Keith Whitley & Ricky Skaggs - Second Generation Bluegrass

(Rebel SLP 1504) 1971

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Keith Whitley and Ricky Skaggs second album was recorded at Roy Homer's basement studio largely on the 29th June, 1971, and finished off the following day, when the band also recorded the final seven tracks for Ralph's Something Old, Something New LP.

In the (not quite) six months since the duo had first entered a recording studio in January for their Jalyn debut the pair had performed with Ralph at every opportunity and also helped record the groundbreaking Cry From The Cross LP and five tracks for Something Old, Something New album.

It's not surprising then that there is an an air of confidence in the boys' performance, when compared to their Tribute To The Stanley Brothers.

Like their debut, there is a large Stanley Brother influence, but there are also a few new tunes.

All I Ever Loved Was You was written by Ricky's mother Dorothy, and later re-recorded by Ralph for his Play Requests LP (and much later still the Saturday Night / Sunday Morning set).

Ricky Skaggs, recalling the song said:- "Mom didn't play an instrument, but she'd write out what she could and Dad would help her work out the melody on his guitar. She wrote a lot of love songs when Dad was away working and she was missing him. He'd be on her mind, and she'd wake up in the middle of the night thinking of lyrics. She'd jump out of bed and jot down the words before she'd forget. She said the songs would just come to her."^[1]

Ricky also contributes a fine fiddle instrumental Son Of Hobart and there are two tracks written by David Sloas of The Sloas Brothers:- Sea Of Regret and Those Two Blue Eyes. (The Sloas Brothers were a talented bluegrass band from Eastern Kentucky, you can hear their orginal versions of these two songs on their LP 'I'm Going Home Again' (REM LP-1023) 1967).

Roy Lee Centers' also contributes the light-hearted tale of Poor Monroe.

Rebel re-released this album with a new cover on LP & CD (Rebel REB-1504/REB-CD-1504) 1990. This utilised a section of the original LP sleeve photo on the front cover. In 2001 the album was reissued on CD as 'Second Generation' (ie. with 'Bluegrass' dropped from the title) with a photo by Ron Petronko on the cover taken at Ralph's appearance from the 'Festival of American Folklife, Montreal Canada, June 1971.^[2]

Two additional tracks were recorded at the 29 June session:- a version of Blue Yodel #3 with Ricky Skaggs on lead vocal; and a version of Jack Lynch's In Memory Of Carter Stanley. Both remained unreleased until their appearance on the 2xCD set Classic Stanley.

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

Other artwork / related images:

[1] Ricky Skaggs' book "Kentucky Traveler" (p.37)
[2] The Nov. 1971 issue of 'Bluegrass Unlimited' featured an article and photographs by Ron Petronko on the Festival of American Folklife, which was held at the US Pavilion at Montreal's International "Man And His World" exhibition in Montreal, Canada, June 1971.