With his trademark mandolin style and unequaled tenor harmonies, Curly Seckler has carved out a seventy-seven-year career in bluegrass and country music. His foundational work in Flatt and Scruggs's Foggy Mountain Boys secured him a place in bluegrass history, while his role in The Nashville Grass made him an essential part of the music's triumphant 1970s revival.

Written in close collaboration with Mr. Seckler and those who know him, Foggy Mountain Troubadour is the first full-length biography of an American original. Penny Parsons follows a journey from North Carolina schoolhouses to the Grand Ole Opry stage and the Bluegrass Hall of Fame, from boarding houses to radio studios and traveling five to a car on two-lane roads to make the next show. Throughout, she captures the warm humor, hard choices, and vivid details of a brilliant artist's life as he criss-crosses a nation and a century making music.

| Cover Title Page Copyright Contents Foreword Preface Acknowledgments Chapter 1. Down in Caroline: 1919–1939 Chapter 2. The Adventures of Smilin' Bill: 1939–1944 Chapter 3. Don't This Road Look Rough and Rocky: 1945–1949 Chapter 4. Creating the Foggy Mountain Sound: 1949–1952 Chapter 5. Climbing the Ladder with Flatt and Scruggs: 1952–1954 Chapter 6. Goodness Gracious, It's Good: 1955–1962 Chapter 7. Traveling Down This Lonesome Road: 1962–1972 Chapter 8. The Nashville Grass: 1973–1994 Chapter 9. The Old Man Has (Not) Retired: 1995–2014 Notes Selected Listening Interviews Index | Certificate of Merit for Best Historical Research in Recorded Country Music, Association for Recorded Sound Collections Awards (ARSC), 2017
Named Bluegrass Print/Media Person of the Year from the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA), 2016 — Association for Recorded Sound Collections Awards (ARSC)
Certificate of Merit for Best Historical Research in Recorded Country Music, Association for Recorded Sound Collections Awards (ARSC), 2017
Named Bluegrass Print/Media Person of the Year from the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA), 2016 — the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA)
|Music journalist Penny Parsons was Curly Seckler's manager and is a regular contributor to bluegrass publications.