These are the songs that built first-generation bluegrass. Bill Monroe wrote a handful of them himself — “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” “Uncle Pen,” “On and On,” “Molly and Tenbrooks.” The Stanley Brothers brought “How Mountain Girls Can Love” and “The White Dove.” Flatt and Scruggs contributed “Little Cabin Home on the Hill” and made “Roll in My Sweet Baby’s Arms” a jam standard. Mixed in are older songs from the Carter Family, gospel numbers like “I’ll Fly Away” and “Angel Band,” and traditional ballads like “In the Pines” and “John Henry” that bluegrass pulled into its core repertoire. Learn this group and you can sit in at almost any jam.

Work through them in any order. Each song page on Picker’s Guide has chord charts, lyrics, recordings to listen against, and a short song history with where it came from and who cut the definitive version.