Junior Blankenship & Friends - The Newsboy

(Two Cat Productions No #) 2006

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The album largely consists of instrumental standards, with Junior's exemplary lead guitar picking to the fore, and features excellent production by Ralph Stanley II.

Junior sings lead on Jimmy Brown, Mary Ann and More Pretty Girls Than One; Ralph II sings a superb lead on Memories Of Mother; and John Rigsby, I think, takes the honours on Worried Man Blues.

Many of the tracks are the kind of tunes/songs that Junior would get called out to perform with Ralph as a 'spotlight' number.

Both the performances and production on this album are top notch, and if you see a copy of this one, it's well worth picking up. The artwork on the cover / CD tray are also worthy of note, with a mock 'Stanley Brothers' poster in the door window in the 1940s front image & a contemporary shot of Junior outside the same building on the tray art.

Incidentally Brown County Breakdown mistitled as Brown County Blues.

The album was originally released on CD. Some later copies also exist on CD-R, which have a white border around the artwork and omit the inner booklet text. As I'm sure you're aware, CD-R's are not as robust as normal CD's being sensitive to heat / light. My CD-R copy died after a couple of years, but luckily I recently found an original CD copy on ebay...

• Junior Blankenship: guitar, vocals
• Dewey Brown: fiddle
• Jack Cooke: bass
• John Rigsby: mandolin
• Steve Sparkman: banjo
• Ralph Stanley: vocals(*)
• Ralph II Stanley: guitar, vocals

NB: (*) backing vocal on Memories Of Mother.

Other artwork / related images: