In the early days, there was no need for a descriptor. It was just “music.” The music that grew naturally out of the environment, played on homemade instruments and using the rhythms and the stories that had been passed down generation by generation. It certainly wasn’t highbrow like opera or even broadly popular like music hall. If people ever did need a label, they just named it for where it had come from. They called it mountain music.
As with so many indigenous art forms, it took an outsider to ignite interest. In this case, a Brit named Cecil Sharp began traveling to those mountains in the 1910s and recording the music. The emergence of radio exposed the sound to a wider audience and resulted in a catchier, albeit more pejorative name – hillbilly music.
Eventually, it did grow in stature, as music fans began to recognize the virtuosity of the best musicians and the authenticity of the expression. Festivals began cropping up. So did another new name. But in the mid-1950s, it was known as bluegrass.
10 bluegrass albums that are not to be missed
If you’re not a bluegrass fan, the most important names in the genre may occupy some distant recess in your memory. They may sound familiar but you can’t match that name with their music. I’m here to help rectify that, for those who are interested. Because this is a crucial part of American history, and current purveyors are reaching far beyond the traditional roots of mountain music, while never losing sight of those origins.
Bluegrass, be it traditional or progressive, tells great stories, and it tells them in a way that almost forces you to tap your toes and sing along. Modern progressive banjo player Kyle Tuttle summed up the compelling dichotomy at the heart of so much great bluegrass. The lyrics, he says, often tell stories of tragedy. But the music is impossibly energized. Somewhere in the middle of it all, you find a genuine American art form, whether you call it lowbrow hillbilly, or the more modern highbrow Americana.
It’s all bluegrass to me. Here are ten seminal albums from the early days to the present that can serve as a good primer for those wishing to dive into the vital genre.
BILL MONROE – COUNTRY MUSIC HALL OF FAME – 1991
Let’s get a couple of things said right up front. Bill Monroe invented bluegrass music. He didn’t invent mountain or hillbilly music, and I just said that those were forerunners of bluegrass. Still, he invented bluegrass. He elevated the mandolin to vital status in the ensemble and he pumped new life and energy into traditional country and mountain tunes. Bluegrass music is called bluegrass music because Bill Monroe hailed from Kentucky – the bluegrass state.
Second, you cannot pick a single album. It’s not simply that Monroe’s career was too vast to cover in one album. It’s that most of his greatest work was not initially released in album form. They were singles that were later gathered up and parceled out on dozens of compilations.
The Country Music Hall of Fame release from 1991 is the best single-volume compilation I know of. This covers the highlights from his Decca years, from the 1950s through the 1980s. Even with all that, it omits crucial tracks from the 1940s and necessarily leaves out plenty of personal favorites from the ‘50s onward.
But on this one album, you get 16 glorious songs, including the hyper-speed picking on “White House Blues,” about the assassination of President McKinley and his iconic take on Jimmie Rodgers’ country classic “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” which begins at a moderate pace, then kicks into overdrive once the boys start cutting loose.
Many of the greatest bluegrass artists got their start with Bill Monroe. If you have the money and the good fortune to find a copy, you might want to invest in the Bear Family collection of Monroe’s greatest work. That comes from the German outfit that puts out among the very best large compilations of hard-to-find genres.
LESTER FLATT AND EARL SCRUGGS – The Fabulous Sound of Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs – 1964
Speaking of giants who started with Bill Monroe, Flatt and Scruggs were members of Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys in the 1940s. When they split from Monroe, Lester did most of the singing and played guitar while Earl became famous as one of the greatest banjo players there ever was. Their band was called the Foggy Mountain Boys.
There was a creative tension between the partners that yielded extraordinary results. Scruggs favored the new sounds of progressive bluegrass while Flatt preferred the more traditional ones. So you get both from the best of Flatt & Scruggs.
The other thing you recognize is that though both were fully capable of playing fast, they had some of their greatest success in slowing down the rapid picking and allowing the music to evolve. That is the actual point of one song on Fabulous Sound – the Johnny Cash composition “When Papa Played the Dobro.”
