Country Gentlemen – On The Road (And More)

In one of the booklet photos, the Country Gentlemen are posed aboard ski-lift cars, instruments in tow, comic effect courtesy of Tom Gray’s ungainly upright bass. It’s a shot more reminiscent of the Kingston Trio than Flatt & Scruggs, and points out how effectively the Washington, D.C., foursome attached themselves to the era’s urban folk music explosion.

While old-line bluegrass acts introduced folk songs into their albums and — sometimes grudgingly — began accepting bookings at folk festivals, coffeehouses and campuses, the Gentlemen willingly set out to be bluegrass music’s very image of a folk act. This reissue of their third Folkways album adds six tracks from a 1961 Carnegie Hall concert to the LP’s original 1962-63 performances at two Ohio venues: Antioch College in Yellow Springs, and the Sacred Mushroom coffeehouse in Columbus.

The live settings make for a fun document of how the Gents fared amongst the folkies. These shows demonstrate their knack for injecting an urbane and mildly risque brand of humor not only into their stage patter, but into the songs themselves. If today some of this comes off a bit too Kingston Trio cute (particularly their Cockney send-up of “Blue Ridge Mountain Blues”), one cannot deny the audience’s reaction.

More enduringly entertaining is Charlie Waller’s goofy take on Clarence “Frogman” Henry’s “Ain’t Got No Home”, which was to become a Waller staple over the decades and countless lineup changes.

The Country Gentlemen’s folk period might have become nothing more than a quirky footnote were it not for the level of musicianship and creativity they brought to these shows. Mandolinist John Duffey and banjo player Eddie Adcock were a matched pair of fast improvisatory minds but were equally capable of wringing considerable emotion from the slow songs. Waller’s staccato guitar runs and Gray’s nimble bass backup effectively anchored their bandmates’ wilder excursions. Their vocal sound owes its folk-friendly lack of shrillness to Duffey’s stratospheric but decidedly non-nasal tenor singing and Waller’s mellow, Hank Snow-influenced lead.

Although bluegrass purists of the day derided the Country Gentlemen’s approach as lightweight, the delicate beauty of their trio arrangements, best heard here in the two recordings of “A Letter To Tom”, is perhaps the group’s most lasting and imitated contribution. Indeed, that the Waller-Duffey-Adcock-Gray lineup remains one of the most imitated bands in all of mainstream bluegrass is vindication for whatever criticism these performances may have garnered in their day.