Articles

By Bill Kemp. Published on March 13, 2016.

Although born out of the Roaring Twenties, dance marathons and walkathons peaked in popularity during the 1930s and the Great Depressio...

By Bill Kemp. Published on June 25, 2017.

“The voice that spanned continents and oceans to win international acclaim is forever stilled,” announced a somber Pantagraph in Octobe...

By Bill Kemp. Published on September 24, 2017.

“Julia Scott Vrooman has always been in the news,” noted The Pantagraph in early October 1976. The occasion was her 100th...

By Bill Kemp. Published on April 29, 2018.

As with most small town movie houses, the Colonial Theatre in Colfax offered area residents more than a parade of Hollywood legends on ...

By Bill Kemp. Published on October 28, 2018.

For the better part of four decades, friends Jacob Welby Bucher and Charles Carroll Fell of Bloomington performed as the popular vaudev...

By Bill Kemp. Published on March 10, 2019.

Cousin Emmy, a pioneering female country music artist affectionately known as “the first hillbilly to own a Cadillac,” spent a decade o...

By Bill Kemp. Published on September 29, 2019.

“The members of the Lotus Club last evening entertained their lady friends at their rooms on North Center Street,” noted The Pantagraph...

By Bill Kemp. Published on October 6, 2019.

“I was always too independent,” Bloomington resident Annie May Christian confided in a remarkable scrapbook she compiled around 1903....

By Bill Kemp. Published on December 29, 2019.

One hundred years ago, New Year’s Eve 1919 brought hope for better days to come. After all, the nation had been deeply scarred by the t...

By Bill Kemp. Published on December 13, 2020.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to the cancellation of countless holiday gatherings, school pageants, office parties, concerts, dinner da...

Articles about Music