Search - Various Artists :: Mountain Music Bluegrass Style

Early Bluegrass Album Captures Era & Style Well

Todd A. Gracyk | Petaluma, CA USA | 01/10/2002

(4 out of 5 stars)

""Mountain Music Bluegrass Style" features field recordings made by Mike Seeger, who was trying to showcase the more traditional side of bluegrass music as practiced by mostly part-timers in the Washington D.C. area (who had little chance of otherwise recording). This album was made when things were getting thin for professional bluegrass musicians and just before the folk music boom fully embraced bluegrass (this album was targeted at followers of the folk music). This re-issue contains the original 19 tracks plus 4 fine outakes. An insert features brief notes by Seeger written in 1990 plus extensive original notes (reportedly the first written description of bluegrass music).For the most part the CD features that raw, hard-edged country singing that I like so well. Some of the fiddle work by Chubby Anthony is quite good, too. Especially noteworthy are the strong cuts by Earl Taylor and the Stoney Mountain Boys, Don Stover and half of the Lilly Brothers (this being Bea Lilly; Everett Lilly was off with Flatt and Scruggs), and Bob Baker and the Pike County Boys (with Seeger on banjo and tenor vocals).My favorite cuts here are "Katy Cline," "Short Life of Trouble," "Little Willie", "There Ain't Nobody Gonna Miss Me When I'm Gone," "White House Blues," "They're At Rest Together," "Foggy Mountain Top," "Cricket on the Hearth," "Snow Dove" (pretty much "The Butcher's Boy"), "Bile 'Em Cabbage Down." "All the Good Times Have Passed and Gone," and "Drifting Too Far From the Shore.""