The Old Apple Tree is a father-and-daughter album by Molly and Jack Tuttle of Palo Alto, California, released in 2007 on Back Studio Records (BSR 001). It was Molly Tuttle’s first CD: she recorded it at age 13 and was barely 14 when it came out. Jack Tuttle, a Bay Area multi-instrumentalist, bluegrass teacher and author, is credited with banjo, rhythm and lead guitar, mandolin and fiddle, and the two sing together on nearly every track. Molly is credited with lead guitar and banjo, and John Kael plays bass.
The fifteen tracks lean on the repertoire of other singers. Hazel Dickens’s “It’s Hard to Tell the Singer from the Song,” Cousin Emmy’s “Graveyard” and the Louvin Brothers’ “I Wish You Knew” are among them, alongside “Rain and Snow,” “Muleskinner Blues,” “Kentucky Waltz,” “Little Maggie” and “Diamond Joe,” and two instrumentals, “June Apple” and “Alabama Jubilee.” The title song is credited to Jack and Molly Tuttle. Reviewers quoted on Jack Tuttle’s site single out her clawhammer banjo on it and her singing on “Graveyard.”
Molly Tuttle went on to win the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Guitar Player of the Year award in 2017, the first woman to win it, and had also been the first woman nominated in that category in the awards’ 27-year history.
Tracklist
- 1 I Wish You Knew alt version 2:26
- 2 It's Hard To Tell The Singer From The Song 3:32
- 3 Graveyard 3:00
- 4 Walking the Dog alt version 3:32
- 5 June Apple alt version 3:16
- 6 Rain and Snow alt version 4:02
- 7 The Old Apple Tree 2:16
- 8 Stepstone 3:55
- 9 Air Mail Special on the Fly alt version 1:51
- 10 Muleskinner Blues alt version 4:23
- 11 Kentucky Waltz alt version 3:17
- 12 Lonesome Road Blues alt version 2:28
- 13 Little Maggie alt version 2:44
- 14 Alabama Jubilee alt version 2:52
- 15 Diamond Joe alt version 3:33
