One Woman Man

One Woman Man, recorded in 1983, finds Jimmy Martin and the Sunny Mountain Boys working in the style Martin had sustained essentially unchanged since the mid-1950s — hard-driving, ensemble bluegrass built around his powerful lead vocals and a tight, experienced band. Martin had long been a champion of an unmodernized traditional approach at a time when progressive bluegrass, newgrass, and country-influenced hybrids were pulling the genre in new directions. That stubbornness was both his limitation commercially and the source of his integrity. "What a Way to Go" is representative of the album's energy and straightforwardness. Martin's sense of rhythm — he was celebrated among musicians for his bandstand timing — keeps the performances driving forward with an insistence that makes the recordings feel live even in studio settings.