For a lot of mainstream America, Flatt & Scruggs were the face of bluegrass owing to their appearances as themselves on The Beverly Hillbillies, and their iconic theme song for the number one show in the country in the early ‘60s. Pretty soon, another outstanding bluegrass act – the Dillards – was making regular appearances on The Andy Griffith Show as the fictional Darling family.
THE STANLEY BROTHERS – The Complete Columbia Stanley Brothers – 1996
The Stanley Brothers are the third pillar of bluegrass, along with Bill Monroe and Flatt & Scruggs. Carter and Ralph came out of rural Virginia and launched their careers after the War. Carter’s magnificent voice, and the harmony provided by Ralph’s high tenor, quickly became their trademark. They formed their band – the Clinch Mountain Boys – and grew so popular that they were signed by Columbia in the late 1950s. (A move which prompted an angry Monroe to leave the label.)
Though their sound grew more complex after leaving Columbia for Mercury a few years later, this collection of their 22 Columbia releases is about as good an introduction to the formative days of bluegrass as you will find. Their playing got better and better, but those voices are what make the Stanleys an essential part of bluegrass. Just give a listen to “The Lonesome River.”
Carter’s mournful lead carries the verse before Ralph's soaring harmonies raise goosebumps on the chorus. The voices bend and curve around each other in ways that few vocal groups have ever managed, regardless of genre. When they sing entire songs together -- as on "Little Glass of Wine” or “The Drunkard’s Hell,” you could swear those voices are emerging from the same source.
Carter was a heavy drinker and liver disease took him away in the mid-‘60s, when he was barely 40 years old. Ralph forged on for many more decades, playing a crucial role on the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack that would introduce bluegrass to a brand new generation.
COUNTRY GENTLEMEN – Country Songs, Old and New – 1960
Not all bluegrass came from Kentucky, or even from Appalachia. Almost as soon as popular festivals began springing up, new bands that brought different perspectives to the form began emerging as well. The first and most important of these early new bands was formed in Washington, DC in the late 1960s. Charlie Waller, Tom Gray, John Duffy, and Eddie Adcock played traditional bluegrass, but they couldn’t help but bring something a touch more modern to their songs.
Country Songs, Old and New, their first album, put it in stark relief. Their three-part harmonies, with high tenor leads, predicted a lot of both folk and rock and roll that was to come. Duffy’s mandolin and Adcock’s banjo began altering rhythms to create a fresher sound.
Give a listen to the instrumental “Weeping Willow,” and you’ll hear the old and new promises in the title. Then we’re back to the breakneck speed of “Tomorrow’s My Wedding Day,” which could have come right from Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys in the ‘40s.
Country Gentlemen were among the very first of the newer groups to be identified with progressive bluegrass, which came to be known as “newgrass” for those too lazy to say “progressive.”
JOHN HARTFORD – Aereo-Plain – 1971
If Country Gentlemen opened the door for progressive bluegrass, John Hartford invited the hippies in. Hartford was an accomplished fiddle and banjo player, who could pay respect to the old-school masters. But he had the irreverence of a ‘60s rebel and was not afraid to have fun with the classics.
He had already cranked out a slew of albums for RCA in the late 60s when he moved to Warner’s for a pair of albums in the early ‘70s. Aereo-Plain, and its follow-up, Morning Bugle, were first-class efforts that failed to find a mainstream audience. They parted ways after those two releases, and Hartford spent the remainder of his career releasing albums through specialty label Flying Fish, and eventually through the label that bought them, Rounder Records.
Aereo-Plane shows Hartford in full force. He has a stellar cast around him, led by frequent collaborator, guitarist Norman Blake. He has classic throwbacks like Albert Brumley’s gospel-tinged “Turn Your Radio On” and his own “Steamboat Whistle Blues,” which was new but sounded old.
