David B. Pruett

I have been involved with country music most of my life and call a variety of Southern places home such as Concord, North Carolina, where I was born and attended elementary school, to York in rural upstate South Carolina where I spent the latter half of my childhood on a farm. I studied music and German at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, and after a few years of studying and teaching in Germany, I found my way into graduate school at Florida State University in Tallahassee. It was my privilege and honor to apply my graduate studies in ethnomusicology to my southern roots, first in a master's thesis on bluegrass and old-time music at WPAQ Radio in Mount Airy, North Carolina, and second in a doctoral dissertation on commercial country music in Nashville, Tennessee. After teaching for five years at Middle Tennessee State University in nearby Murfreesboro, I accepted a position at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, where I currently teach classes in world music and American music.

"MuzikMafia: From the Nashville Scene to the National Mainstream" is the product of five years of my behind-the-scenes work with some of country music's biggest stars, including Big & Rich and Gretchen Wilson. This book tells the story of how a collective of underdogs became the top dogs in the music business. I would like to thank John Rich, Big Kenny, and the rest of the MuzikMafia for inviting me to participate even for a brief time in their roller coaster lives. I dedicate this book to the MuzikMafia and its Nashville fans. Tuesday nights were not just another show. They were something special, almost like family.