Johnny Staats
American musician

Johnny Staats is a bluegrass mandolin, guitar and violin player, born and raised in West Virginia. He has been featured on NBC's Today Show, in People Magazine, on the CBS Evening News and CNN, and has appeared on the Grand Ole Opry. He won Charleston's Vandalia Gathering-Mandolin championships in 1996, 1997, and 1999. In 1997 he also won the guitar title and placed third in the fiddle competition.
He is an avid raccoon hunter. His Johnny Staats Bluegrass Festival is a part of the Parkersburg (W.Va.) homecoming every year. He supports local instrument makers by playing ones made in the Parkersburg area. He lives in Sandyville, West Virginia.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Johnny Staats” as american musician. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american musician. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 13, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q6267720. VIAF identifies the subject as 28910307. The Library of Congress control number is n2003077619. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1996, 1997 and 1999.
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This entry incorporates text from “Johnny Staats” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.