The Pioneers and Legends of Bluegrass is a various-artists collection assembled by Ronnie Reno, the son of banjo player Don Reno, and issued on his Man-Do-Lin label as a DVD in 2010 (Man-Do-Lin 0410). Reno built it around previously unseen film of Bill Monroe at a North Carolina festival, with further performances by Lester Flatt, Mac Wiseman, the Lewis Family, Jim & Jesse and the Bluegrass Alliance, the last filmed in 1971. Wiseman’s “All I Have to Offer You Is Me” comes from the Renfro Valley Barn Dance in Kentucky that same year, with Billy Edwards on banjo, Herschel Sizemore on mandolin, and Chubby Wise and Tater Tate on fiddles.
The Bluegrass Alliance plays “Five Hundred Miles” and “I Just Think I’ll Stay Around.” At the time the Louisville band included Sam Bush and Tony Rice. Bush had moved to Louisville and joined in 1970. That year he first heard Rice at a campfire at Carlton Haney’s festival in Reidsville, North Carolina, and brought him into the group. Rice soon moved on to J. D. Crowe’s New South, and in the fall of 1971 the Alliance broke up and re-formed as the New Grass Revival.
In June 2022 Man-Do-Lin Productions released the soundtrack as a fifteen-track digital album of the same name, crediting the two Alliance performances to Tony Rice & Sam Bush. That edition changes the running order and adds the Country Gentlemen’s “Matterhorn” and Wiseman and Reno singing “I’m Using My Bible for a Road Map.” Reno said he got many of the recordings from Wiseman himself, recorded Monroe personally, and had others from Jesse McReynolds and the Lewis Family.
Tracklist
- 1 Muleskinner Blues alt version 4:23
- 2 Paradise alt version 3:15
- 3 Tis Sweet to be Remembered 1:31
- 4 I’ll Stay Around alt version 3:21
- 5 Flattland Toursitor 1:44
- 6 Matterhorn alt version 2:20
- 7 That Silver Haired Daddy of Mine 1:33
- 8 New Jerusalem Way 1:42
- 9 Cotton Mill Man 2:44
- 10 Rawhide alt version 2:31
- 11 I'm Using My Bible for a Road Map 1:09
- 12 How Can You Refuse Him Now 1:55
- 13 Five Hundred Miles alt version 3:29
- 14 All I Have to Offer You is Me 2:47
- 15 Are You Washed in the Blood alt version 2:42
