The Blues Are Still the Blues is a fifteen-track retrospective that Rebel Records released on 18 September 2015 (REB-CD 7535). It draws on the four albums the Traditional Grass made for Rebel in the 1990s; the recording dates listed in the discography run from 1991 to 1994, at Rivertracks Studio in Louisa, Kentucky, and Suite 2000 Studio in Nashville. Joe Mullins founded the Ohio band with his father, the fiddler Paul Mullins, in 1983, and it was active until 1995. Joe plays banjo, Mark Rader guitar and lead vocals, Gerald Evans mandolin, with Glen Inman or Mike Clevenger on bass depending on the session. Daniel Mullins wrote the liner notes.
Rader sings lead on the title song, written by Charles M. Rader, and on Carter and Ralph Stanley’s “I’ll Not Be a Stranger,” A. P. Carter’s “You Are My Flower” and the Delmore Brothers’ “Gonna Lay Down My Old Guitar.” Mullins and Evans take the lead on Don Reno’s “It’s Grand to Have Someone to Love You,” and Evans on his own “Lazarus,” co-written with Patty Cooper. “Old Joe” is an instrumental for banjo and fiddle, arranged by Evans and Mullins. Bobby Osborne wrote “You’ll Never Be the Same.”
Tracklist
- 1 The Blues Are Still the Blues 2:39
- 2 You Are My Flower alt version 2:31
- 3 I’ll Not Be a Stranger alt version 3:18
- 4 Rough Edges alt version 2:15
- 5 The Shuffle of My Feet 2:36
- 6 A Broken Heart Keeps Beatin' 2:11
- 7 Old Joe 2:12
- 8 It's Grand to Have Someone to Love You 2:49
- 9 I Believe in the Old Time Way alt version 2:35
- 10 She Has Forgotten 2:33
- 11 Lazarus 2:18
- 12 You'll Never Be the Same 2:08
- 13 You Can Keep Your Nine Pound Hammer alt version 2:29
- 14 Gonna Lay Down My Old Guitar alt version 3:33
- 15 Back to Hancock County 3:02
