Ricky Skaggs and Bruce Hornsby

Hornsby, a pianist and singer from Williamsburg, Virginia, had brought bluegrass into his music well before the partnership: in 1989 he played the Telluride Bluegrass Festival and reworked his song “The Valley Road” with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band for Will the Circle Be Unbroken: Volume Two, a recording that won the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Recording in 1990.

The 2007 album, released on 20 March, was produced by the two of them and recorded at Hornsby’s studio in Williamsburg and at Skaggs Place in Hendersonville, Tennessee. Hornsby sang and played grand piano, and Skaggs sang, played mandolin, guitars, fiddle, banjo and clawhammer banjo, with Kentucky Thunder’s Cody Kilby, Andy Leftwich, Jim Mills and Mark Fain beside them and Jerry Douglas, Stuart Duncan and Jeff Taylor among the guests. Alongside Hornsby’s own “The Dreaded Spoon,” “Gulf of Mexico Fishing Boat Blues,” “Mandolin Rain” and “Crown of Jewels,” it took in the traditional “Across the Rocky Mountain,” “Sheep Shell Corn” and “Hills of Mexico,” arranged by Skaggs, his instrumental “Stubb,” and a bluegrass version of Rick James’s “Super Freak” with John Anderson adding vocal ad-libs. Besides topping the bluegrass chart it reached No. 37 on the country album chart.

Cluck Ol’ Hen, issued on Skaggs Family Records on 20 August 2013, was recorded live, in Omaha, Nebraska, among other places, and put together at Hornsby’s Tossington Sound studio. The band was Skaggs on mandolin and fiddle and Hornsby on piano with Kilby, Darrin Vincent, Ben Helson and Paul Brewster on guitars, Mills on banjo, Leftwich on fiddle and Fain on bass. Between spoken introductions it mixed Bill Monroe’s “Uncle Pen” and two numbers from his Blue Grass Boys’ Columbia sessions of 1946 and 1947, “Toy Heart” and “Bluegrass Breakdown,” with “Darling Corey,” “Little Maggie” and the title piece, and stretched Hornsby’s hit “The Way It Is” to more than ten minutes and “White Wheeled Limousine” to more than fourteen.