Richard M. Long began to play guitar in high school, and played folk music professionally while an undergraduate at Florida State University. Already well along in his history major before a guitar program was established at the FSU School of Music, he received his M.A. and Ph.D. in European History, specializing in the period of the French Revolution and Napoleon (which also coincided with the first blossoming of the classical guitar). His researches into the guitar repertory of the period led to collaboration with a number of performing artists, notably Pepe Romero, and, with the encouragement of the Theodore Presser Co., to the creation of Tuscany Publications in 1982. Long has published dozens of articles on European history and the history of the guitar, critical editions and arrangements of guitar and lute music, as well as liner notes for Philips, CPA Hollywood, Naxos, Azica, and many other labels. He has presented papers or has been a featured speaker or performer at many professional and scholarly organizations. He is a charter member of Camerata, a Florida-based chamber ensemble, and has performed on guitar (and occasionally on Renaissance lute) across the United States and in Europe.

With the winter issue of 2001-2002, Long assumed the editorship of Soundboard, the Journal of the Guitar Foundation of America, at first in in partnership with his wife Mary, who died in 2005, and always with the crucial assistance of an excellent staff, partially inherited from his predecessor, Dr. Peter Danner.