Bill Clifton and the Hamilton County Bluegrass Band

Clifton, born William August Marburg in Riderwood, Maryland, in 1931, had led the Dixie Mountain Boys in the 1950s, recording for Starday and Mercury, and in 1961 staged one of the first all-day bluegrass shows, at Luray, Virginia. In 1963 he moved with his family to England and played the folk clubs of Britain and Europe, and in 1967 he joined the Peace Corps, serving three years in the Philippines. The New Zealand album was made during those years.

The Hamilton County Bluegrass Band grew out of the friendship of the banjo player Paul Trenwith and the guitarist Alan Rhodes, who met at Fairfield College in Hamilton in 1962. In 1966 they were joined by the mandolinist Dave Calder and the fiddler Colleen Bain, a classical violinist, and took their name from a Dillards fiddle tune, “Hamilton County,” since half the members came from Hamilton. The band made its first album in Auckland in January 1967, became nationally known as the resident band on the NZBC television series The Country Touch, hosted by Tex Morton, and turned professional at the start of 1969. Lyndsay Bedogni had by then taken over the bass, and when Len Cohen left at the end of 1969 the band continued as a five-piece.

The Kiwi label put the band together with Clifton, and the album was recorded at Mascot Studio in Auckland, produced by John Ruffell. Trenwith played banjo, Calder mandolin, Bain fiddle, Rhodes guitar and Bedogni bass, with Clifton on guitar; Clifton switched to autoharp for his own “Sarah’s Willijog,” and Trenwith did the same on “My Native Home.” The songs drew on country and old-time repertoire: Ernest Tubb’s “Blue-Eyed Elaine,” Grandpa Jones’s “Ridin’ on That Train,” A. P. Carter’s “My Native Home,” Uncle Dave Macon’s “He’s Up with the Angels Now,” “Night Train to Memphis,” “Baby, You Done Flubbed Your Dub with Me,” and the traditional “Jordan Is a Hard Road to Travel,” “Red Wing” and “Feast Here Tonight.”

It was the first of the band’s three albums of 1970 and its last for Kiwi before a move to HMV. The band later spent two years in Australia touring with Slim Dusty, played the Grand Ole Opry on a trip to the United States, and recorded Kersbrook Cottage (1972) in Sydney. Two Shades of Bluegrass was reissued by the British Archive of Country Music in 2013.