Emerson & Waldron – The Best Of Emerson & Waldron

If they were remembered for nothing else, Bill Emerson and Cliff Waldron would be recalled (and probably cussed) by generations of bluegrass musicians for having converted Manfred Mann’s failed single “Fox On The Run” (a Top-5 hit for Sweet in 1976) into one of the most frequently requested numbers in the bluegrass repertoire. Indeed, were it not for this new collection, which gathers 11 cuts from their three LPs of the late ’60s and early ’70s and five previously unissued cuts, that’s all they might be remembered for — and that, even a cursory listen makes clear, would be an unforgivably sad outcome.

Bill Emerson was well-known in 1967 as an outstanding banjo player, a founder of the Country Gentlemen and a longtime, albeit intermittent, member of Jimmy Martin’s Sunny Mountain Boys, with whom he had appeared on some of the most important bluegrass recordings of the early and mid-1960s. Cliff Waldron was a young singer/guitarist known mostly around the D.C. area until he hooked up with Emerson.

Though well-schooled in the styles of the music’s first generation, both had an inclination to look beyond the standard fare; as Emerson later told an interviewer, “We were tired of singing little darling number two.” What they came up with was a groundbreaking combination of typical bluegrass numbers and a healthy dose of songs drawn from the world of rock and folk-rock that was swirling around the more insular bluegrass scene — songs such as Gordon Lightfoot’s “Early Morning Rain”, Tim Hardin’s “If I Were A Carpenter”, and CCR’s “Proud Mary”, not to mention “Fox”.

Making a consistent sound out of that kind of potpourri was no easy job, but Emerson & Waldron were up to it, especially after they were joined by dobro player Mike Auldridge. Always a solid banjoist and harmony singer, Emerson had punched up his sound during his stints with Martin, while his interest in other kinds of music made for a fusion of old and new that rendered his work instantly recognizable. Waldron’s lead voice had a distinctive timbre that, with his direct approach and clear enunciation, created a delivery at once squarely within the tradition of great bluegrass leads and daringly different.

With young Auldridge, already blazing new trails in bluegrass dobro playing, occasional guest appearances by John Duffey on mandolin, rock-steady bass from Ed Ferris (another early Country Gentleman), and solid, if unspectacular, fiddling from Bill Poffinberger, Emerson & Waldron were a potent ensemble. They offered bluegrass that was not only historically important but immensely satisfying in the way it blended the familiar and unfamiliar in just the right proportions.

For many years, Emerson & Waldron were an act more often mentioned than heard, their records as hard to find as they were said to be important. That’s a tough fate for a band that sounded as good as this one did; hell, it’s a tough fate for any artist. What a pleasure to see them avoid it.