as the birthday of the late Charlie Moore.  We also remembered the great songwriter, Boudleaux Bryant (February 13, 1920 - June 25, 1987), who, while not a Bluegrass songwriter, has definitely had a good many of his songs recorded in the Bluegrass style over the years. There was a tiny bit ..read more