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The new Flatt and Scruggs Band was named The Foggy Mountain Boys, and they secured a contract with Mercury records for whom they recorded from 1948 to 1950. This album contains the tracks they recorded, and helpfully Universal has placed them in chronological order. As an added bonus, the booklet is written by Mary Katherine Aldin, a folk historian, and its excellent.
Now some cautions. This material has been out of copyright for years, and has appeared on all sorts of compilations, some good, and some which are no better than dubbed from vinyl. Some of the songs have been done to death by this process and any prospective buyer should rightly question any reissue that revisits this material. The good news is that the sound is very good, almost Bear Family standard, and the inclusion of all their Mercury output in recording order allows you to appreciate how they developed their sound. The old chestnuts are here of course, Foggy Mountain Breakdown, Roll In My Sweet Baby's Arms, Cora Is Gone etc. but so are unconsidered songs like Pain In My Heart, written by Bobby Osborne and Larry Richardson. I also rediscovered Baby Blue Eyes, a Jim Eanes song.
During their time at Mercury, Flatt and Scruggs worked the road relentlessly, and they interacted with so many musicians that a lot of good material came their way. A lot of it is here on this album.
Hand on heart, I have to say that Flatt and Scruggs golden years lay ahead with Columbia records, but to appreciate how they reached that success, this album answers a lot of questions and is very enjoyable to listen to all the way through. Anyone looking for Flatt and Scruggs Mercury material, who isn't going to invest in the Bear Family Box sets, will find it in good sound, with great notes, all on this one CD.
Arrived on time and was most appreciated by the recipient.
This is just as fundamental to bluegrass music, to general musical culture, as the original sides Lester and Earl cut with Bill Monroe. The new band, without Bill Monroe, cuts loose more musically, builds more openly on the devastingly powerful banjo of Earl Scruggs, the great bluesy, jazz, Western swing educated fiddling of Chubby Wise, and the elegant vocals of Lester Flatt.
Lester Flatt's guitar playing that came through on these records and the sides with Monroe, are the foundation of all modern bluegrass guitar and much that people now use for old timey music and contradance music.
Even though I have had some of these cuts for more than 40 years, I am still devasted every time I play this. The last time I played this, I just had to call a friend of mine who is a champion fiddler out in California just to talk to her about how brilliant Chubby Wise's work is here.
If you came to Lester and Earl from the great records they put out in the 1960s in response to the folk revival, you will find that these and other recordings of the 1940s and 1950s have more of a normal country repertoire with fewer traditional folk songs thrown in. There are more of Earl's original instrumentals, his various "Specials."
I also love the way Earl plays guitar on many of the spiritual tunes like Aren't Going to Go to Heaven Some time.
In the old days the banjo, the fiddle, and the mandolin were thought dangerous satanic and certainly Negroid, and not played on "sacred songs." Bill Monroe would put down his mandolin and pick up a guitar for a sacred song, as Earl here picks up his guitar and Chubby's fiddle is silent.
This is just plain good music that anyone likes. I think someone who seriously enjoys band music of any kind, and enjoys the good interplay between rhythm and lead, will lead much from listening to these records. Anyone who grooves on a great solist improvizing/composing will learn a lot from what Earl and Chubby Wise do here.
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