Thanks to Richard F. Thompson for putting together this lovely remembrance of Red Shipley.

Robert Grant ‘Red’ Shipley: September 4, 1937 - October 6, 2007

Legendary radio personality Red Shipley passed away in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Saturday, October 6, due to cancer. He had just recently retired from being the host of WAMU’s Stained Glass Bluegrass program, a show he hosted for 25 years. His last show was on September 16.

Shipley’s career as a bluegrass DJ has spanned more than 50 years, with the common factor throughout being the songs that serve as the foundation for his bluegrass gospel programs. He began his career at WJMA-AM in Orange, Virginia, on Memorial Day 1956. Later, during his time at WPIK-AM/WXRA-FM in Alexandria, Virginia, he began a program called Inside Bluegrass, and met Jerry Gray, who was instrumental in taking him to WAMU 88.5. Red filled in initially for Jerry and other bluegrass hosts, and in August 1982, took his place a the host of Stained Glass Bluegrass, where he remained until his recent retirement. Red’s reputation for his partiality for great music has spread world wide via the Internet and the show continues to be heard on BluegrassCountry.org.

Listeners in the Washington, DC area can also hear Stained Glass Bluegrass on WAMU’s 88.5 HD-2 (the hyper digital channels which parallels the bluegrass programming on BluegrassCountry.org.)

After his retirement from the trade show industry in late 1995, Shipley returned to Orange, Virginia., to be closer to his family. This move brought about a unique partnership between WAMU 88.5 and commercial station WJMA-FM in Orange that has allowed Red to continue to serve his regular listeners and has added even more loyal Stained Glass Bluegrass fans in central Virginia.

In September 2006, the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) named Red as its Broadcaster of the Year.

In a formal announcement on the WAMU 88.5FM website, Caryn G. Mathes, General Manager for WAMU 88.5, commented on Sunday ……

“Radio lost one of its own legends last night. I’m deeply saddened by the news of Red’s passing, but grateful that he was able to spend 25 years on the air with us at WAMU, and heartened that he was able to continue doing what he loved for so long.” (more…)

Good morning from Nashville.

Brance and I just had a chance to be a part of radio history. Katy Daley, whose morning bluegrass show is broadcast each morning on both BluegrassCountry.org and WAMU HD-2, is here at IBMA doing the show live from Music City. She invited us down to speak with her on air, and we just returned from a very enjoyable interview.

Katy, and producer/engineer Jen Hitt, mentioned that theirs is among the very first live remote broadcast for HD Radio, and we were delighted to be on hand to see it go down. We talked with Katy about The Bluegrass Blog, about my work with AcuTab and Brance’s with Clear Blue Productions, and she even played a couple of tracks from Acoustic Endeavors.

BluegrassCountry has been offering a free, 24/7 bluegrass audio stream online since 2001, and since are now replicating the signal on WAMU HD 88.5-2 for HD Radio listeners in the DC metro area.

Katy’s show airs each weekday morning from 7:00-10:00 a.m. (ET). I’m not sure if she would approve of me suggesting that everyone should “wake up with Katy Daley each morning,” but it’s not a bad plan as you prepare for the morning slog.

Katy and Jen have also volunteered to provide red carpet fashion coverage for us during our live blog coverage of the IBMA Awards Show Thursday night. They said they would send along fashion hits and misses via text messaging to our Live Blog Headquarters backstage at The Opry.

Join us here on Thursday evening (10/4) around 9:00 p.m. to follow the proceedings online.

Starting today, September 17, the folks at WAMU FM in Washington, DC will broadcast their 24/7 online bluegrass audio channel as an HD FM radio signal as well. DC area listeners with HD Radio receivers can find the new channel at 88.5-2.

Folks without access to HD radio will notice that many of their favorite bluegrass and acoustic music programs are no longer being carried by WAMU’s FM broadcast, but station management is betting that the future of radio involves this sort of niche programming, and that its home will be with HD Radio.

BluegrassCountry.org has more details about the change, as does a piece in yesterday’s Washington Post.

You may also want to check out recent additions to BluegrassCountry.org’s Musicians Tips series, with installments from Sonya Isaacs, Jamie Daley and Joe Carr.

Our friends at BluegrassCountry.org have launched a new feature as part of their 40th Anniversary celebration of bluegrass programming on WAMU. It’s called Musician Tips and will be a weekly audio segment with prominent bluegrass artists sharing advice on a wide range of topics that will be of interest to those seeking to improve their own songwriting, stage presence or performance.

Each tip will be run for a week in BluegrassCountry.org’s 24/7 bluegrass programming, and then be archived on their web site. You can hear the first in this series, from noted songwriter Chris Stuart, on the Musician’s Tips site, where you can also subscribe to the series as a podcast.

BluegrassCountry.org’s Katy Daly says that they have quite a lineup of artists in the pipeline.

In weeks to come we’ll feature tips from Bill Emerson, Jaime Daley, Sonya Isaacs, Joe Carr, Alan Munde, Ralph Stanley, Honi Deaton, all the Stringdusters, all the Steep Canyon Rangers, Mike Auldridge, Missy Raines, and Randy Kohrs, just to name a few.

WAMU, and it’s online sister station BluegrassCountry.org, are celebrating the summer of 2007 as their 40th year broadcasting bluegrass music. It was in 1967 that Dick Spottswood and Gary Henderson, who were among the founders of Bluegrass Unlimited magazine that same year, launched a program by that name on July 2, carried on WAMU 88.5 FM, broadcast from the campus of the American University in Washington, DC.

