American Beauty cover

American Beauty

The Nashville Bluegrass Band

Album · 1998 · Sugar Hill SHCD 3882

American Beauty (Sugar Hill SHCD 3882) was released on 21 July 1998 by the Nashville Bluegrass Band: Pat Enright on guitar, Alan O’Bryant on banjo, Roland White on mandolin, Stuart Duncan on fiddle and Gene Libbea on bass. White had been a member since 1987. The band produced the album with Mark Howard, who also engineered it, and it was recorded and mixed at 1103 Studio.

O’Bryant and Enright share most of the lead singing, O’Bryant on six songs and Enright on four. Duncan adds harmony on three tracks, and Libbea and White join the harmony on Ira and Kate Campbell’s “Signs Following.” White takes one lead of his own, on Bob Dylan’s “Livin’ the Blues.” The program also includes “Red Clay Halo,” Candace Randolph’s “All Alone,” “The Johnson Boys” (credited to Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs) and Ralph Stanley’s instrumental “Holiday Pickin’.”

The band had already won the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album with Waitin’ for the Hard Times to Go (1993) and Unleashed (1995). American Beauty was one of five nominees in that category at the 1999 Grammy Awards, where Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder’s Bluegrass Rules! won.

Tracklist

  1. 1 Red Clay Halo alt version 2:53
  2. 2 All Alone 2:50
  3. 3 Fiddlin' Bill 2:54
  4. 4 Signs Following 3:01
  5. 5 The Johnson Boys alt version 2:58
  6. 6 Slow Learner 2:37
  7. 7 Blue Cadillac 3:17
  8. 8 Livin' The Blues 3:23
  9. 9 Holiday Pickin' 2:36
  10. 10 Homeless Waltz 3:27
  11. 11 Down A Winding Road 3:19
  12. 12 Just Like A Fiddle 3:18

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