The Great Interpreter

There aren’t many live recordings of legendary singer/guitarist, Red Allen, available so I’m glad to see his recorded work on YouTube. Red was one of the greatest interpreters of songs in bluegrass, and this performance is no exception.

The album this comes from, Keep On Going: The Rebel and Melodeon Recordings is an essential compendium of his work. Bonus: It features the work of some stellar sidemen including fiddler, Scotty Stoneman and banjoist, Porter Church.

The song is “Hello City Limits”.

Harmonious

Of the brother duos so popular in the 1930s, The Monroe Brothers had speed. Bill and Earl Bollick, collectively known as The Blue Sky Boys, had beautiful, intricate harmonies like these.

This is “Happy Sunny Side Of Life”.

An Old Song, A Definitive Performance

Junior Sisk, solo, displaying the effortless vocal technique and pure mountain soul that inspired IBMA voters to name him Male Vocalist of the Year. This is an old song and often-covered, but I don’t think I’ve heard anyone ever do it better. This is “He Died a Rounder At Twenty-One”.

Newgrass Does Trad Grass

NewGrass Revival, having a blast at Bean Blossom, 1972. Relative to much of what NGR did, this is a fairly traditional sound. Even so, they manage to sneak in some mighty rock riffs.

This is “Wild Hog”.

Hank Williams, High Lonesome Style

Maybe it's that high lonesome sound, but, for some reason, the songs of Hank Williams sound especially good when done in the bluegrass style. This one is no exception.

 Here are The Shenandoah Cut-ups in their gospel incarnation, The Shenandoah Valley Quartet, with “How Can You Refuse Him Now”.

Decorated Veterans

What did it take to sing tenor to Jimmy Martin?

When he left Bill Monroe for a solo career, Jimmy Martin had to answer that question with a tenor whose power equalled Monroe’s. Martin found the perfect foil in Paul Williams.

A few years ago, Williams got together with two other Martin alumni – Doyle Lawson (who plays guitar here), and banjo man, J.D Crowe. They’ve made a couple of well-received albums, but when they hit the stage, they blow the roof off the dump.

In this clip, they’re joined by Jason Barie on fiddle and Dale Perry on bass – both of whom were members of Lawson’s band, Quicksilver, at the time. And though everyone is in top form, it’s hard not to single out Crowe’s return to a more traditional, blues-based style (He has said he learned a lot from Fats Domino’s piano playing) for his work with this group. This is his best picking in years!

Here they are with Williams out in front, singing one of his signature numbers, “The Hills Of Roane County”.

A Simple Song Gets Complex With A Second Look

I love this song, but I was hard-pressed to say what's extraordinary about it until I listened -- really listened -- to the lyrics.

"I fell in love in Cincinnati," Steve Gulley sings, following with the standard tale of a naive young man falling prey to a citified gold-digger, and a chorus that you wouldn't write home about. The final verse goes like this:

I wish that I was in Kentucky
With mama, and papa dear
But mama's gone now, and so is papa
And Kentucky's a long way from here

And, all of a sudden, the chorus makes horrible sense:

It's a lonesome feeling when you're traveling
Down a lonesome road, down a lonesome road
Nobody cares a thing about you
It's a heavy load, it's a heavy load.

The lonesome road is the Hillbilly Highway, both literal and metaphorical, that Appalachian migrants took to escape the poverty at home for the jobs to be found in the wealthy, industrial north.

More than one bluegrass pioneer made this journey -- Bill Monroe, Red Allen, and The Osborne Brothers, among others. Like this song's protagonist, The Osborne Brothers journeyed from Kentucky to Ohio. Eventually, they found musical success. Without the family, culture, and institutions that had sustained them back home, they found their share of loneliness and isolation, too.

This is Steve Gulley, Dale Ann Bradley, and Debbie Gulley with "Lonesome Feeling".

Bluegrass With A Bakersfield Accent

Yet another clip from Austin City Limits, this one with Ralph Stanley and his long-time lead singer, Charlie Sizemore. This must’ve been right around the time Sizemore was studying for his law degree at the University of Kentucky.

Yeah. Imagine being this talented in two areas of endeavor.

I've talked before about how Buck Owens sounded as much like bluegrass as Bakersfield. This clip has Charlie Sizemore walking that line, too, accompanied by Dr. Ralph’s mountain tenor (is it any wonder Dr. Ralph’s been called “The Man With the Hundred-Year-Old Voice”?)

This is a medley of “If I Lose” and “The Kitten and the Cat”.

Bill Monroe's Playful Side

Kenny Baker set the standard for every bluegrass fiddler who came after. So, why have I picked this obscure performance to highlight his genius?

I picked it because Baker’s kickoff here is one of my top five bluegrass kickoffs of all time. I picked it because it’s sassy and playful – attributes never associated with Monroe, but often with Baker (although “sprightly” is the adjective more often applied in Baker’s case).

I picked it, because the creativity and playfulness never let up – just listen to Baker’s backup, Lonnie Hoppers’s banjo fills.

Speaking of creativity, Monroe introduces his break by quoting the final notes of “Taps” at a tempo that makes it sound more like “Reveille”. After all, everybody needs an army to protect their playhouse, er, stillhouse. The original lyric says “stillhouse”.

Monroe, who had been beaten and bullied by an alcoholic older brother, would have none of it. And that makes the whimsy driving this track all the more remarkable.

This is Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys, featuring bluegrass fiddle pioneer, Kenny Baker, with “Darling Corey”.

Bluegrass Pop From Massachussetts

I’ve talked before about how the first and best lineup of The Seldom Scene took combined un-bluegrass elements to create a progressive bluegrass masterpiece.

