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We mentioned last week that they would have a new Lost and Found CD in March, and Mark tells us that they will also have a Barry Scott Gospel project, the debut from Spring Creek and a new album from David Davis & the Warrior River Boys between April and May.

“That will quickly be followed by Don Rigsby’s first Gospel recording for Rebel sometime in June. I’m confidant Paul Williams will have a new album ready for this year, as he always does.

And that’s just the new projects… we have a few reissues and compilations planned as well. I’m confident that the John Duffey collection we’ve been promising for the past few years will see the light of day sometime this Spring; we’ll also have a Mac Wiseman CD on our Vault Masters Series coming out around that time too.

A collection tentatively titled Drive Time Bluegrass will be the first release of the year on our budget-priced 8000 Series – that will probably drop sometime early Summer. There are also plans for a second Larry Sparks Gospel compilation, a retrospective on Benny & Valle Cain, and a repackaged McPeak Brothers collection as well.”

That’s a lot to be looking forward to from Rebel this year. Hat’s off to them for continuing to release both new music, and compilations from tehir extensive collection of classic bluegrass.

It may also mark the first time a new band hits the national scene composed entirely of players who studied bluegrass music at South Plains College under the tutelage of Alan Munde and Joe Carr.

Spring Creek is made up of Jessica Smith on bass, Chris Elliott on banjo, Alex Johnstone on mandolin and fiddle, and Tyalor Sims on guitar. All four members contribute vocally, trading off on lead and harmony. They write much of the material they record and perform, and feature a good bit of duet singing.

The band will be at IBMA at the end of this month performing on a variety of showcase stages, and will be in the studio later this fall getting started on their debut CD for Rebel. A Spring 2009 release is anticipated.

You can hear hear audio samples from current releases on the band’s web site or MySpace page.

Just today, it has been announced that Junior Sisk & Ramblers’ Choice have signed with Rebel Records. The Ferrum, VA based band consists of Sisk on guitar & lead vocals, Tim Massey on bass, Darrell Wilkerson on banjo, Chris Harris on mandolin, and Billy Hawks on fiddle.

Both band and label are excited by the pairing. Says Sisk…

“I’ve always wanted to record for Rebel. Now I feel like I’ve found a home.”

The straight-ahead, traditional bluegrass favored by the band is a perfect fit for Rebel who specializes in just that. Mark Freeman of Rebel says…

“Junior is a strong singer with a solid band and we’re looking forward to working with them.”

The upcoming album, produced by Ronnie Bowman and tentatively titled Blue Side Of The Blue Ridge, is scheduled for a mid-summer release.

Here’s what David Freeman has to say in his Newsletter ‚Ķ‚Ķ‚Ķ‚Ķ.

“As we enter our 43rd year of selling Bluegrass and Old-Time music, we thought it was a good time to reflect back on some of the changes that have occurred since we put out our first few Newsletters back in 1965 and 1966. At that time‚Äîwhen it only took a 6 cent stamp to mail our Newsletter, and just 15 cents postage to mail 2 LPs anywhere in the USA!‚Äîthere were hardly enough new releases (vinyl LPs) to fill up even two or three pages of space every couple of months. We can’t recall the existence of any significant books about the music at the time, and there were no such things as DVDs or VHS tapes. We scrambled to find news about Fiddlers’ Conventions and even word of future LP releases‚Äîthere were probably not more than 25 or 30 Bluegrass LPs on the market then, and the revival of interest in “Old-Time” music was in its infancy.

In contrast, there is a wealth of great items available today: more good records than we can keep up with, a bunch of amazing DVDs, and in the last two issues alone, 3 or 4 excellent books (in short, more items in one month than we had to offer in the first 2 or 3 years of COUNTY SALES’ existence combined!). What has accounted for the rise in popularity of this wonderful rural American art form that we love? A music that was once mostly associated with sleazy bars and honky tonks, and dismissed by many as inferior, low-life “hillbilly” trash has finally gained a significant measure of respect, and is now a healthy, family type pursuit. The early Bluegrass Festivals, “Dueling Banjos”, “Bonnie & Clyde” and “O Brother Where Art Thou” all have helped greatly in gaining exposure for Bluegrass, but we owe special thanks to the early pioneers who brought respect to the music through their writing & promoting: people like the late Ralph Rinzler, Bill Vernon, and Charles Wolfe, and those still involved today like Bill Malone, Neil Rosenberg, Lance Leroy and Mike Seeger. And a special thanks to all those festival promoters who have insisted on keeping their events clean and family oriented, after a flurry of ill-conceived, rock-based “peace, love, & Bluegrass” fiascos in the early 1970s almost brought an early end to what is now a very healthy phenomenon.”

