Search - Don Reno, Red Smiley :: Fiddle Breakdown: 20 Instrumental Favorites

Best of genre, a must have for your country collection.

Vocal Music | 01/27/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"If you like classic country or fiddle music, I highly recommend this title. You will find outstanding selections for fiddle, banjo, string guitar, and steel guitar. Natural Bridge Blues (track three) has wonderful guitar picking probably by Red Smiley. Track seven, stomping with Reno, features great fiddling from Buck Ryan with Don Reno picking guitar and nice work from Tom Kiley on steel guitar.



The liner notes states that the album contains examples of western swing, contest fiddling, and many bluegrass standards. I have listened to modern bluegrass and this album sounds more like classic country than bluegrass. There are no vocals and thankfully no rock-style drums that are the bane of modern country music.



My original album had lots of surface noise. This CD solves that problem and brings out the wonderful bass guitar, played by Jerry McCoury, that was barely audible on the original album which had very narrow groove spacing. Although the album has twenty selections, all of the songs are very good and there is no filler material.



Originally released as an album by Buck Ryan, the CD now features Reno and Smiley because of their name recognition. This is one of those rare albums that really merits five stars.



Music Footnote:

Track 18, In the Pines, was also covered by the rock group Nirvana in the early 1990's."