And then he had those irreverent modern songs like “Holding” and “Up on the Hill Where Do the Boogie,” a pair of bluegrass scat songs that are about as much fun as you can have in a bluegrass song. He also mixes in a couple of instrumentals that show off the band. The layers of “Symphony Hall Rag” is another song that is both old as the hills and young as a Viet Nam protestor at her first demonstration.
Just before he died, some of Hartford’s music was featured in the biggest bluegrass album of the last 25 years – T Bone Burnett’s soundtrack for the Coen Brothers O Brother, Where Art Thou? Highly appropriate for a man who did so much to expose bluegrass to a new audience.
JIMMY COLLIER – Freedom on My Mind – 1965
I wish I knew more about Jimmy Collier. I wish his album Freedom on My Mind was readily available. Late in life, a few videos surfaced of him performing which made him more of a real man and less of a myth. Those tiny snippets can only hint at what it must have been like to see him performing as a young man, essentially warming up the crowd at Martin Luther King, Jr. rallies. In a local news profile about fifteen years ago, Collier told the reporter he never knew if he would be playing for a few minutes or a few hours when opening for King.
Collier is the least known name on this list, and judging by the small sample size I have heard, he was not the virtuoso player that some of the others were. He was a good guitar player and competent on the banjo, and he had a powerful baritone and compelling presence as a performer. He is also one of the very few artists of color who made any kind of mark in the early decades of bluegrass.
Collier came out of a gospel tradition and soon applied the lessons of his youth to the civil rights struggle. He was both a musician and organizer and the one album from which I have heard pieces, Freedom on My Mind, shows that he was a first-rate performer. If that isn’t enough for you to consider him worthy of inclusion on this esteemed list, let me offer one other piece of supporting evidence.
Collier also told that news program that when traveling in the south during the civil rights era, he was frequently denied the opportunity to purchase strings for his guitar. Since he played a lot and was constantly breaking them, he had to figure out ways to make his own strings out of whatever materials he could find. And that, as much as anything I have heard, hearkens back to the earliest days of bluegrass. Back when it was mountain music and all the performers built their own instruments so that they could play their own music.
DEL MCCOURY – A Deeper Shade of Blue – 1993
Bill Monroe passed away in 1996 at the age of 84. A few years prior, a kid named William Lee Apostol – who would eventually become the face of modern bluegrass – was born. Del McCoury was the link between the two. He began playing banjo and singing in a few bluegrass outfits in the late ‘50s before joining up with Monroe as guitarist and singer in 1963. From there, he would team up with a great many musicians and explore every style of popular music, while always bringing along a good helping of bluegrass.
McCoury would eventually form his band with family. First, it was his brother Jerry in the Dixie Pals, and later, his two sons would join him in the Del McCoury Band. A Deeper Shade of Blue came at his zenith in the early ‘90s, when he was winning IBMA's major awards seemingly every year. Though he has continued to put out excellent work to this day, this album is the best place to start to understand how traditional bluegrass has been gradually broadening its appeal over the past fifty years.
The lead track, “Cheek to Cheek With the Blues,” shows the band in its full bluegrass glory. Del’s twangy tenor harmonizing with his son Ronnie soars over Ronnie’s mandolin and his other son Rob’s banjo. “How Long Blues” is a classic blues number given bluegrass treatment with Ronnie’s mandolin. A fiddle shows up on “What Made Milwaukee Famous,” And dobro master Jerry Douglas, who co-produced with Ronnie, makes an appearance on “Cold Cheater’s Heart.”
McCoury has performed with a who’s who of modern music over his long career, and this album stands at the crossroads of traditional and progressive – one the very best blends you will ever hear.
ALISON KRAUSS & UNION STATION – Every Time You Say Goodbye – 1992
Alison Krauss is the most important figure in bluegrass music in the early 21st century. Her extraordinary popularity, both as a soloist and with her band Union Station, has elevated bluegrass in ways not seen since the days of Bill Monroe. She has branched out in all directions. Her popular tours with Robert Plant have introduced elements of bluegrass into the ears of traditional rock & roll fans.
