Barnes & Noble
This box set features three discs of well-known bluegrass recordings from Bill Monroe, Ricky Skaggs, Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss, Del McCoury, Rhonda Vincent, Vince Gill, and Patty Loveless; selections from the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack; and more.
All Music Guide
Although most people think of bluegrass as an old form of Southern mountain music, it's actually a fairly recent creation, gaining its shape at the same time as rock & roll in the late '40s and early '50s and making use of the same technology (portable microphones and electric amplification) as rock & roll did to catch on and spread. The new technology allowed individual instruments to step forward out of the earlier massed string band approach and also allowed singers to fine-tune and emotionally nuance their vocals without resorting to shouting, which led to more involved and developed vocal harmonies. The big bang for this new genre came with Bill Monroe's classic late-'40s lineup of his Blue Grass Boys (Monroe had actually formed the band nearly a decade earlier in 1939), which included Chubby Wise on fiddle, Lester Flatt on guitar, and the amazing Earl Scruggs on banjo (Scruggs' rolling, rapid, and efficient fingering style would redefine the sound of the five-string banjo for the modern world), and Time Life has wisely opted to open this three-disc, 60-track survey of bluegrass history with that ensemble's 1948 recording of "It's Mighty Dark to Travel." The variety and scope here are impressive, with several other Monroe tracks on display, including a rushed, hell-bent version of "Molly & Tenbrooks" and the classic waltz "Blue Moon of Kentucky," along with solid sides from the Stanley Brothers, the Stonemans, the Kentucky Colonels, the Dillards, and many more. Among the highlights are Moore & Napier's "Barbara Allen," which illustrates how bluegrass appropriated the old mountain ballads for its own needs; the Stonemans' "Cripple Creek," which shows that bluegrass doesn't just speed up the old material it embraces (the Stonemans slow the normal blistering pace of this banjo standard by half); Emmylou Harris' gorgeous, countrified turn on "The Wayfaring Stranger"; and Ralph Stanley's weathered vocals on the rugged and rushing "Little Maggie" and his signature, "O Death," which closes out this set. Bluegrass has broadened its base and moved into new and progressive territory as the 21st century rolls through its first decade, and little of those new byways are explored here, but as a backdrop for the 60-year rise of bluegrass to date, this concise anthology does a great job of setting up and revealing the foundation. Steve Leggett
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