"Away in a Manger" is a Christmas carol first published in 1885 in Philadelphia and used widely throughout the English-speaking world. In Britain it is one of the most popular carols, a 1996 Gallup Poll ranking it joint second.

The song was first published with two verses in an Evangelical Lutheran Sunday School collection, Little Children's Book for Schools and Families (1885), where it simply bore the title "Away in a Manger" and was set to a tune called "St. Kilda," credited to J.E. Clark.

For many years the text was credited to the German Protestant reformer Martin Luther. Research has shown, however, that this is nothing more than a fable. In the book Dainty songs for little lads and lasses for use in the kindergarten, school and home, by James R. Murray , (Cincinnati, The John Church Co., 1887) it bears the title "Luther's Cradle Hymn" and the note, "Composed by Martin Luther for his children, and still sung by German mothers to their little ones." A possible reason for the spurious attribution to Luther is that the 400th anniversary of his birth was in 1883. The words were either based on a poem written for this anniversary or were credited to Luther as a clever marketing gimmick. This song has never been found in Luther's works.

Felicity Ann Urquhart (born 4 May 1976) is an Australian country music singer-songwriter, sometimes seen as Felicity^{[citation needed]}. Her single "Big Black Cloud", co-written with Randy Scruggs, reached No. 1 on Country Tracks National Top 30 Singles Chart in 2007. She has won numerous awards including a Centenary Medal in 2001 "For service to Australian society through country music". Urquhart married musician and producer Glen Hannah in March 2009. Since March 2010 she is the host of country music show Saturday Night Country on Australian Broadcasting Corporation Local Radio.

Felicity Ann Urquhart was born on 4 May 1976 to Rex, an upholsterer, and Patricia "Trish" Urquhart. She grew up in Tamworth in rural New South Wales. Her maternal grandfather, Ernie Walmsley, was a jockey turned horse-trainer and with her grandmother, Anne, ran a pub in Bingara. Urquhart began busking in Peel Street, Tamworth during the Tamworth Country Music Festival at the age of 11. Aside from learning guitar, Urquhart had piano lessons and performed in musicals.

Robert Randolph and the Family Band is a multicultural American funk and soul band led by pedal steel guitarist Robert Randolph. Other band members include drummer Marcus Randolph, bass guitarist Danyel Morgan, vocalist Lenesha Randolph, keyboardist and guitarist Brett Andrew Haas, and one of three rotating rhythm guitarists: Joey Williams of Blind Boys of Alabama, Adam "Shmeeans" Smirnoff, and Cousin Ray-Ray. Jason Crosby (keyboards and fiddle) and John Ginty (organ) are former members. Rolling Stone included Robert on their list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time.

Frontman Robert Randolph was trained as a pedal steel guitarist in the House of God Church and makes prominent use of the instrument in the band's music. The instrument is referred to in many African-American Pentecostal churches as Sacred Steel. Randolph was discovered while playing at a sacred steel convention in Florida.

Randolph cites Stevie Ray Vaughan as a primary influence in his own technique and style.^{[citation needed]} The group's sound is inspired by successful 1970s funk bands such as Earth, Wind & Fire and Sly & the Family Stone, another multicultural band composed of former members of the Church of God in Christ.^{[citation needed]} Randolph himself has explained that in his adolescent years before his discovery by the secular community, he was almost completely unaware of non-religious music, saying "I never heard of The Allman Brothers Band, Buddy Guy, Muddy Waters, none of them. I wasn’t into that music, only the church thing."

Richard Lee "Ricky" Skaggs (born July 18, 1954) is a country and bluegrass singer, musician, producer, and composer. He primarily plays mandolin; however, he also plays fiddle, guitar, mandocaster and banjo.

Ricky Skaggs was born in Cordell, Kentucky. He started playing music at age 5 after he was given a mandolin by his father, Hobert. At age 6, he played mandolin and sang on stage with Bill Monroe. At age 7, he appeared on television's Martha White country music variety show, playing with Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs. He also wanted to audition for the Grand Ole Opry at that time, but was told he was too young.

In his mid-teens, Skaggs met a fellow teen prodigy, guitarist Keith Whitley, and the two started playing together with Whitley's banjoist brother Dwight on radio shows. By 1970, they had earned a spot opening for Ralph Stanley and Skaggs and Keith Whitley were thereafter invited to join Stanley's band, the Clinch Mountain Boys

Skaggs later joined The Country Gentlemen in Washington, DC, J. D. Crowe's New South. For a few years, Skaggs was a member of Emmylou Harris's Hot Band. He wrote the arrangements for Harris's 1980 bluegrass-roots album, Roses in the Snow. In addition to arranging for Harris, Skaggs sang harmony and played mandolin and fiddle in the Hot Band.

The Skaggs Family, starting from a small frontier town in southern Idaho, came to have an important impact on merchandising across much of the United States. During most of the 20th century, the Skaggs name became prominent on hundreds of store fronts throughout the West. But as that name now fades from the commercial scene, it is important to show how a number of widely-known commercial chains owe their origin to this one, entrepreneurial family.

If one examines the origins of a wide range of grocery and drug store enterprises across the West and Midwest, the Skaggs names is likely to arise. The father was a relatively poor Baptist minister, but he and six of his sons, with varying degrees of collaboration, introduced in the early decades of the 20th century, two very important changes in merchandising: the low-margin, cash-and-carry approach to business and the process of rapidly growing a multitude of common outlets, now called chain stores. Their entrepreneurial zeal became a major retailing force resulting in large, well-known retail chains that carried not only the Skaggs name itself, but names like Safeway, Osco, PayLess, Albertsons, Longs Drug Stores, Katz's and others.