Legendary bluegrass vocalist and mandolinist celebrates 60 years
Vocalist and mandolin player Bobby Osborne has been a legend in the bluegrass world for over sixty years, starting with his radio debut in 1948. With his sights set initially on becoming a country singer, he learned guitar, became a trailblazing mandolin player, and with his soaring tenor voice, a beloved bluegrass singer. Together with his brother Sonny he pioneered changes, such as adding pedal steel and drums to their band’s lineup, that many purists decried. No doubt the drums included on most of these tracks will engender similar criticism, but to fixate on the drumming is to miss the beauty of the band’s playing and the vitality of the singing.
Following Sonny’s retirement in 2006, Bobby Osborne formed the Rocky Top X-Press. On this fourth outing, the focus is split between Osborne’s vocals and the band’s instrumental talents. Winningly, the band spends time down-tempo, giving thoughtful performances on instrumentals like “Man from Rosine,” and welcoming guest performances from David Grisman and Ronnie McCoury. There is some requisite hot-picking, as Mike Toppins’ fingers fly across his banjo strings and Glen Duncan’s bow turns into a blur on the group’s cover of “Rocky Top,” but even here it’s Osborne’s high, keening vocal that gives the arrangement its identity.
Pioneering Appalachian singer, songwriter and string player
Ola Belle Reed is destined for repeated rediscovery. An Appalachian singer steeped in the mix of folk styles born of America’s melting pot, she was discovered at her family’s country music park, by 1950s folk revivalists. By that time she’d already been playing and singing for several decades, and her national emergence at the 1969 Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife showcased a talent that was pure in its folk roots and mature in its expression. Her appearances resulted in recordings for the Folkways label and a 1976 audio documentary, My Epitaph. Her songs have been recorded by Marty Stuart, Del McCoury, the Louvin Brothers and Hot Rize, but it’s her own versions that best capture the folk tradition that she so fully embodied. Belle looked, dressed, talked and performed as a folk musician – part of a folk community rather than a commercially-bred folk scene.
Reed was bred among musicians: her father was a fiddler, one uncle ran a singing school and another taught her to play clawhammer banjo. Her father, uncle and aunt started a band in the early decades of the twentieth century, and Ola Belle and her brother Alex played in the North Carolina Ridge Runners before forming their own band in the late 1940s. Her husband Bud was also a musician, and his family combined with Reed’s to open the New River Ranch country music park. The park hosted most of Nashville’s major stars and many of Wheeling’s best acts, with Ola and Alex’s New River Boys and Girls serving as the opening act and house band. Oddly, at the crucial moment when Gei Zantzinger arrived to record the group, Alex chose not to participate – leaving the recording to be billed under Ola Belle’s name.
This set of nineteen tracks collects eleven from her previously released Folkways LPs and adds eight previously unreleased cuts from 1972 and 1976 archival recordings. The titles include Belle’s best-known originals, including the oft-covered “I’ve Endured” and “High on the Mountain,” as well as terrific renditions of fiddle tunes, mountain songs and nineteenth century standards that include “Bonaparte’s Retreat,” “Foggy Mountain Top,” and “Look Down That Lonesome Road.” Her son David Reed provides harmony on Ralph Stanley’s gospel “I Am the Man, Thomas,” but its her solo vocals that show how thoroughly she could imbue a lyric with aching loneliness. As she says in introducing “Undone in Sorrow,” “When I do a song that is as old as the hills and has the oldest flavor, as Betsy said, ‘If it’s a sad sad sad mournful song, when I get done with it, it’ll be pitiful’.”
Traditional bluegrass keyed by warm lead and harmony vocals
Guitarist Audie Blaylock and his hot-shot bluegrass group return with their second release in as many years, and it’s another fine album of feeling vocals, tight-harmonies and finely crafted musicianship. The quintet’s been reduced to a quartet with the departure of mandolinist Jason Johnson, but their sound doesn’t suffer, as fiddler Patrick McAvinue performs double duty. The group’s instrumental talents live up to their hot-picking name, but it’s the more reserved playing that’s their real strength. McAvinue’s work on the lovelorn and lonesome “All I Can Do is Pretend” and Evan Ward’s laconic banjo picking on “Talk to Your Heart” are graceful additions to the songs rather than flashy look-at-me solos, and group’s vocal blends impress with their subtle textures.
Forceful contemporary acoustic and bluegrass sounds
There’s a power to this sextet’s progressive acoustic and bluegrass sounds that leans into the listener like a poke in the chest. The instruments are mostly the standard acoustic assortment, but the verve with which they’re picked, and the group’s punchy vocal harmonies are heavier than one might expect from a contemporary acoustic outfit. As on their previous self-titled album, the band writes many of their own songs, generally avoids the standard bluegrass canon and stretch their genre with an acoustic reworking of U2’s “In God’s Country.” The latter amplifies the song’s force in group harmonies and a propulsive arrangement, but weans it from the original’s anthemic emotion. The group’s originals weave folk and country sounds with progressive arrangements and hot-picked strings. There are bluegrass intervals in their harmonies, but otherwise their melodies are quite progressive. The instrumental “Magic #9” suggests both – a melody with downtown jazz complications picked on acoustic string instruments from the hills.
All music files are posted with the express permission of the recording artist or record label. Files are available for at most 30 days. If any of these files infringe upon rights that you hold, please notify us at the e-mail contact below and they will be removed.
Reviewed items may have been purchased, rented, borrowed, bartered, streamed, received as gifts or supplied by artists, authors, filmmakers, publishers, manufacturers or publicists.
Hyperbolium.com is affiliated with Amazon.com as an Amazon Associate, and may receive comissions on sales generated by hyperlinks leading to Amazon.com.
Traditional bluegrass recorded at the IBMM
