Tracks: Bury Me Beneath The Weeping Willow, Mansions For Me, There's More Pretty Girls Than One, Memories Of Mother And Dad, Where The Soul Of Man Never Dies, Talk About Suffering, Will The Roses Bloom, Tennessee Blues, The Old Crossroads, Have You Someone In Heaven Awaiting

Personnel: Ricky Skaggs (mandolin and vocals); Tony Rice (guitar and vocals)

By Larry Carlin

THE BIBLE FOR BLUEGRASS duet recordings was first released in 1980. Anyone who knows anything about bluegrass owns - or at least knows about - the influential Ricky Skaggs and Tony Rice duet masterpiece from two decades back. And in honor of the 20 year anniversary of the release of the recording (most of you probably first got it on vinyl) Sugar Hill Records has recently re-issued a re-mastered CD with new artwork and liner notes.

These two bluegrass greats met in the mid-seventies while playing with JD Crowe and The New South. Rice had already been with the band for a few years, and Skaggs was a 20 year-old bluegrass "veteran" from Ralph Stanley & The Clinch Mountain Boys. After the New South band Rice joined the fledgling David Grisman Quintet, and Skaggs went on to play in The Hot Band with Emmylou Harris for awhile before embarking on a solo career as a country singer. And before Rice went on to form his influential Tony Rice Unit, the two of them got together in 1980 in a studio with one guitar, one mandolin, and two of the finest voices bluegrass music has ever heard, to record this Skaggs and Rice record.

On this CD Skaggs and Rice pay homage to the likes of the Lilly, Delmore and The Louvin Brothers (the brother duo acts from early days of country and bluegrass music. It is a stark, bare bones sound here (no backup players or overdubs. Rice sings lead on most of the songs except the first cut (the traditional song Bury Me Beneath The Willow, where Skaggs takes the lead on the verses but then jumps to the harmony on the chorus (and on the instrumental Tennessee Blues. The rest of the songs are all done with two-part harmony at least in the choruses. There are four traditional songs, two by Bill Monroe, one by Charlie Monroe, one by the Stanley Brothers, and two other songs. There is solid picking throughout by these two bluegrass gods on every song except for the haunting a capella version of Talk About Suffering. And what bluegrass jam has never experienced someone singing Where The Soul Of Man Never Dies, which they first heard by these two guys?

Lots have happened in the ensuing years since this recording was made. Ricky Skaggs went off to be a successful country singer before returning to bluegrass a few years back with his multi-IBMA/Grammy Award winning Kentucky Thunder band. He also started his own Skaggs Family Records company. Tony Rice went on to expand the parameters of bluegrass with his Tony Rice Unit, he made quite a few fine solo recordings before losing his singing voice some years back to a throat ailment, and now he plays with his brother Larry, Chris Hillman, and Herb Pedersen. He is still one of the hottest bluegrass guitar pickers around.

On the cover of the new CD are the words, "The Essential Old-Time Country Duet Recording." This is one time where a recording lives up to its hype. For those of you who were maybe too young to be buying records in 1980, or if you no longer have a record player, or if you who somehow overlooked this great work of art way back when, it is indeed essential that you listen to Ricky Skaggs and Tony Rice.

Larry Carlin, Sausalito, Nr. San Francisco, USA |  Write to | Web site |

28 June 2000