Classic Bluegrass From Smithsonian Folkways

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Featuring tracks by: Dough Wallin Lesley Riddle, Pete Steele, Berzilla Wallin, Kilby Snow, Jean Ritchie and more!

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Originally known as a folk music label, Folkways, founded by Moses Asch in 1948 and now owned by the Smithsonian Institution, also released a number of fine bluegrass records over the years as folk revivalists became hip to the mountain style. This superb 25-track, 65-minute collection represents the best of the label’s bluegrass offerings. Some of the musicians–, the , –are household names. Others are members of the genre’s second generation: ,
Red Allen and Frank Wakefield, and the . Still others, including three-finger-style banjo pioneer and Nashville Grass singer Curly Seckler, are ripe for rediscovery. Most of the music on
Classic Bluegrass is as traditional as it gets, but not all of it. If you think drums are relatively new to bluegrass, listen to the surprisingly jazzy “The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise,” recorded by Watson and banjoist Roger Sprung in 1963 for a years-ahead-of-its-time Folkways album titled
Progressive Bluegrass and Other Instrumentals: Vol. 1. This set is full of such delights.
–David Hill