The first-generation bluegrass canon is well-trod — but for every “Blue Moon of Kentucky” and “I’ll Fly Away” that everybody calls at the jam, the catalog has many lesser-known songs from the same era. Bill Monroe, the Stanley Brothers, Flatt and Scruggs, Reno and Smiley, the Osborne Brothers, and dozens of contemporaries cut hundreds of sides between 1945 and 1970. These sixty are the next tier — known to working bluegrass musicians but rarely the first thing called.

Each song’s page on Picker’s Guide has chord charts, lyrics, recordings, and song history.