Welcome to a summary of research on five generations of professional bluegrass musicians and their musical ancestors. The material was presented at the first Bluegrass Music Symposium at Western Kentucky University on September 9, 2005.

It is being posted for those interested in bluegrass, to stimulate further research, and in the hope that visitors will correct mistakes and supply missing information (email fred@fredbartenstein.com).

You may view or download the following files:

Summary Table of Generations
The table is a one-page summary of how I classify musicians by generations, including distinctive characteristics and examples of the musicians found in each generation.
View it here or download it here.

Spreadsheet of Individual Entries
You will find an alphabetical listing of more than 680 musicians with 15 data elements for each one. You may download an Excel spreadsheet containing this information, plus worksheets for each of six generations, sorted by the musician's birth year. Using your own software, you can resort the spreadsheets, search them, or export the information to a database, table, or word-processing file. This spreadsheet is periodically updated as I receive new and corrected information, so it may not exactly match the statistics in the Summary Table or PowerPoint presentation.
View it here (large file not recommended for dial-up) or download it here.

PowerPoint Presentation
View the slides I used to present an explanation of the research and its findings at the Bluegrass Music Symposium. A series of tables and graphs presents a variety of information about the 680 musicians included in the original research.
View it here in a pop-up window or download it here.

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