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Ralph Stanley & The Clinch Mountain Boys - 1971-1973

The three years covered by this collection were among the most productive and intensely focused of Ralph Stanleys career. In 1971 alone, his band produced four records for Rebel, and in May of that year, Stanley initiated an annual festival at his home in McClure, Virginia. With exception of fiddler

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch... In Memory of the Sundowners

To describe The Ranch as unlike any other place on earth would be misleading, for it was in fact very much like a great many other places: It was a country music bar. Like every country bar, the Double-R Bar (which was its official name, printed like a cattle brand,

Tom Russell - " But He's Big In Norway"

I met Tom Russell and his longtime guitar accompanist Andrew Hardin in 1981 in a cellar bar in Oslo, Norway. To my astonishment, they did a cover of a Gram Parsons song (at the time I thought I was the only person in Norway familiar with Parsons), and I shouted

Byrds - Sweetheart Of The Rodeo

"We claim Gram Parsons as our unholy ghost, minister of the shotgun wedding of country and rock 'n' roll long before the Eagles crashed the reception." --No Depression Vol. 1, No. 1 If you accept this assertion, then Sweetheart Of The Rodeo is our Pentecost, the

Lefty Frizzell - That's the Way Love Goes: The Final Recordings of Lefty Frizzell

Perhaps Lefty Frizzell knew he was getting ready to check out. By 1972, his emotional, financial and physical health was failing. He'd gone eight years without a top-10 hit, and Columbia, the label he had blessed with a flurry of hits in the '50s, let him go.

Townes Van Zandt - Rear View Mirror

This reissue of a 1993 live album was never intended to memorialize Townes Van Zandt (in the saddest of posthumous ironies, its Sugar Hill sleeve includes a phone number to call for bookings), but it'll do for now. Originally released by Sundown, a tiny Austin indie with limited

Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs - 'Tis Sweet To Be Remembered: The Essential Flatt & Scruggs

If it's true that Bill Monroe invented bluegrass, it's equally true that it wouldn't have happened the way it did without guitarist/lead singer Lester Flatt and banjo player/baritone singer Earl Scruggs. As members of Monroe's 1946-48 Blue Grass Boys, they