The Essential Bluegrass Album cover

The Essential Bluegrass Album

The Osborne Brothers and Mac Wiseman

Album · 1979 · CMH CMH 9016

The Essential Bluegrass Album is a two-record set that Mac Wiseman made with Bobby and Sonny Osborne for CMH Records, released in 1979 (CMH 9016). Its twenty-two tracks were recorded at five sessions between 1 February and 8 May 1979 at Hilltop Studios in Nashville. Wiseman sings and plays rhythm guitar, Bobby Osborne plays mandolin and Sonny Osborne plays banjo, with both brothers singing harmony. The rhythm section is Ray Edenton on rhythm guitar, Jimmy Brock on bass and Robby Osborne on drums. Fiddle, Dobro and high-strung guitar are added on parts of the record: Blaine Sprouse and Buddy Spicher on fiddle, Jerry Douglas on Dobro and Benny Birchfield on high-strung guitar and harmony vocals. On Joe and Rose Lee Maphis’s “Mother Maybelle,” Sonny Osborne switches to lead guitar.

Wiseman had been in the first Foggy Mountain Boys with Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs and later in Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys, and several songs here go back to his own early records. “’Tis Sweet to Be Remembered,” one of his five compositions on the set, was his first solo single in 1951, and he was known for Jimmie Davis’s “Shackles and Chains” from his years on Dot Records. The rest of the program draws on a wide range of writers, including Bill Monroe (“Travelin’ This Lonesome Road”), Clyde Moody and Chubby Wise (“Shenandoah Waltz”), Paul Craft (“Midnight Flyer”), Randall Hylton (“Mountain Fever”) and John Lair (“Take Me Back to Renfro Valley”). It also includes “Family Bible,” credited to Claude Gray, Walter Breeland and Paul Buskirk.

Tracklist

  1. 1 Midnight Flyer Source Recording Paul Craft · key B · 138 bpm 2:00
  2. 2 Shackles and Chains alt version 2:51
  3. 3 Four Walls Around Me 2:32
  4. 4 I'm a Stranger Here 2:43
  5. 5 You’re the Girl of My Dreams alt version 2:01
  6. 6 Family Bible alt version 2:23
  7. 7 Mother Maybelle 2:58
  8. 8 Poison Love alt version 2:00
  9. 9 Take Me Back to Renfro Valley 4:30
  10. 10 Mountain Fever 2:27
  11. 11 'Tis Sweet to Be Remembered 2:47
  12. 12 Keep on the Sunny Side alt version 2:53
  13. 13 It's Goodbye and so Long to You 2:06
  14. 14 Shenandoah Waltz alt version 2:17
  15. 15 I’ll Still Write Your Name in the Sand alt version 2:37
  16. 16 Pins and Needles - In My Heart 2:52
  17. 17 Are You Coming Back to Me 2:29
  18. 18 The Bluebirds Singing for Me alt version 2:47
  19. 19 Old Brush Arbors 2:16
  20. 20 Don’t Let Your Sweet Love Die alt version 2:45
  21. 21 Travelin’ this Lonesome Road alt version 3:03
  22. 22 I Wonder How the Old Folks are at Home alt version 2:51
  23. 23 I've Always Wanted to Sing - In Renfro Valley 3:18
  24. 24 Little White Church Source Recording Arthur Lange, Jeff Branen · key B · 114 bpm 2:46

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