Will the Circle Be Unbroken

Nitty Gritty Dirt Band

album cover

A Cross-Generational Summit Meeting

Just before starting "The Precious Jewel," one of the dusted-off standards on this unusual cross-generational summit meeting, veteran singer Roy Acuff tells his younger accompanists, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, about a long-standing policy he follows in the recording studio. "Once you decide you're going to record a number, don't say, 'Oh, we'll take it over and do it again,'" Acuff says in one of several moments of priceless studio chat between tracks. "Because every time you go through it, you lose a little something."

It's unlikely that all of the thirty-seven tracks on this triple album were first takes. But an astonishing number of them have that first-take feeling. In one of the most unusual musical apprenticeships of the rock era, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band invited country and bluegrass legends to spend time in the studio, sharing songs and traditions. The guests included Mother Maybelle Carter (who plays "Keep on the Sunny Side" on autoharp!), Merle Travis, banjo master Earl Scruggs, Acuff, and others. Also invited were younger, lesser-known musicians—this record established Vassar Clements as a profoundly melodic (and surprisingly versatile) fiddler.

The host band was attentive to the veterans—unlike the many rock figures then grafting country earnestness onto electric backdrops, these guys wanted to do the songs the "right" way, and they sought not just the lines but the magical little embellishments between them. The reverence is audible. Respect flows in both directions, as the mythic "circle" that stretches back to the Carter Family remains unbroken.

Genre: Country, Rock
Released: 1972, Capitol
Key Tracks: "Keep on the Sunny Side," "Wreck on the Highway," "I Saw the Light," "Orange Blossom Special"
Catalog Choice: Alive
Next Stop: Various Artists: O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Book Page: 554

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