Customer Reviews

Beatle Country

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As an old fan of the CRVB and a good friend of the guy who helped arrange this album when it first came out about 30 years ago, I am a heavily biased observer. But as one who lived through the 60's after college and grew up with the Beatles, but who's greater love is for bluegrass music, I can say without hesitation that this is one of my all time favorite albums. I am delighted to see that it has been re-released as a CD. It should definitely be a part of every country music lover's personal collection. It's a classic blend of two great polyphonic styles of 20th Century music.

Apparently, the CRVB recorded several albums, although this is the only one I've come across. It is a brilliant collection of Beatles covers originally recorded in 1966. They didn't just go for the obvious songs - this must be one of the few Beatles tributes not to include Yesterday.

Some of the songs are very famous, like I feel fine, Help! and Ticket to ride. Less well known are Baby's in black, And your bird can sing and What goes on. I was pleased to see the rarely-covered Paperback writer included, though perhaps my favorite here is Yellow submarine - they insist on singing it as Yeller submarine, but do it very well, including bubbling sounds.

In 1966, when this album was recorded, the line-up included Joe Val, a mandolist and singer well known in bluegrass circles, and Jim Field, former lead singer of the New Lost City Ramblers. The other members were Bob Siggins and Everett A Lilly. Three guest musicians were brought in for the recording - Buddy Spicher, Craig Wingfield and Eric Thompson.

This is a wonderful, if slightly unusual, album, but if you enjoy bluegrass music, it's well worth a listen.

Love this album so much...
Heard the 'Norwegian Wood' cover somewhere, a long time ago.. and I've been searching for this album ever since!
So glad to have found it. We have a cabin in the mountains, and this album is on repeat, during breakfast time, almost every day. Just beautiful.

I got this cd for my husband who had heard it on the radio. He has enjoyed listening to this, and even tho shipping took a bit longer from overseas, it was worth the wait.

The Charles River Valley Boys came together amongst the early `60s folk revival scene of Cambridge, MA, the product Harvard and MIT students and a transplanted New Yorker. For all those Northeast roots (and the jokey name), their shared love of old-timey music resulted in surprisingly fine acoustic bluegrass. This 1966 album for Elektra could have been nothing more than a crass effort to cash in on the Beatles' popularity (see for example The Hollyridge Strings' contemporaneous Beatles Song Book), but the group displays an obvious love of Lennon and McCartney's songs, and finds plenty of room to add bluegrass harmonies. Several choices find obvious analogs in the acoustic string band vein (e.g., "I've Just Seen a Face," "Baby's in Black" and "What Goes On"), but others are taken much further from their source. Lennon's blistering "And Your Bird Can Sing" is turned from angry to melancholy, "Ticket to Ride" leans surprisingly on the blues, and the beat-heavy "She's a Woman" is turned into a hot-picked instrumental for banjo, guitar and mandolin. Originally marketed to the general country music audience, rather than bluegrass fans or folk revivalists, the album stiffed and quickly became a hard-to-find collector's item. Reissued first by Rounder and subsequently by Collectors' Choice, the dozen cuts hold up as both bluegrass-harmony string band music and an affectionate tribute to the Beatles. [©2008 hyperbolium dot com]

"Beatle Country" holds up very well after 30 years, both as a concept album and as a dedication. The idea of bluegrass covers of rock music was not new when the Charles River Valley Boys did it (see Jim and Jesse's classic "Berry Pickin'"), but they chose the right group to cover. The music of the Beatles provides a rich, well-known tableau for instrumental and harmonic interpretation. Boston-based CRVB brought this out in their hard-driving version of "She's A Woman", the marvelous high tenor vocals of Joe Val on "I Feel Fine" and "What Goes On", their light, tight arrangement of "And Your Bird Can Sing". Though demonstrably country in instrumentation, "Beatle Country" has an upbeat, urban flow to it, true to the origins of the songs and also to the true origins of bluegrass, born in the country but polished in the city. The result is music that remains as fresh today as it sounded to me in the mid-70's. The album cover is also a classic, four bluegrass troubadours taking in Piccadilly Circus. For many Beatle fans, "Beatle Country" was and still is their introduction to bluegrass. No library of a bluegrass enthusiast today is complete without this masterpiece.

One of the most original ideas concerning The Beatles. Recording blue grass versions of tracks from the period 1963 - 1966. Very nice. Even The Beatles liked it!