When I was growing up in Mississippi, mountain music had a bluegrass twang to it that made my bare feet rhythmically twitch when I’d watch a summer rerun of The Andy Griffith Show featuring the musical Darling family, some of whom were played by bluegrass legends The Dillards. On Saturday afternoons, another form of mountain music filled the television screen during The Porter Wagoner Show—wondrously female and mountainously wigged—when Dolly Parton from the Appalachian hollers around Gatlinburg, TN, began to make her appearances with him. The northern mountain music of the Catskills was decidedly different when I lived in Hudson—although…
