Leo Morris
When I was a newbie reporter at the Wabash Plain Dealer, I started hearing about a young woman named Brenda Webb, just a few years out of high school and beginning to make a name for herself as a country singer.
Since she was the younger sister of superstar Loretta Lynn, it was the consensus that Brenda just might make it.
And so she did. She grew up to become Crystal Gayle, who had more than a few No. 1 country hits.
Later, after I had moved on to the Michigan City News-Dispatch, I began a series of annual pilgrimages to Bill Monroe’s bluegrass festival in Bean Blossom, just outside Nashville in Brown County. Like Gayle, a Kentucky transplant, Monroe had lived in northwest Indiana while perfecting the new form of music called bluegrass.
How many other states can boast of being home to the creator of a whole new genre of music?
In Wabash, I still listened to LPs,…
