10 Pretty Gritty Textures

The Earl Scruggs Revue - Four Original Columbia Albums (2018) {2CD Set BGO Records BGOCD1295 rec 1972-1976}
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© 1972-76, 2018 Columbia / Sony Music / BGO Records | BGOCD1295
Country / Folk / Bluegrass / Banjo

Four albums by the legendary Earl Scruggs – all recorded in the years after he'd split with famous partner Lester Flatt, and moved on to work with a younger array of partners in the Earl Scruggs Revue! Given the way that Scruggs revolutionized the sound of American banjo in the postwar years, he'd always found strong interest from a younger audience – but with these records, he almost seems to give back directly to that group – by working with sons Randy and Gary, the younger of whol sings a lot of lead vocals – and almost brings a roots rock approach to the music.

Before Steve Young became one of the founding fathers of country-rock with his 1969 album Rock Salt and Nails, he was a member of Stone Country, a short-lived pop group that fused country and rock in a very different way. Stone Country's sole album, released in the spring of 1968, is a polished but intriguing mixture of sunshine pop, progressive country, blue-eyed soul, and folk-rock, all wrapped up in a slick package created with the best of L.A. studio craftsmanship (producer Rick Jarrard and arranger George Tipton, who both worked on the album, were also helping Harry Nilsson create his sublime early albums at the same time). Stone Country goes in too many directions at once for its own good, but it's clear that this was a band packed with talent and full of great musical ideas; the opener, "Love Psalm," is a delightful bit of psychedelic pop punctuated with some solid bluegrass picking…

In their survey of Haydn's string quartets for ASV, the Lindsays have set about the business of restoring these Classical masterpieces to their proper place in the repertoire, with all their brilliant wit and brusqueness intact, and without undue sweetening or romanticizing. The point, it seems clear, is to bring Haydn out from under the familiar shadows of Mozart and Beethoven, and to render his quartets as the true models of quartet writing, not as light Rococo divertissements or tamer antecedents of greater works. The Lindsays are sharp in their characterizations of Op. 33, Nos. 3, 5, and 6, and their lean textures, crisp articulation, transparent repartee, and pungent attacks distinguish these performances from more commercially pretty or polished versions.