Just back from the road, Norman and Nancy Blake are sitting on a weathered wooden bench on the front porch of their home place in Rising Fawn, playing an old fiddle tune called “Prettiest Little Girl in the County.” It’s a stifling July afternoon, but the sound of the couple’s deft picking drifts above the humid air like a soft breeze. “Cool, dude,”...

Malone opens and closes his 80-year musical career in Rome In 1925, Kasper “Stranger” Malone got a ride that landed him on a street corner in Rome, Ga. – the town that was to see the launch of his musical career as well as his passing some 80 years later at the age of 95. But that makes his story sound simpler than it was. Born near Paducah, Ky., Oct. 25,...