Profiles of East Tennessee musicians on line at The Knoxville News-Sentinel's website Songs of Appalachia: Musical Profiles from the Region. The lead story, by Morgan Simmons, hits all the right notes from Cas Walker and the "Midday Merry-Go-Round" to Red Rector, the Laurel Theater and the bluegrass jams at Buddy's Barbecue on Kingston Pike in the 70s.
Also links to brief profiles of southern Appalachian musicians. One is traditional ballad singer Donna Ray Norton, of Asheville, N.C., who sings "Pretty Peggy-O" among other ballads like those that were collected by Cecil Sharp in the Carolina mountains in 1915. Only a couple or three verses but enough to get her sense of the tune and the phrasing. "Some people’s families are ballerinas or football players," Norton told the News-Sentinel. "My family has been singing ballads for eight generations. This is what we do." She's from Madison County, and she sings it the authentic way. Since she started singing to the public at Warren Wilson College, she's been to the West Coast and performed with the North Carolina Symphony.
She has several songs on her MySpace page. Plus some more background. She got interested in traditional music through a high school project in Asheville, has a couple of CDs.
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