Krauss is an excellent fiddle player, but she is known primarily as having one of the finest voices in the history of bluegrass. Like Del McCoury, she dominated the IBMA’s in the early ‘90s. She was a crucial part of the O Brother… soundtrack and continued to put out essential albums into the new millennium.
Most fans would suggest beginning with her first-rate Live album from 2003 or the studio album she released two years earlier, New Favorite. There is a very good reason for those suggestions. They feature the strongest version of Union Station, with Dan Tyminski on guitar and vocals, and Jerry Douglas on dobro.
But I am going back further, with the original Union Station featuring Tim Stafford on guitar. Stafford does not provide the same presence as Tymanski, but as a bluegrass album, this early release (just the second by the full band) places Krauss’s vocals in a truer light. I wouldn’t think of arguing that this is somehow better than Krauss’s later explorations with other crossover genres.
I just know when I’m in the mood for bluegrass on a Sunday morning, I’m listening to the spry “Who Could Blame You” or the simple beauty of “Heartstrings” more often than some of the later albums. Krauss never abandoned bluegrass, but as time went on, more of that traditional sound was carried by Tymanski, as Krauss tried out other things. Every Time… is a full-on bluegrass album, with highlights of gospel and traditional country.
BILLY STRINGS – Me/And/Dad – 2022
William Lee Apostol – AKA Billy Strings – exploded onto the national scene when he was just 21, releasing an album with mandolinist Don Julin. In his subsequent solo releases, Strings blew audiences away with the skill and breadth of his playing. He was immediately hailed as perhaps the greatest guitar player in bluegrass history and began incorporating many other musical styles into his famous jams.
In a genre that has been engaged in the same argument Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs had fifty years ago about how much to incorporate new sounds into traditional mountain music, Me/And/Dad was the warmest of hugs. Strings – the guitar hero to many – recorded with his own personal hero, his stepfather Terry Barber. The opening track, “Long Journey Home,” opens with classic banjo picking before reflecting that Kyle Tuttle quote to a tee. Fast music – tragic lyrics. You have to be hooked.
Barber sings the classic country song “Life to Go,” with fiddle, guitar, and mandolin effortlessly carrying him along. A joyful “Little White Church” features Michael Cleveland’s fiddle. He also takes a nice little solo on the high-octane “Dig a Little Deeper (in the Well),” which also gets some fiery banjo from Del’s boy Rob McCoury. Jerry Douglas’s dobro is there, as it is on so many seminal modern bluegrass albums. And by the end, Debra Apostol – Billy’s mom – joins in singing “I Heard My Mother Weeping.”
MOLLY TUTTLE & GOLDEN HIGHWAY – Crooked Tree – 2022
By the time she had formalized her dynamic backing band Golden Highway, Molly Tuttle had already been chosen the IBMA Guitarist of the Year twice. She would add a couple of Vocalist awards a few years later. She was not yet 30.
Teamed with Golden Highway, the magic was immediate. The classic five-piece bluegrass outfit featured virtuosos at every turn, all capable of playing any type of music. Bronwyn Keith-Hynes sweeping fiddle runs trade-off with Dominick Leslie’s lightning-fast mandolin from the other side of the stage.
Between the poles, the banjo and backing vocals from the amazingly unrelated Kyle Tuttle and Shelby Means’ bass and occasional vocals provide stellar support. On Crooked Tree, she also calls on a host of bluegrass royalty, from Billy Strings to Sierra Hull and Ketch Secor for support. Molly co-produced with the ever-present Jerry Douglas, who lends his dobro to the mix.
The result is a first-rate collection of tunes, from the haunting, swampy “Dooley’s Farm,” to the joyous “Side Saddle.” “Nashville Mess Around” and “Castilleja” let the band go wild. Centering it all, the title track is one of the best songs, regardless of genre, produced in the States over the past few years. There is not a weak track on the disc. Tuttle followed up Crooked Tree with City of Gold. Both albums won the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album. Molly, like Billy Strings, just turned 31 years old. The future of bluegrass looks pretty darn solid.