Will the Circle Be Unbroken

Nitty Gritty Dirt Band | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (November 1, 1994)
• Number of Discs: 2
• Label: Capitol
• ASIN: B000002UC3
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #107,131 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

Disc: 1

1. Grand Ole Opry Song

2. Keep on the Sunny Side

3. Nashville Blues

4. You Are My Flower

5. The Precious Jewel

6. Dark as a Dungeon

7. Tennessee Stud

8. Black Mountain Rag

9. Wreck on the Highway

10. The End of the World

See all 17 tracks on this disc

Disc: 2

1. Lonesome Fiddle Blues

2. Cannonball Rag

3. Avalanche

4. Flint Hill Special

5. Togary Mountain

6. Earl's Breakdown

7. Orange Blossom Special

8. Wabash Cannonball

9. Lost Highway

10. Doc Watson & Merle Travis First Meeting (Dialogue)

See all 21 tracks on this disc

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com essential recording

A history-making event for both popular and country music, this album brought together the hippieish Nitty Gritty Dirt Band with some of the all-time legends of country and bluegrass music, including Roy Acuff, Doc Watson, Earl Scruggs, and Mother Maybelle Carter herself. It may not sound earth-shaking now, but in the days before Johnny Cash covered Soundgarden songs, there wasn't too much mixing going on between Nashville and the longhair camp. The result: an epochal meeting of minds exploring the joys of gospel, bluegrass, and old-time country music. Check out traditional acoustic gems like "Wildwood Flower," "Orange Blossom Special," "Soldier's Joy," and of course the heart-wrenching title track. Sixteen years later, Will the Circle Be Unbroken: Volume Two made for a worthy sequel to this seminal cross-cultural experiment. --Mary Park

Product Description

Remastered reissue of their 1989 album for Warner Brothers, that year's recipient of the CMA's 'Album Of The Year' & winner of three Grammys. Star-studded performers on it include: the late John Denver, Johnny Cash, Levon Helm, Emmylou Harris, Chris Hillman, Bruce Hornsby, Chet Atkins, Roger McGuinn and John Prine. Also features additional sleeve notes and faithfully restored artwork. 20 tracks total. 1998 BGO release. The full title is 'Will The Circle Be Unbroken Volume 2'.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This Album Changed My Life., June 23, 2000

By 

Tom Tuerff (That there Phoenix place) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Will the Circle Be Unbroken (Audio CD)

I remember the first time I heard this album. It was 1977. I was in college and a friend of mine drove 200 MILES to play me this record, which he had just purchased and listened to exactly once.

Well, needless to say, I wondered how the hell I'd done without this album for so long and I went out and bought my own copy. It has always been one of my favorite albums.

You can't classify this album, really; there's folk, there's bluegrass, there's old time country. (For some of the older folks on this record, like Roy Acuff and Maybelle Carter, this was sort of a last hurrah. Both appear flattered, although uneasy, about the situation in the between-song chatter, but once the instruments kick in they do it like the pros they were. Acuff's gentle admonishment of the Dirt Band -- he equates the situation to a man playing with boys -- is particularly hilarious, when you know in hindsight how professional it's all going to sound.) If you need to call this album anything, call it American music.

So many highlights, so little time: All of Doc Watson's stuff is amazing; Merle Travis and Earl Scruggs both play their hearts out and are truly amazed by the multi-talented longhairs from California and their younger Nashville counterparts, Vassar Clements and Norman Blake.

If you only buy two CDs in your life with this kind of music on it, make it this one and John Hartford's Aereo-plain. Both will make you dance and tap your feet and sing, and show you that country music, when it's done right, isn't such a bad thing after all.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Voice in the Chorus, February 14, 2000

By 

Michael Weber "fairportfan" (Atlanta) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Will the Circle Be Unbroken (Audio CD)

The chorus of praise for this incredible set, that is.

I notice a couple of the reviews that are already here have said what i've said on a more or less regular basis since i bought the original edition of this album -- this album belongs in EVERY music-lover's library, no matter what sort of music you THINK you like.

Listening to this album has always been a revelation for me -- what is revealed varies from time to time, but every spin shows me something to think about.

(Lately, listens to this set mostly engender dark ruminations on the parlous state of country music in the year 2000...)

Recorded live in the studio -- no overdubs, no "sweetening" -- mixed *directly* to a two-track master to catch the spontaneity, this is the True Country Tradition made accessible and available.

A couple of minor gripes --

The track timings listed on the inlay card are correct for the songs, but many of the tracks include a fair amount of studio chatter, and actually run long.

One of the inner sleeves of the original 3-LP version featured a reprinted article from the Nashville paper and (i believe) a "Rolling Stone" piece on the project; it would be nice to see those items here with the CD version...

An Interesting Note: Dean O Torrence, credited with the cover graphics on this set, is none than other half of the Sixties surf-music vocal duo.

You Need This Recording.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is THE album for so many folks, March 12, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Will the Circle Be Unbroken (Audio CD)

In bluegrass and old-time circles this album is referred to reverently. Listening to it, you begin to realize what it was about traditional music that makes it so attractive. It is able to bring folks together, not only crossing generation gaps, but also, as evidenced in this ablum, crossing musical genres.

There are many folks, including me, who were first introduced to folk and bluegrass legends like Doc Watson, Jimmy Martin, Merle Travis, Vassar Clements, Mother Maybelle Carter and Earl Scruggs, through this album. We thought we were buying another Nitty Gritty Dirt Band album, but got much more than we bargained for.

This album is filled with memorable moments and performances. For example, among guitar flatpickers this recording of Doc Watson's "Black Mountain Rag" is the one that first hooked many of them onto flatpicking, causing them to leave rock and roll and never look back.

The mood of this album is informal and fun, with much in-between song banter among the artists, and yet the musicianship is impeccable. Like the banter before "Down Yonder" when Doc asks Vassar Clements "How DOES it go Vassar?" and Vassar leaps into the pickup and everyone else jumps in after him without missing a beat. And the moment that Roy Accuff tells everybody before one of his takes that he doesn't like to do retakes so get it right the first time.

If you've ever wondered what it would be like to sit in on a long recording session with a bunch of bluegrass and country legends this is it. It is a classic recording filled with classic performances.