Lester Flatt & The Nashville Grass – The Essential

Though the title suggests it’s a compilation, this twenty-track set is a straight reissue — right down to the liner notes — of the first album Lester Flatt recorded for Los Angeles label CMH back in 1976.

Off of major labels for the first time in 30 years, Flatt was by then seven years past the breakup of his partnership with Earl Scruggs. He was in declining health, too, and though he sang with as much grace and feeling as ever, Flatt’s voice wasn’t the instrument it had been during the duo’s glory days; it was lower, slower and more than occasionally flat.

A comparison to the original versions of many of these songs — more than half of the album reprised Flatt & Scruggs classics — is sobering, despite the best efforts of the Nashville Grass, an accomplished bunch that included veterans Paul Warren (fiddle) and Curly Seckler (tenor vocals) as well as youngsters such as Kenny Ingram (banjo) — now with Rhonda Vincent’s group — and a pint-sized Marty Stuart (mandolin, guitar).

Yet despite the deterioration of Flatt’s vocal abilities, there’s a lot to appreciate here. For one thing, the band was hot, well-schooled in the classic sound; for another, some of the new songs were outstanding, including the comic “I Live The Life Of Riley”, and also “Drink That Mash And Talk That Trash”, which sounds from the title like it ought to be comic as well, but in fact tells a frighteningly deadpan tale of welfare poverty, alcoholism and murder.

Perhaps most importantly, on songs such as “Is It Too Late Now” and “If I Should Wander Back Tonight”, the singer’s evident age imparts a sense of mortality that adds emotional depth to otherwise formulaic (albeit classic) lyrics. Romance is, after all, not the exclusive province of the young, and though it can be tough to listen to at times, this collection makes the point well.