Fred recalls that his love for traditional music was expressed early. As Fred puts it, My father understood and appreciated the music and my maternal grandmother genuinely liked it. A cousin from Tennessee taught him the songs of the famous Carter Family and other classic country tunes. His father and an uncle had a guitar-mandolin duo on Wildcat Mountain in Northern Virginia. Fred grew up with a rich musical background.
How It All Startedīorn in 1950, Bartenstein started listening to music very young, and has never stopped.
It has also meant that, among other things, he found himself attending the first bluegrass festival in Fincastle, Va., becoming a bluegrass DJ at the age of 16, starting Muleskinner News Magazine, and playing rhythm guitar and singing with a long list of pickers from Don Stover and John Hartford to Frank Wakefield and Dorsey Harvey.
Fred Bartenstein: The Right Place at the Right Timeīy Kurt Mosser Reprinted by permission of the author and Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine, 1-800-BLU-GRAS.Ĭlick on any image to view a larger full version.įred Bartenstein has always seemed to find himself perfectly situated to pursue his life-long interest in bluegrass music as he puts it, Ive always seemed to be in the right place at the right time. This luck has allowed him to find bluegrass in the most surprising places, whether at a private day school in New Jersey, or at Harvard University in the late 1960s.