Bluegrass Gospel : The Music Ministry of Jerry and Tammy Sullivan

Heavily influenced by Bill Monroe, the "Father of Bluegrass" in the 1940s and ’50s, gospel music in the South began to shift into bluegrass gospel, a style that combines both genres.In Bluegrass Gospel: The Music Ministry of Jerry and Tammy Sullivan, anthropologist and journalist Jack Edward Bernhardt explores the lives, music, and ministry of acclaimed father-daughter bluegrass gospel performers and recording artists Jerry (1933-2014) and Tammy Sullivan (1964-2017) of southwest Alabama. Beginning in 1993, Bernhardt lived and traveled with the Sullivans as they took their music and testimony along bumpy back roads to backwoods sanctuaries from the Florida Panhandle to Mississippi, Louisiana’s bayous, Texas, Arkansas, and beyond.The author’s compelling narrative combines long-term fieldwork with extensive oral histories, archival research, photography, and tape recordings of the Sullivans’ music and testimonies in secular and sacred contexts.Bernhardt describes in vivid detail the chall