Knee Deep in Bluegrass, released on Decca in 1958, captures Bill Monroe at a transitional moment: the rock and roll era had disrupted country music's commercial certainties, but Monroe's response was to dig deeper into the music he had founded rather than accommodate pop trends. The album is among his most purely traditional-sounding records of the period, with "Lonesome Wind" and "Cry Cry Darling" representing the aching, blue-toned emotional core that made bluegrass something more than an instrumental novelty. Monroe's high, lonesome tenor carries a quality of ancient grief that no amount of commercial pressure could domesticate. The Bluegrass Boys here are capable custodians of the sound.
Tracklist
- 1 Lonesome Wind 2:48
- 2 Sweet Bluegrass Music 3:20
- 3 When I'm Knee Deep in Bluegrass 3:33
- 4 My Little Girl in Tennessee 2:59
- 5 Blue Moon of Kentucky 3:51
- 6 Smokey Mountain Rain 3:34
- 7 More Than a Name on a Wall 3:32
- 8 Ashokan Farewell 3:11
- 9 Call the Captain 3:40
- 10 Hallelujah 4:56
- 11 Cry Cry Darling 2:24
- 12 I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow 3:32
- 13 Couldn't Keep it to Myself 3:00
- 14 God Made a Promise 3:12
- 15 Sharecropper's Son 2:51
- 16 Blackberry Blossom 2:50