Pinecastle Records has released three new CD projects this week, each of which we had previewed for you here prior to their street date. They have also launched a new, completely redesigned web site which Andy Evans at Pinecastle tells us has been in the planning stages for several months.

The new releases are from longtime Stanley bass man, Jack Cooke (Sitting On Top Of The World), The Circuit Riders (Let The Ride Begin) and a second compilation set from their extremely popular bluegrass instrumental series (More Ultimate Pickin’).

Andy says that they are still making minor site revisions, but expect that all the bugs will be found and fixed in the next few days. He invites everyone to stop by and have a look around.

We just got word from our friends at Pinecastle Records with the street dates for two of their upcoming releases which have been discussed here of late.

Jack Cooke’s Sittin’ On Top Of The World, and The Circuit Riders’ Let The Ride Begin are both set for an official release on February 20, 2007.

Pinecastle Records has two new CD releases that should be of interest to readers of The Bluegrass Blog.

Jack Cooke has spent the past 37 years working as the bass player with Ralph Stanley & The Clinch Mountain Boys. Before that, he had been a member of both Bill Monroe’s Bluegrass Boys and The Stanley Brothers. Jack has also lent his voice to some of the most memorable bluegrass harmony in the history of the music, providing his soulful baritone to the trios and quartets Dr. Ralph has recorded since he returned to the music in 1970 after brother Carter’s passing.

In this, his first solo project, Sittin’ On Top Of The World, Cooke steps up to the front and offers his take in a set of mostly familiar bluegrass numbers, produced by Jim Lauderdale.

You’ll find a complete track listing, with several audio samples, on the Pinecastle web site.

Also new on Pinecastle is The Best Of David Parmley & Continental Divide. The retrospective CD offers 24 tracks on two audio CDs, with tracks taken from all 5 of their previous Pinecastle releases.

Included are such popular Parmley songs as New Tin Roof, There’ll Always Be A Rocking Chair, Wake Up and Wing And A Prayer.

Track listing and some audio samples are up on the Pinecastle site.

Rebel Records has reissued two Ralph Stanley albums as download only releases on Apple’s iTunes Music Store. Both were originally released in the mid 1970s, during what is widely viewed as the hey day of Dr. Ralph’s post-Carter era, when the band included Keith Whitley, Curly Ray Cline and Jack Cooke.

The first of the two digital reissues is the all-Gospel, Let Me Rest On A Peaceful Mountain, which first came out in 1975, and which features some of the finest a cappella “mountain style” harmony you’ll ever find. The other, Old Home Place, was originally released the following year and includes Whitley singing the classic Sharecropper’s Son, and the cut of If That’s The Way You Feel, later covered (brilliantly) by Ricky Skaggs during his country period.

The album title links above will take you into the iTunes Music Store, but you must have a copy of iTunes software installed on your computer in order to hear the audio samples, or purchase these fine recordings. These two Rebel reissues are only available from iTunes.

We congratulate Rebel Records for making these wonderful albums available again, and hope to see this trend continue. There is a wealth of bluegrass music, out of print from an original LP release, which has never found its way onto CD. Sometimes individual tracks make it into box sets and collections, but we see this option of re-releasing them in toto, but for download only, as an excellent alternative - and one we hope to see repeated many times.