Country music and bluegrass grew up together, trading songs back and forth from the start. Bill Monroe cut Jimmie Davis tunes. Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs leaned on Hank Williams. The Stanley Brothers built half their sets out of Carter Family material. These twenty songs are the ones you hear called at every jam — the Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, and Merle Haggard side of the repertoire, plus the older country and brother-duet songs that fed straight into bluegrass. Most of them work in any key, with simple chord shapes and lyrics people already know.

Use this as a starting list for jam prep or for filling out a set. Each song’s page on Picker’s Guide has chord charts, lyrics, recordings to listen through, and a short history of where the song came from and who carried it. Start with the ones you half-know already and work outward from there.