WPLN News Archive; Thomas Allen Marty Stewart (Rebecca) 5 18 00; News Archive 3/30/00-5/22/00

you may not have known it at the time the chances are very good you've seen the artwork of thomas b allen his drawings and paintings have appeared in esquire or new york or live sports illustrated and other noted magazines he's done work for nbc cbs and the discovery channel and he got his start right here in nashville in nineteen thirty eight i started taking our questions mr wafted fifth of denver which now that iraq was grown ups to the or an issue of classes anymore and then one it was ten they let me in to watch it and so i still was just wrong but that's when i publicly announced that i was going to be an artist rather than a cpa or my father there was a bluegrass music thomas b allen is best known for the seventeen album covers he illustrated for lester flatt and earl scruggs back in the fifties and sixties allen is a longtime friendship with scruggs grew out of an assignment from esquire magazine's art director plan to feature a series called country comes to town and he asked

allan to be part of the project i chose bluegrass and i had heard girl on his banjo the sense of the freshmen and bill never had met in western earl was a full page penny and esquire luis minero like it wanted to buy it and we finally traded it at a mass to get movies and the marketing sense to use our own all of their cars to make that stand apart those helicopters which turned country music's marty stuart into a thomas b allen fan as a boy growing up in racially tense mississippi marty stuart learned to cherish saturday evenings that was when he and his dad watched flatt and scruggs on their black and white tv there were almost worker friendly country cousins that came to these detention

in her home and so the dime store and bomb infrastructure and here's this beautiful painting of flatt and scruggs in white suits and red ties whole interest in the cases where in white hats it was the first piece of art ever own a step up in the bedroom i'm just got to know it and would walk in every day is going to look at it and love it a notice of the artist named thomas b allen four years ago while working on his pilgrimage album marty stuart contacted thomas b allen to do our work for the project it was the beginning of a great friendship and it was also when stewart began seriously collecting allen's art and commissioning him to do new pieces you can use or commissioned by a portrait in my case i ask him to do and the flood insurance pay for average american people and there was another cycle have fallen but there was a snapshot that he went to a concert producer

with an upstate you're broken ruble and all countries a concert and grandpa jones was onstage graham past that look like is the end of the song who lives near his hands in the air and as always mr smigel i just thought that was so gorgeous thompson took panky on the four years ago that there were beatings and we needed a new work at isi and there's three new balancing thousand pieces says wallace a children's book work the things that nobody's ever seen before but the one to grandpa's special to me because i told grandpa about it in his honor because the lawyer driven an example for using come by my house and see it when he got sick i never got to see what they used to think it was meant to be marty stuart has put together a retrospective of the work of thomas b allen using pieces owned by stuart allen earl scruggs and others which will be on display at the ryman auditorium for the next six months tonight's concert to launch the exhibit will be earl

scruggs his first appearance at the ryman in decades and marty stuart has put together an all star ensemble to join him few names have been leaked but stewart is promising it will be a star studded event tickets are available through ticketmaster for the ryman box office for more information on the thomas ellen art exhibit contact running for national public radio i'm rebecca bain ahead