The Cumberland Highlanders are a constantly-shifting group ranging from bluegrass legends to ridiculously-talented local pickers. This particular lineup includes former Blue Grass Boys Butch Robins on banjo and Wayne Lewis on guitar and vocals.

Less well-known (and I aim to remedy that) is tenor singer Stacy York. If you don’t know her work, I hope you’ll take the time to search it out. She’s one of the few real-deal female bluegrass singers around, working solidly in the tradition of Hazel Dickens.

Here they all are with The Stanley Brothers’ “Let Me Love You One More Time”.

A few days ago, I posted a video by The Cumberland Highlanders, an ever-shifting amalgamation of bluegrass talent that includes former Blue Grass Boys, and some current Clinch Mountain Boys.
In this case, the band is fronted by no less than Ralph Stanley, and his son, Ralph II. They’re backed by once and future Blue Grass Boy, Butch Robins on banjo, and singing a Stanley Brothers favorite, “I Hear A Choo Choo Comin’.”

I figure I’m just being redundant if I say it’s amazing, and that you should devour every performance by this band that you can find.

Outside of hardcore bluegrass fans, Charlie Moore is not widely known. That’s a pity because, as you’ll hear, he had the perfect voice for bluegrass.

He attracted plenty of superior musicians to his band, The Dixie Partners. That’s Butch Robins, who would later become a Blue Grass Boy, on banjo; and Paul “Moon” Mullins, Joe’s daddy, tearing it up on fiddle.

You know this tune. It’s from the pen of Hank Williams, and it’s called “I’ll Fly Away”.

Chubby Wise and Butch Robins recorded this one while they were with Charlie Moore’s band. I love how their two styles mesh so well – Wise’s bluesy swing, the groundwork for which was laid in Bill Monroe’s “Heavy Traffic Ahead” – and Robins’s melodic banjo, which anticipated his solo work.

This is “Chubby’s Lonesome Blues”.

Waltzing With Beauty and Wit

Here’s one way to show love: entertain an audience, no matter how small.

Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys fill this performance with beauty and wit. It’s nothing spectacular; just a little waltz, but sometimes, that’s all it takes to warm the hearts of your audience. Kenny Baker on fiddle, and Butch Robins on banjo, demonstrate this admirably on the “Mississippi Waltz”.

The Missing Piece

I might as well say something about the general lack of blues in bluegrass music.

The Country Gentlemen, The Seldom Scene – those groups at the forefront of the progressive bluegrass trend – were always better when they kept a little blues in their bluegrass.

At minimum, their best work was suffused with the passion – if not the bent notes – of the blues. The same is true today of artists like The Truffle Valley Boys, Jussi Syren, Nathan Stanley and Michael Daves. Keep the blues – both the notes and the passion – in bluegrass, I say.

Here are Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys with a thrilling textbook example, “Rocky Road Blues”.

San Francisco, 1978. One wonders if Bill and the Boys got hold of whatever it is that makes San Francisco sourdough the best in the world. I think Butch Robins may have something to say about that in his tell-all book, “What I Know ‘Bout What I Know”, but I digress ….

What a fizzy, exuberant performance this is; not at all like the original. The tempo is almost too fast. As singers, the Blue Grass Boys just barely keep up to tempo, but as instrumentalists, they’re in their element. Kenny Baker’s fiddle improvisations on the the melody are wildly inventive, and Robins’s picking walks the line between traditional Scruggs style and the melodic style popularized by former Blue Grass Boy, Bill Keith.

Through it all, Wayne Lewis’s lead singing is as rock-solid as it is soulful. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Lewis is the best bluegrass singer you never heard.

This is Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys, with “Walking In Jerusalem (Just Like John).

I know, I know: I just can’t say enough good things about this lineup of the Blue Grass Boys. Backing the father of bluegrass music are Wayne Lewis on guitar, Butch Robins on banjo, Mark Hembree on bass, and the fabulous Kenny Baker on the little fiddle.

The quartet singing is fine, but it’s Baker who stands out here. French jazz violinist, Stéphane Grappelli, was a major influence on Baker. If Grappelli had played bluegrass, this is exactly how he would have sounded.

Here are Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys with "The Old Crossroad".