I thought that this was a subject that warranted further discussion ……….

You mentioned vinyl (LPs) …. what about 45rpm discs? Were you selling many of those in the early days?

In the early days we did sell a few 45s, and some EPs that some Bluegrass artists had out before they could afford to do a full LP or find some label willing to do that for them. I do recall selling quite a few of some EPs that were put out on the Jalyn, Jewel and Rem labels (Esco Hankins & Jackie had some really nice sides on Jewel), and there was Jimmy Murphy and Molly O’Day (as well as others) on Rem. We also sold quite a few Blue Jay (J.E. Mainer, Joe & Janette Carter) and MKB label items, as I had got to know the owners of these labels pretty well (Mr. Butner of MKB in North Carolina, and EP. Williams of Blue Jay in Salisbury, NC. And there were also some nice fiddle EPs out of Missouri & Texas by artist like Lonnie Robertson, Pete McMahan etc.

What were popular items (LPs) ? (Singles/45s) ? in the early days?

Some of the first really big sellers we had were the “budget” LPs that started coming out on the Camden and Harmony labels (Carter Family, Bill Monroe, Flatt & Scruggs, Molly O’Day, etc). As I recall, we bought these for $ 1.,25 and sold them for $ 1.75 each‚Äîthey were great value & great music. Some of the early full price records that we sold really well in our first couple of years were the Decca “Knee Deep In Bluegrass” and Instrumentals LPs, along with the Decca Uncle Dave Macon and Carter Family LPs. (Full price LPs we sold for $ 3.75 each)

What are popular items today?

Some of the most popular items of the past couple of years have been the Flatt & Scruggs DVDs from their Martha White TV shows of the early 1960s. Big sellers among today’s artists include Rhonda Vincent, Del McCoury and IIIrd Tyme Out , and of course Alison Krauss. In between our early days and the present, we probably have sold more Stanley Brothers, Ralph Stanley and Flatt & Scruggs records than anything else‚Äîalso Seldom Scene and Country Gentlemen and Bill Monroe. And we have sold literally thousands of old time CDs by Charlie Poole, Gid Tanner and Uncle Dave Macon.

You spoke of postage …. What does it cost to mail 2 LPs (or equivalent) to US customers these days?

When we started, there was a special rate for books & sound recordings—10 cents for the first pound and 5 cents each additional pound, so 2 or 3 LPs could be shipped for 15cents—today the same parcel is around $ 2.80. And a cardboard mailer that cost us 7 cents in 1965 is now around 40 to 45 cents.

When did County Sales begin to get orders from outside of America? What differences are there in international shipping then and now?

We were dealing with international shipping right from the start. As a matter of fact, that is how we really got started into the business full time, by taking over supplying American country LPs to European customers for a British country music magazine (Country News & Views) that had such a service but then lost its USA supplier in Nashville. So we took over, sending parcels to the British Isles and other European countries, while building up our own business in the USA (mostly from classified ads in the Nashville Music City News Newspaper, at first). We also got a lot of customers by word of mouth and we had a small but solid group of collectors who bid on my auction lists‚Äîmany of them became customers of County Sales when they found they could get current LPs from us at discount prices. I forget the exact rates, but in our early days we could send records overseas very reasonably by using the “Small Packet” rate back then‚ÄîI think it was between $ 1 and $ 2 to send 2 LPs overseas at that time. Now it costs a minimum ofd $ 11.00 to ship anything overseas, and most of the packages we send to Japan and Australia are as much as $ 25.00 or more.

Of course the big issue of the day is digital downloads and you offer that; when did you begin to do so? Is this part of the County Sales operation or is it direct Rebel/County business?

County Sales does not offer any digital downloads at this time. But just about all of our Rebel and County Records catalogs are available for download through i-Tunes, e-music, Geneva, Musicnet and other similar services, and eventually will be available directly from our Rebel Records web page and projected County Records site as well.

What other aspects of the computer age helps County Sales business? Stock control/ordering? Advertising? Communication (When did you first put your (a) catalogue and (b) Newsletter on the web)? Otherwise?

We bought our first computer in 1983, a year or so before Rebel Records issued its first CD (REB-1101, Best Of The Seldom Scene). Both were hugely expensive items for us at that time (we had to take 3500 of the CDs, master the disc in Holland at a cost of over $ 2000.00, press the CD in Japan and pay for shipping to USA, and the price per CD was about 5 times what it is today!), but we felt they were both here to stay and we got into them as early as we could. I think we were also one of the first minor independent labels (Rebel) to get our full catalog on i-Tunes.

