Blue Sky Boys - A Treasury of Rare Song Gems From the Past

 

Bill and Earl Bolick, known professionally as the Blue Sky Boys, were another example of early country music with some bluegrass, folk and Americana influences, in the vein of the likes of the Monroe Brothers and the Louvin Brothers. They performed from the mid-1930's until they retired in 1951 because they didn't care for the burgeoning honky tonk style and refused to record with electric guitars! This is a 16 song collection of some of their most requested songs and is certainly a good starting point for anyone interested in their music, although the packaging is extremely minimal, it does contain the original LP's liner notes - grammatical errors and all! 

Opening with "The Sunny Side of Life" (not the similarly titled Carter Family song), we get the Boys' traditional sound - acoustic guitar, mandolin and tight, genetic harmonies - again, similar to my untrained ears, anyway, to the likes of the Louvins. "As Long As I Live" is a short, sad, love song, "Nine Pound Hammer" is the upbeat trad bluegrass number, "The Longest Train I Ever Saw" seems to be a different name for the old folk tune "In the Pines" and from that melancholy refrain we move into "Golden Slippers", as fast-paced, fiddle-led, square-dance-styled instrumental.

They slow down again for another traditional tune, "Mary of the Wild Moor", they get spiritual in the call'n'answer of "I Have Found the Way", there's other fiddle hoe-down instrumental, "Tugboat", more fast-paced fiddle fun'n'harmonies in "Get Along Home", then switch gears for a sad, sappy, kinda tex-mex ballad in "The Last Letter". Back for another bluegrass-y, fiddle instro in "Black Mountain Blues", the waltz-beat "A Picture From Life's Other Side", the heartbreak of lost love in "There's Been a Change", another sad spiritual in "Row Us Over the Tide" and "Dust on the Bible", with its kinda clumsy phrasing, before the bouncey finale of "Turn Your Radio On".

More really well done early country/bluegrass/Americana/folk before there really was a name for it all. Worth searching out!