V/A - Bluegrass Country Soul

(Time Life M19264) 2003

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Along with Rachael Liebling's High Lonesome film, this is one of those must see 'Bluegrass' DVD's which is jam-picked with top-notch picking and an incredible jaw-dropping line-up.

Filmed at Carlton Haney's 7th Annual Labor Day Weekend Blue Grass Festival at Blue Grass Park, Camp Springs, Reidsville North Carolina in 2nd - 5th Sept 1971, the movie provides a unique view of the early bluegrass festival scene, with many of first generation musicians, and early footage of contemporary bluegrass greats like the Country Gents, J.D. Crowe, Del McCoury, Tony Rice, Sam Bush etc.

The DVD has a playing time of approx 1 hour 26 min and with exception of a few tramlines, the film has good picture quality and excellent sound. The disc also includes an optional bonus commentary option by Fred Bartenstein, which gives lots of informative background details and context to the festival. Fred worked for Carlton Haney at the festival as one of the M.C.'s and was editor of 'Muleskinner News' at the time. According to Fred's commentary the film was originally premiered at the Virginia Theatre in the Washington D.C. area on 6th July 1972. Expectations for the film were high, but unfortunately it didn't get any picked up by any national distributor and only a few prints were made. It did however become an 'underground classic' with 3rd/4th generation copies circulating... and I believe there was a poor quality VHS release as well.

Around the time of the festival, it had been a busy and eventful week for Ralph and the CMB's. They'd played the Grassroots Music Festival near Port Huron, MI the previous weekend (28th/29th Aug), recorded the Sing Michigan Bluegrass LP (30th Aug), and then Roy Lee Centers had to go home on the 31st Aug as one of his children had a bad accident and was critically ill in hospital.^[1] Sadly, Roy Lee was therefore abscent from Ralph's show.

In the film Ralph can be seen singing Man Of Constant Sorrow and Curly Ray Cline is also featured quite prominently during an on stage fiddle jam with several of the fiddlers including Chubby Wise, Hsueh-Cheng 'Ryo' Liao, Tater Tate, Tex Logan, Kenny Kosek, Big Joe Greene and others.

In addition to the film the festival's sound man, Ken Alexander, luckily also made soundboard recordings of many of the acts. Ralph's set, including the Man Of Constant Sorrow used in the film, was later issued by Ralph on cassette as Volume 1 (Recorded Live In 1971) and partly on the Classic Stanley 2xCD. If memory serves, copies of about 35 hours worth of recordings from the festival started circulating on the internet in the late '90s and can still be found in MP3 format on the web at Fred Robbins site. These additional live recordings include two further sets featuring Ralph and The CMB's with the band sharing the stage with Mac Wiseman and Jimmy Martin and The Sunny Mountain Boys. Some of the other tapes include similiar 'two bands on stage' type collaborations, which was something Carlton Haney was experimenting with at the time.

The Timelife DVD has been out of print for some time, but there is now a 50th anniversary 'restored' version of the film available in various configurations. According to Albert Ihde the film was originally made on a low budget and they could only afford a limited amount of film stock, so there's no new footage, although there is a bonus disc around the making of the film. I haven't picked up a copy of this edition yet, as it's a bit expensive. Also from a clip of Ralph's Man Of Constant Sorrow segment on youtube, the restoration process has messed up some of the colours... (the CMB's shirts at this time were red not orange!). A bonus 2 CD of additional music from the film is taken from the MP3s which you can find on Fred Robbins site.

It's worth also mentioning that the Time Life DVD is Region 1 only, so if you're outside the US and don't have a multi-region DVD player, it's tough luck... Region free / Blu-ray options of the restored version are however available from bluegrasscountrysoul.com

• Ralph Stanley: banjo, vocals
• Curly Ray Cline: fiddle
• Jack Cooke: bass
• Ricky Skaggs: mandolin
• Keith Whitley: lead guitar

Other artwork / related images:

[1] On the Volume 1 (Recorded Live In 1971) cassette, Ralph says after Little Maggie "I'd like to tell you that Roy Lee Centers, that's usually with us is er.., one of his children had a bad accident Tuesday night and is in the hospital in a real critical condition, he couldn't be with us, so Keith Whitley is standing in and doing a fine job in Roy Lee's place."