To help mark the anniversary, the folks at WAMU have searched through their archives and are running some special programs over the next few weeks.

The first, Katy Daley’s 1975 interview with Vassar Clements, starts tonight (8/28) at 10:48 p.m. The show is called Fiddle Players Young and Old, and will run repeatedly on BluegrassCountry.org over the next few weeks. The discussion with Vassar was recorded at DC’s legendary Cellar Door during his debut tour as a band leader, and was also the first interview Katy recorded for WAMU as a cub bluegrass radio host.

It runs again on Sunday (8/29) at 1:04 a.m., and also includes an interview with 12 year fiddler Roland Clark, who spoke with Michelle Mercer of NPR. Find future air times by checking the BluegrassCountry.org schedule online.

You can read more of the history of bluegrass programming on WAMU and BluegrassCountry.org on their web site.

We mentioned a few days ago that IIIrd Tyme Out banjoist Steve Dilling had assembled a band of his fellow bluegrass professionals to perform on a brief tour in early December. We just got word that one of the tour dates, which will also include a show by Lonesome River Band, will be recorded by WAMU for eventual broadcast over the air, and on BluegrassCountry.org.

The show will be held this Sunday, December 3, at The Cultural Arts Center in Frederick, MD as a part of their Sunday Bluegrass concert series. Two shows will be held that day, a matinee at 3:00 p.m. and an evening performance at 7:00.

Ticket information can be found on the Sunday Bluegrass web site for folks in the area who may want to attend the show. Everyone knows how much fun it is to be present at the recording of a live show, right?

BluegrassCountry.org’s Katy Daly tells us that they don’t have a clear broadcast date in mind for this LRB/Dilling concert, but she promised to let us know as soon as it is set.

Katy also passed along that she and Jen Hitt, BluegrassCountry.org’s Production Director, are planning a series of specials intended to introduce their listeners to the art and technology involved in producing bluegrass instruments. We’ll keep you posted as those plans solidify.

We just got word from the folks at WAMU/BluegrassCountry.org that one of their wayward show hosts has returned to the roost. Bill Foster, who was a host on the popular Bluegrass Overnight show broadcast in the DC area from 1985 to 1998, is back on staff.

He will once again be a host on Bluegrass Overnight, with his return debut scheduled for this Sunday, October 22. He’ll be on live on WAMU.org from midnight to 6:00 a.m., and the show will be rebroadcast on BluegrassCountry.org throughout the following week.

Bill is a great friend to bluegrass music and an active contributor on many levels.

We join Bill’s coworkers at BluegrassCountry.org in welcoming him back to Virginia (after an eight year ex-pat existence in Florida), and to broadcasting bluegrass at WAMU.

Jen Hitt, production director for bluegrasscountry.org, stopped by to visit with us yesterday at The Bluegrass Blog booth at IBMA.The cyberstation, which provides a 24/7 bluegrass radio stream online, grew from Washington, DC’s venerable WAMU radio station, where bluegrass music was once a staple feature of their broadcast format.

When the station moved to the more common NPR news/talk format several years ago, the howls of protest from the relatively small but (thankfully) vocal contingent of bluegrass lovers led to the station management creating this internet vehicle, and bluegrasscountry.org became a pioneer in cybercasting bluegrass music.

Jen stopped by to let us know that their feed is now available in the DC area on HD Radio - great news for folks who still miss getting their bluegrass fix in the car or at work since the demise of WAMU’s bluegrass programming. If you’ve even visited the Northern VA/DC area, you can empathize with the amount of time commuters spend behind the wheel each week.

An HD Radio receiver is required to pick up the signal, and they are available in both automobile and table top models. Jen tells us that the fidelity of the signal is far higher than what they can stream online, and is based on the AAC (mpeg4) audio codec. They will also have expanded metadata which displays on the HD Radio receiver’s screen.

WAMU and bluegrasscountry.org have been out on the edge of new broadcast technology for some time, and they hope their listeners in DC will embrace this new move as well.

The streaming audio online can be accessed by anyone, anywhere with an internet connection, but the HD Radio broadcast can only be picked up in the DC metro market. The various details can be found on the bluegrasscountry web site.

The folks at BluegrassCountry.org are in a festive mood this week, as they celebrate the start of their fifth year of cybercasting bluegrass music, and two weeks of special programing and events in recognition of this milestone.

This Internet bluegrass radio outlet has been a pioneer in this field, and is an offshoot of WAMU, the large public radio affiliate in Washington, DC. Residents of the DC area will recall that WAMU was once a premier source of bluegrass, folk and acoustic music over the air, with several hours of daily programing, plus the long running Bluegrass Overnight show that spun bluegrass in the wee hours of each night. When the station moved to a talk/news format several years ago, bluegrass lovers in the area were dismayed, and many expressed their frustration to the station management.

Enter, BluegrassCountry.org, which was WAMU’s answer to the dilemma, where shows and show hosts who were on the air prior to the switch found a home on the Internet, and which has since grown to include hosts and shows from all over the world. Bluegrass programming is available as an audio stream all day, every day, delivered in a commercial free environment.

As a part of their anniversary celebration, they are running a major fundraiser, hoping to generate $50,000 to secure the continuation of the cybercasts. If you listen to public radio, you are familiar with this sort of annual appeal, and will perhaps be receptive to the idea of helping to support commercial-free radio on the Internet. They have quite a ways to go to reach their goal, and are asking bluegrass lovers worldwide to consider becoming a member and supporting them financially. (more…)