Mountain songs are bluegrass’s home territory. The Blue Ridge, the Smokies, the hollers of West Virginia and eastern Kentucky — this is where the music came from, and the songs here keep circling back to it. Some are first-generation classics. Carter Stanley’s “How Mountain Girls Can Love” and “Think of What You’ve Done,” the Delmore Brothers’ “Going Back to the Blue Ridge Mountains,” Clarence Ashley’s “My Home’s Across the Blue Ridge Mountains.” Others came later from writers who lived the same ground. Ola Belle Reed’s “High on a Mountain” and Hazel Dickens’s “West Virginia My Home” are as essential as anything older. Together they map the longing, pride, and homesickness that runs through the whole tradition.

Use this as a starting point for a jam set, a learning list, or just listening. Each song’s page on Picker’s Guide has chord charts, lyrics, recordings, and song history.