Search - Country Gentlemen :: Folk Session Inside

Brilliant!

Hasjman | 09/02/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"At long last, this gem of a bluegrass album has been released on CD by Copper Creek. Recorded in 1963, the DC based Gents were at the top of their game. This is the "Classic" Country Gentlemen that was inducted into the IBMA Bluegrass Hall of Fame, the first honor bestowed upon musicians who were not the original founders of the genre. Bluegrass lovers should not be offput by the "Folk" in the title. Although the Gents famously incorporated folk tunes into the repertoire and played at college coffee shops during the "folk boom," this is bluegrass music (regardless of the corporate suits' marketing ideas). But it's bluegrass as presented by urban folks.



The close proximity of Washington to the Appalachians and the wave of migration of "mountain people" to the Nation's Capital and its surrounding suburbs in Maryland and Virginia after WWII to take advantage of job opportunities created an important new chapter in bluegrass. These good folks brought their music with them and inspired a legion of pickers raised far from a Blueridge mountain home. Before long this "hillbilly" music was regularly heard in the bars of Georgetown and Capitol Hill and the affluent bedroom communities bordering DC.



Sociological ruminations aside, this is powerful, bluesy music with the wonderful singing and stellar rhythm guitar of Charlie Waller, the searing tenor and aggressive mandolin of John Duffy, the innovative banjo of Eddie Adcock, and the virtuosic bass playing of Tom Gray. Gray's contribution to the Gents' classic sound cannot be overemphasized. For he was a bedrock bluegrass bassist fully versed in the language of jazz, and his walking bass lines give this music a texture and complexity that was wholly fresh and unique. This music was progressive and traditional at the same time and served as a blueprint and inspiration for the new grass wing of bluegrass."