Massachusetts indie kids, Darlingside, do the opposite, using fat harmonies, a heaping helping of banjo, and a lead guitar line suggestive of the mandolin to craft a stunning pop symphony.

Their work has been compared to the best of CSNY and, while I hear a little of that, I am reminded far more of the ringing harmonies of The Hollies and the classical sensibility of The Beach Boys.

Those influences are best heard on the studio version of “My Gal, My Guy”, but you might be forgiven for wondering if Darlingside can cut it live. Yes, they can.

How Bluegrass Grew

If a couple of college students named Mike Seeger and Ralph Rinzler hadn’t prodded Bill Monroe out of his bluegrass depression-era funk, moments like this might never have happened.

As it was, Monroe transformed himself over the years into a benevolent-ish bluegrass patriarch, sharing his musical wisdom with the generations that followed during post-show jams and random yet momentous encounters.

What was a dying, regional musical style became a movement, paving the way for musical pyrotechnics like this.

The Del McCoury Band, featuring mandolinist, Ronnie McCoury, joins Marty Stuart for a blistering version of Bill Monroe’s “Rawhide”.

Pure Bluegrass, Poisonous Times

How can you make a case for the exceptional quality of one recording when every recording made by this lineup was exceptional?

There was nothing good about Monroe’s life in this period: woman trouble; the bluegrass depression; the bookings in smaller, dreary venues; the hastening obscurity and increasing combativeness of the man that nobody had yet acknowledged as the father of bluegrass music – all of it was garbage.

Except the music.

During this period, Monroe made the most painful, incandescent, and enduring music of his life. It helped that he had an equally-troubled duet partner in Jimmy Martin (No, that’s not Martin in the video still, but Bill’s older brother, Charlie – speaking of problematic relationships).

This is “Poison Love”.

Bluegrass From Another World

“Otherworldly” is not an adjective I’ve ever applied to a bluegrass record, but if ever a bluegrass record deserved to be called otherworldly, it’s this one. Stranger still is that it’s sung by two of the least otherworldly singers you could name – Bill Monroe and Jimmy Martin, along with banjoist Rudy Lyle. In fact, that’s young Jimmy Martin playing the guitar in the video still.

A few people have tried to cover this number, with no success whatsoever. They only succeed in pulling it down to earth when it needs to float up and away, as it does in the opening credits of the bluegrass documentary, “High Lonesome”. That opening sequence sends chills up my spine every time I hear it.

This is “A Voice From On High”.

Two Ways To Play

Having only heard Del McCoury’s version of this old song, I was curious to see how Jim and Jesse interpreted it.

Where McCoury is rueful, seeing the humor through the pain, the McReynolds brothers feel the sting keenly. The picking is just a bit angry, and the poignant harmonies cut like a knife. Oddly enough, I like them both.

Here are Jim and Jesse with “She Left Me Standing On the Mountain”.

Invasion of the Hicks From the Sticks

On the eve of this show, gossip columnist Dorothy Kilgallen famously warned New Yorkers to flee the city because “the hicks from the sticks” were about to descend on Carnegie Hall. Apparently, she hadn’t heard that banjo pickin’ college students had commandeered Washington Square Park, ushering in the Folk Scare years before.

Flatt and Scruggs were warmly received. This album became foundational for any bluegrass music library. Bluegrass musicians kept invading Carnegie Hall.

And they lived happily ever after. With the possible exception of those folks who are horrified to find genuine country music in the blogosphere.

Here are Flatt and Scruggs with “Little Maggie”.

Melisma Done Right

If you’re remotely into traditional bluegrass and haven’t seen this video, you may have been living in a cave.

I’m not posting it to alert you to newly-unearthed footage, but to highlight the melismatic Scots-Irish vocal style that is one of the building blocks of bluegrass music. If there’s a better example of that influence at work, I don’t know where to find it.

This is Ralph Stanley and The Clinch Mountain Boys, featuring the astounding Keith Whitley on “Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone”.

An Unexpected Pleasure

Critics loved it; fans hated it. The fans were expecting more psychedelia; what they got was … this.

Generations of country rock and bluegrass lovers – artists and fans alike – have been grateful to The Byrds ever since. Sweetheart of the Rodeo has been an incalculable influence on countless artists from Emmylou Harris to the Eagles.

Some might even blame this seminal album for the dilution of today’s bluegrass and country with rock and pop. They shouldn’t. Just listen to this straight-up, bluegrass version of Woody Guthrie’s “Pretty Boy Floyd”.

How Bluegrass Does Vitriol

So, this is bluegrass: sad, lonesome, even vitriolic lyrics (like this one) delivered with a joy that’s contagious and a driving rhythm (on top of the beat, please) that’s irresistible. Listen to the way the crowd responds to Del McCoury and David Grisman, and their version of Jimmy Martin’s “Dog Bite Your Hide”.

Don’t know who the fiddler is, since they're off camera, but that’s one tasty break.

BONUS: Bluegrass clapping school, done to perfection on the off beats.

Local Color

More evidence that Ralph Stanley is the hardest of hardcore bluegrass artists: drankin’, ridin’ fer pleasure, and sheriff-shootin’, plus prison and court systems so merciless that one descriptive line about each suffices to ensure the sympathy of savvy locals.

This is “Old Richmond Prison”. And no, the irony is not lost on me: This story will only seem glamorous and romantic to many, simply because the perpetrator is W-H-I-T-E.

Vintage Weekend Listening

Here’s some gorgeous listening: Emmylou Harris and Ricky Skaggs, their sublime duet vocals, a well-chosen selection of country and bluegrass songs, and minimal acoustic accompaniment. When two singers are this brilliant, this emotionally raw, who needs anything else?