It’s hard to believe, but all through the 1960s and 1970s we were typing up mailing labels for several thousand customers every 6 weeks for our Newsletter. Our first computer cost us over $ 4,000.00, and was probably about one fiftieth as powerful or efficient as what we have now‚Äîbut it paid for itself many times over before we upgraded. For one thing, we are able to get an inquiry from a customer overseas, reply back quoting prices, then receive an order from them with payment by credit card, and mail their records to them all within less than an hour: in the “old” days those 4 back & forth transactions might have taken 3 or 4 weeks!

We are (very) far from the most computer literate people, but it’s amazing what the computer has done for our business! (I can’t recall the year that our newsletter first went on the computer, but Burgess Hurd would know, as it was with his help and prodding that we made the jump to creating a web site.

I clarified the situation with Burgess, who has done graphics and online work for Rebel and County for more than 10 years ………………

I contacted Dave about a web site in October, 1996, and began working on the site. About March of 1997 we went live and a job opened up within the company and I started working for him full time.

He had been approached earlier by others to make the County Sales operation available on the web. There may have been an issue with a large expense that caused the previous reluctance as in the beginning of e-commerce the software was very expensive.

I started making the site showing him the progress as I went along. He had not committed, signed anything, contract etc, but as it went along he warmed to the idea and after we got a working order form it became a matter of entering the product and making updates. The company did have the mailing list on the computer and the royalty information for the record labels was on 5″ floppies. This could have been the 1990 date Dave was referring to.

Gary Reid was making some of the County Sales catalogs on the computer before I started with Dave, Old Time, Bluegrass, Gospel, Instrumental, Fiddle, and these were the models for the web site. There was a nice Dell computer, a postscript printer and a HP scanner when I started with Dave but I don’t know how long he may have had them.

The newsletter was up on the web from the beginning as it was a prime selling feature, however there were not “buy now -shopping cart” links until we changed software and service providers. One of the earliest newsletter heads I can find in my files is # 233 – August 1999. With computer crashes and service provider changes some of the earlier editions are no longer available.

As a Post Script I made a rather parochial enquiry, reflecting my own experiences ……..

I bought most of my bluegrass music in the early days through Mike Craig in Scotland; did you supply him? Was that through County Sales or Record Depot?

Yes, after County News & Views went out of business, Mike Craig got in touch with me and started his own import service, with us as one of his wholesale suppliers, an arrangement which kept up until a few years ago when Mike decided to retire from the record business. We keep in touch and Mike visited us here in the states several times. It seemed like he did a lot for Bluegrass and country music in Scotland and all over Great Britain.

Footnote –

This really deserves more than a footnote remark to a long article but I hope that you have read this far.

In the Newsletter, David Freeman passed on this bit of information about an important member of his staff for many years ……

“All of us at County Sales want to wish WANDA DALTON a very happy retirement. Wanda handled our foreign order department and was an invaluable member of our staff for over 32 years. Wanda, who really knows and loves Bluegrass music, retired at the end of 2007, and we have already received many calls from customers who miss hearing her voice!”

Happy Retirement Wanda!

The 20 song anthology embraces some of the classic songs in bluegrass music from some of the great acts in the business (track listing below).

So many of the songs here are inextricably linked with the Rebel catalogue; Bringing Mary Home, Fox On The Run and Atlanta Is Burning being three notable examples. These are signature songs as is Love Of The Mountains. There are the tour de force pieces like Rice’s Nine Pound Hammer and JD Crowe’s Train 45 also.

Most of the material is direct from the Rebel vaults, whereas some came to them indirectly, such as – and I speculate here – the Lilly Brothers track, which was originally recorded for Event Records in 1956 or 1957 and later appeared on a County LP. It was subsequently reissued on a Rebel CD (1688). Others in this category are Little Rosewood Casket – Don Reno & Red Smiley (from a Wango LP), Footprints In The Snow – Mac Wiseman (Vetco material, perhaps), Poor Ellen Smith – Ted Lundy & the Southern Mountain Boys (County), Pig In A Pen – Stanley Brothers (Wango) and Lonesome Road Blues – Larry Richardson & Happy Smith (County).

There’s lots of fine traditional material here, which is typical of this series, and which, apparently, has been doing very well for Rebel. Judging by the titles and the artists listed, the potential for this set to match its predecessors is great.

For those who have a long-time interest in bluegrass music the songs and the respective bands speak for themselves; for newcomers this album is a good place to start investigating the Rebel catalogue.

Thanks must be made to Gary Reid for sharing his thoughts on some aspects of this collection.

Complete track list…

• Nine Pound Hammer – Tony Rice
• John Henry – Lilly Brothers & Don Stover
• Bringing Mary Home – Country Gentlemen
• Wabash Cannonball – Claire Lynch
• Whitehouse Blues – Del McCoury
• Footprints In The Snow – Mac Wiseman
• Atlanta Is Burning – Boys From Indiana
• Fireball Mail – Lonesome River Band
• Fox On The Run – Emerson & Waldron
• Poor Ellen Smith – Ted Lundy & the Southern Mountain Boys
• Love Of The Mountains – Lost & Found
• Darling Corey – Seldom Scene
• Little Glass Of Wine – Ralph Stanley
• Train 45 – J.D. Crowe
• Little Rosewood Casket – Don Reno & Red Smiley
• Pig In A Pen – Stanley Brothers
• Dream Of A Miner’s Child – Whitley & Skaggs
• Down In The Willow Garden – Dave Evans
• Roving Gambler – Larry Sparks
• Lonesome Road Blues – Larry Richardson & Happy Smith

Rebel Records

Bluegrass fans remember Gaudreau from his years with The Country Gentlemen, The Tony Rice Unit and his current gig with John Starling & Carolina Star. Klein will be familiar as a former member of both Seldom Scene and Chesapeake.

According to Mark Freeman of Rebel:

“It’s a very simple, straightforward traditional album, a polar opposite to their Chesapeake days. There are no additional musicians or instruments, just Moondi and Jimmy on guitar and mandolin respectively performing a number of bluegrass and folk standards with some very nice instrumentals as well.”

The two have played a number of shows in the DC-area, and will be booking shows for 2008 as their busy schedules with other commitments allow.

Look for their new CD on Rebel in February 2008.

First up is a Lonesome River Band album from 1988, one which many recent fans of the band may learn about for the first time. Saturday Night, Sunday Morning came out on LP several years before the band took the bluegrass world by storm with Carrying The Tradition, but featured the drive and agreesive style that later (and current) editions of the band perfected.

This release featured founding members Tim Austin on guitar and Jerry McMillan on bass, along with Brian Fessler on banjo and Adam Steffey on mandolin. As you might guess from the title, this project features a mix of secular and spiritual material, with Adam’s instrumental take on Daybreak In Dixie.

You can sample the tracks or purchase the music in iTunes.

Makin’ Tracks by The McPreake Brothers was first released in 1983 on County Records – the last of the three McPeake projects for Rebel/County. By this time, the three brothers (Dewey, Larry and Mike) had established themselves as one of the premiere bluegrass vocal groups of their day.

Living in Southwest Virginia as I do, there were many opportunities to see them perform live, but they never toured far from their homes near Wytheville, VA, and their fine harmony was kept a secret from many bluegrass fans around the world – other than from these fine recordings.

Check out this valuable reissue on iTunes.

The latest CD from bluegrass stalwart Paul Williams and his band, Where No One Stands Alone (Rebel REB 1822) will be released on May 22.

An very accomplished mandolin player, Paul Williams’ first job in bluegrass music was with the legendary Lonesome Pine Fiddlers in the 1950s. From there, he then went on to become one of Jimmy Martin’s Sunny Mountain Boys, staying with the group until the early 1960s. He wrote prolifically during those years and produced many bluegrass classics including Don’t Cry To Me, Prayer Bells Of Heaven and I Like To Hear Them Preach It.

In August of 1963 Williams retired from the bluegrass music circuit, to work for the US Postal Service. However, he continued to write songs and play in churches and radio broadcasts for the next thirty years or so.

In 1995 Paul Williams formed The Victory Trio and the group played in churches around his home town of Morristown, Tennessee. While the group was an immediate regional success, it took four years to achieve wider recognition. The big break came with their second self-produced recording, Old Ways & Old Paths, which was re-released on Rebel Records and subsequently was nominated for a Grammy award in 2000 in the Best Southern, Country, or Bluegrass Gospel Album category.

Paul Williams and The Victory Trio have continued to release great bluegrass gospel albums through the years and their efforts have earned them several nominations for awards. For three consecutive years the Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music (SPBGMA) and the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) nominated the band for Bluegrass Group of the Year, Bluegrass Gospel-Traditional Group of the Year and Bluegrass Vocal Group of the Year, respectively. In February this year the group were presented with the SPBGMA Bluegrass Gospel-Traditional Group of the Year award.

This new collection features 14 all new recordings done at Lasting Sounds Studio, Blountville, Tennessee, in October of last year. Of those, three are original songs penned by Williams; Beautiful Heaven, When We’re Living On The Other Side and I’m Getting Anxious. There are a further two songs where Williams shares co-writing credit; A Long Time Ago (with Susie Keys) and Can You Hear The Angels Sing? (with Joyce Williams).

Among the remainder is I Pressed Through The Crowd (penned by Joe Isaacs) and an Albert E Brumley song, I Know My Lord Is Going To Lead Me Out.

Thank You Jesus is the sole a cappella cut.

Williams has had a complete overhaul of supporting personnel since his last release, with Kelly McCord (guitar) and Rodney Worley (fiddle and guitar) both assisting Williams on vocals, and Kevin Bowen (banjo) and Matt Wallace (bass) rounding out the quintet.

All in all, the collection is more of the good traditional bluegrass gospel that one expects from Paul Williams and The Victory Trio.

To learn more about Paul Williams listen to GrassCast #53 and #54.

These include a first-time-on-CD reissue of JD Crowe’s classic Bluegrass Holiday, and compilations of new-to-CD Gospel cuts from Ralph Stanley, Mountain Preacher’s Child, and a budget-priced Seldom Scene compilation project, Different Roads.

More details about all three can be found in our earlier post.

You can listen to audio samples from Bluegrass Holiday, Mountain Preacher’s Child and Different Roads in the iTunes Music Store.

We first mentioned this project back in August when Kenny and Amanda started making it available at their shows, which unfortunately created some confusion as Rebel was not officially releasing the CD until 2007. Mark Freeman with Rebel tells us that they wanted to take some extra time preparing for this project’s street date to give it the sort of pre-release attention they felt it deserved.

Freeman said that they have brought on a publicist for Tell Someone who specializes in Christian music, and will jointly distribute the CD with Crossroads Music, a label with deep penetration in that market.

The CD is available now from Kenny and Amanda’s web site. Radio hosts who get promo service from Rebel can expect a copy this week, and retailers will have it by the end of January 2007.

For Scene fans, the disputes are about whether the original band (Starling, Auldridge, Eldridge, Duffey and Gray) has ever been eclipsed by the many fine lineups that followed, or the first rate band now performing under that name, with Ben Eldridge the sole founding member on stage.

Taking no side in this dispute, I can predict that Seldom Scene originalists will have much to cheer in the February release of Slidin’ Home, from John Starling & Carolina Star. In addition to Starling, the band includes Scene founders Mike Auldridge and Tom Gray, plus Jimmie Gaudreau and Ricky Simpkins.

They were assisted on the new CD by Emmy Lou Harris, who has been a long time duet partner with Starling. She joins him on In My Hour Of Darkness, a song she co-wrote with Gram Parsons. Other tracks include Starling’s take on Lowell George’s classic anthem, Willin’ and Waitin’ For A Train.

Starling says that they dedicated a lot of effort to utilizing modern recording technology in ways that would enhance a live, living room sort of feel.

"For the new project, we felt that modern, high-resolution digital recording and mixing techniques, a good acoustic environment and musician practice prior to, not on, recording day, would once again make the process fun for everybody. And I knew Mike and Tom were the type of world-class musicians who could pull this off.

We were able to really capture the energy and excitement that comes from playing live. We had really high expectations going into this, but I think the new record exceeds everything we wanted to accomplish."

There are a couple of audio samples from Slidin’ Home on the band’s MySpace page, which also lists some show dates where the band will be appearing next year.

Slidin’ Home is scheduled for a February 20, 2007 release on Rebel Records. Radio service is anticipated shortly after the new year.

Earlier this year,

Down Where The River Bends was first released in 1978, and marked the Clinch Mountain Boys debut of Charlie Sizemore as a lead vocalist and Junior Blankenship on guitar. This pair remained with Stanley for the next ten years, and were also featured on the other new Rebel iTunes reisuue, Memory Of Your Smile, initially released in 1982.

These two Stanley reissues are only available in the iTunes Music Store, where audio samples of each track can be heard, with instant download purchase enabled.

Rebel announced this summer that they would be making many of the out-of-print titles in their catalog available as download-only reissues, and have a pair of albums from the Forbes Family as well as the prior Ralph Stanley projects now up on iTunes. No further download reissues are expected this year, but more will be announced in January 2007.

We’ll be sure to update wth more details as we get them.