Customer Reviews

The Complete Vanguard Recordings

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For most of their long history (which begins in the 1950s), the Country Gentlemen -- based in the Washington, D.C., area -- have been essentially vocalist/guitarist Charlie Waller and whoever was passing through at the time. Some of those passing through were major talents on their way to bluegrass legend. In 1973 and 1974, when these recordings were cut, they included Doyle Lawson, Bill Emerson, Ricky Skaggs, and Jerry Douglas. The result is a satisfying, tradition-rooted, but distinctly modern bluegrass -- or, on occasion, bluegrass-like -- sound. (Even the Country Gentlemen can't transform Kris Kristofferson's "Casey's Last Ride" into bluegrass.) The Gents' repertoire was self-consciously folk-inflected, or anyway folk-revival-inflected, in a way few other bands of the time were. Thus, they were tackling traditional songs such as "One Morning in May" and "House of the Rising Sun" which only their most adventurous contemporaries would have attempted.

The first of the two LPs resurrected here, the eponymously titled The Country Gentlemen, consisted of songs that could have been heard in any Washington folk club of the period: current favorites by Kristofferson, John Prine, Gordon Lightfoot, Paul Simon, and others. When the album came out, I remember being annoyed at what I judged to be its overly familiar line-up. But today, when these songs are seldom heard, I am happy to be reminded just how good they were. Besides the folk-pop selections, there is the chilling vanishing-hitchhiker ballad "Bringing Mary Home," plus a pleasing take on Bob McDill and Allen Reynolds's "Catfish John," then a hit for country singer Johnny Russell.

The second half, from 1974's Remembrances & Forecasts, draws on less covered material in the same vein, with a nod to standard bluegrass via classics from Jimmie Davis ("Home in Louisiana") and Bill Monroe ("Lord Protect My Soul"). Old or new, it's good, solid stuff. One standout is John D. Loudermilk's "The Little Grave," which expresses sentiments one would not expect to hear in a bluegrass song. It's all the more powerful for that, and emblematic of the Gents' admirable capacity for surprise.

It doesn't get any better than this for Bluegrass fans, and, especially, for fans of the original Country Gentlemen, the Seldom Scene and groups with that style. There's not a bad song on the entire album.