Dillards “Early Recordings”

WARNING – BLUEGRASS ALERT – WARNING:  If you experience allergic reactions to bluegrass music, please proceed to the next review.

Some of my favorite episodes from the “Andy Griffith Show” are when the Darlings come down from the mountain to play some bluegrass with Andy and wreak havoc on the otherwise sleepy town of Mayberry.  Led by the patriarch, Briscoe aka Uncle Jesse, and the ever-lovely Charlene, the Darlings would, sneak into the hotel, try to find Charlene’s daughter a husband (Opie) or otherwise disrupt the normal flow of our favorite TV town. My favorite episode with the Darlings is when they want to find Charlene’s baby a husband.  The baby is just an infant, but they need to make sure they have the right arrangement made, much like the European Royalty does.  Through a misunderstanding, Opie is betrothed to the child.  Barney ends up drunk and the Taylor’s get out of the jam by using some disappearing ink when signing the contract.  It made the Darlings believe that there’s some witchery in the Taylor clans past. But they later made up with a song.  The mute side of the Darlings clan is actually the bluegrass band, The Dillards, led by brothers Rodney and Douglas Dillard.  They have recently released a CD full of new songs (at least new to us) recorded in a home studio in 1959.  If you’re a fan of Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs, The Dale Gribble Bluegrass Experience or Bill Monroe you will love The Dillards, I guarantee it.*

This CD has four instrumental songs, and in a perfect world, “Banjo in the Hollow,” would be better known than “Dueling Banjos.”  The best toe tapping/hand clapping song on this CD is “Old Man at the Mill.”  If that song doesn’t make you get up and dance around the living room, then I would bet that you don’t have a pulse.  Another good song is the cover of Grandpa Jones “It’s Raining Here This Morning.”  It talks about being locked up in prison, rain and the betrayal of a loved one.  All the ingredients that are necessary for a great bluegrass song.  I suppose Robert Earl’s first band would say that the loved one would need to be dead and had lost her arms, but this is good enough for me.  Best lyric of the CD:

Married a very young maiden

What was her name, I don’t know

So what have we learned today:

-         I can fit Andy Griffith, Robert Earl Keen and King of the Hill references into the same review (you don’t find that kind of talent everyday)

-         if you like bluegrass, you should have the Dillards in your collection

-         a song can clear up any misunderstandings

-         and a good way to get out of any contract is to use disappearing ink, at least it’s a good way to do it in Mayberry.

I’ll give this CD 3 out of 5 dead and dismembered people.

* All guarantees made my Heath Kirk Inc. are not valid anywhere in the Milky Way galaxy.  Let’s face it, anything Heath says is just not credible.