Robert Oermann
Robert K. "Bob" Oermann is a music journalist, author, and historian of country music from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He earned a fine arts degree from the University of Pittsburgh and a master's in information studies from Syracuse University. He worked as an artist and illustrator, and in the 1970s he was advertising manager for a record store chain in St. Louis. He moved to Nashville in 1978 to run technical services for the Country Music Foundation and the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. From 1982 to 1986 he was USA Today's first country music reporter and critic, and from 1982 to 1993 he covered music for The Tennessean. He later became editor-at-large of Country Music magazine and a regular columnist for MusicRow. With his wife, anthropologist Mary A. Bufwack, he wrote Finding Her Voice: The Saga of Women in Country Music (1993), which won an ASCAP Deems Taylor Award. He also wrote A Century of Country (1999) and liner notes for more than 75 albums, including the soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou? He wrote the CBS special The Women of Country (1993), co-wrote TBS's America's Music: The Roots of Country (1996), and wrote and directed The Black Experience in Country Music (1998). He was a judge on the first season of USA Network's Nashville Star in 2003.