I have a UK print of this, entitled'Country Tracks' and it's been a firm favourite since far too long ago. The bluegrass singing and playing are just impeccable.Hard to recall just what switched my attention in this direction, perhaps it was the 'Duelling Banjos', then getting some airplay due to the recent popularity of Boorman's 'Deliverance' movie. This is one perfect collection, the Beatle's covers totally absorbed into the Dillard sound and their own songs as brilliant as those by other pens; 'Reason To Believe', or 'Rainmaker' for example. The disc came flooding back as we watched,'Oh Brother'(much to the chagrin of nearby viewers who requested a cessation to my vain karioake efforts).
Any Dillards fans should buy this right away. At the moment it's the ONLY Dillards compilation out there, and it contains 28 tracks from the bands Elektra years ('63 - '69). Some great songs are missing("Cold Trailin'" and "Old Joseph" from the "Back Porch Bluegrass" album, "Touch Her If You Can", "Sundown" and "Pictures" from the "Copperfields" album just to name a few) and had this project been expanded to two CDs it could pretty well cover all they recorded for Elektra (save "Pickin' and Fiddlin'" an album which might turn off some listeners). The first two Dillards albums (Back Porch Bluegrass and Live!!!! Almost!!!) are available on 1 CD as an import (the latter album is essential!). Maybe the complete Dillards catalog will make it to CD. Let's hope so. Two early 70's albums are available on CD as well...
'There Is A Time' is a very satisfying chronicle of The Dillards in the Sixties, with heaping helpings of music representing their growth from journeymen paying homage to the bluegrass gods, to adepts tweaking the same gods' noses and, ultimately, to their most interesting incarnation: cracker-barrel mystics on their seminal albums "Wheatstraw Suite" and "Copperfields," evoking lush earth tone idylls to rival The Beatles' psychedelic ones
The salad days of The Dillards and The Beatles, in fact, were roughly concurrent, but otherwise their stories couldn't be more different. In the beginning (1962), The Dillards were just a little old bluegrass band out of Salem, Missouri who happened to play better, sing better and write better than just about any of their contemporaries. Then, when all but one of the founding members (preternaturally gifted banjoist Doug Dillard, who left in a huff) began to feel like they had mowed all the color out of bluegrass and wanted to try something different, The Dillards recruited Herb Pedersen and midwived a cool, rootsy new musical critter. Somebody with no imagination dubbed the sound 'country rock.' What it was, really, was Dillards Music. And it sounded like nobody and nothing else.
The upshot? In the 1970s, psuedo country-rock bands (especially The Eagles) made a mint homogenizing The Dillards' straight-from-the-cow sound. The Dillards, meanwhile, languished in relative obscurity, even as they continued to experiment and embrace a more electric sound on such LPs as "Roots and Branches," "Tribute to the American Duck" and "The Dillards vs. the Incredible Flying L.A. Time Machine."
If you're an early Eagles fan, I urge you to do yourself a huge favor: Buy this album and hear the difference between real mooing (so to speak) and a See & Say toy.
There's nary a mutt in the bunch and every song is sure to be someone's favorite. For me, one of those is 'Old Man at the Mill,' a song The Dillards transform from a hickish hoedown tune into the first - maybe only - example of square-dance rock. Heaven help me, it makes me want to put on yellow socks and a purple tie with acorns on it and dance like Gomer Pyle. I'm also partial to 'Nobody Knows,' 'Listen to the Sound,' 'Rainmaker' and 'Copperfields,' all of which deserved to be huge radio hits and would have been, had fate been kinder to the star-crossed Dillards.
Oh, and please tell Rod Stewart that Rodney Dillard sang the definitive version of 'Reason to Believe' long before anyone thought he (Stewart, that is) was sexy.
My only complaint: There ain't a single one of Mitch Jayne's knee-slapping monologues from 'Live!!! Almost!!!' Folks, I assure you, this is a sacrilege.
One more thing. If you can listen to overgrown choirboy Herb Pedersen sing the daylights out of 'She Sang Hymns Out of Tune' - a song so hauntingly sad, it not only would've made sentimental TV sister Charlene Darling cry, but probably want to hurl herself off the Robert E. Lee natural bridge in despair - and not miss your mama...my friend, your heart is a brick.
This is the best CD I have ever owned.Best banjo picking ever.