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“Country Boy Rock and Roll” was written by Don Reno and recorded by Don Reno, Red Smiley and the Tennessee Cutups in 1956. It was, in effect, Reno’s answer to rock and roll — the new music that was pulling young listeners away from bluegrass in the mid-1950s.
Rather than resist the trend, Reno met it head-on: the song keeps a hard bluegrass drive but leans into a rocking beat, and it spotlights Reno’s own lead guitar, an instrument he played with unusual flash for the genre. The result is a bluegrass band cheerfully claiming a piece of rock and roll for itself.
The song became a standard, recorded by Clarence White, the Crowe Brothers, and others. It remains a favorite for guitarists, a reminder of how Reno helped widen bluegrass’s sense of what it could do.
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