Pretty Good for a Girl: Women in Bluegrass

Alison Krauss, the Dixie Chicks, Rhonda Vincent, and others are only the latest in a long line of female bluegrass performers. More than 80 of these foremothers are featured in this title; 44 of them are spotlighted in short biographies of eight to ten pages each. The author goes on to describe the life, style, and work of 43 others, including some groups, in this thorough work. Herself a well-known banjo player, Henry had been told she was pretty good "for a girl" nearly all her life. While working on her MA in literature in 1999, she began her 15-year study of women in bluegrass. The first featured musician is Sally Ann Forrester, who played accordion with Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys in the 1940s. The book has lots of black-and-white photos, 17 pages of source material, and a detailed bibliography and index. The individual biographies are easy to access separately without reading the whole book.