![]() When Graham cut loose on “Julie Ann” or Gene Watson’s “Speak Softly, You’re Talking To My Heart”, the effect was electric. He was replaced by former Bluegrass Cardinal Randy Graham, a singer with a voice no less high but perhaps even more passionate than Reid’s. Even Dave Loggins’ “A Touch Of Pennsylvania” was turned into a bluegrass tour de force, while Quicksilver’s version of “He Put A Rainbow In The Clouds For Me” set a new standard for a cappella gospel quartets.īy the time Lawson cut Once And For Always, Reid had left to join Ricky Skaggs’ country band. The remainder of the self-titled debut and its follow-up, Quicksilver Rides Again, applied these strengths to a dizzying variety of material, from Bill Monroe and Flatt & Scruggs to folk-rocker Jonathan Edwards to country star Don Williams and country-popster Terri Gibbs. “Mighty Mississippi” began with an a cappella quartet passage, after which the rhythm came barreling in like a bullet train, the Haley-Reid-Lawson trio pealing out over it with a spirit that belied the number’s New Christy Minstrels origin, bolstered by fiery solos from Lawson and guest fiddler Bobby Hicks. On top of that, the vocal strength of the band was second to none, with Haley’s slightly somber lead tone balanced by Reid’s high, pure tenor (then without a trace of the huskiness of more recent years), Lawson’s distinctive tone and vocal flexibility, and, more than occasionally, Baucom’s stolid bass singing.Īll of these were on display from the first song on their first album. Quicksilver laid down a charging rhythm rooted in classic bluegrass styles, yet with a new, almost rocking dimension, thanks in equal measure to the frontman’s crisp mandolin, Jimmy Haley’s solid rhythm guitar, Lou Reid’s thumping, sometimes syncopated electric bass, and Terry Baucom’s driving banjo. These three musicians turned out to suit Lawson just about perfectly. He assembled his own band by picking up two members of a group he had produced a year earlier and a fiddler who, a couple years earlier, had switched over to banjo in Ricky Skaggs’ and Jerry Douglas’ Boone Creek. Lawson was a veteran mandolin player who had spent the preceding seven years with the Country Gentlemen. The self-titled album that makes up the first half of The Original Band was released in late 1979. Why? Because Doyle Lawson and his bands created and elaborated on a new sound that was put together so beautifully, with such attention to detail, and with such a range of material, that it stood between tradition and innovation in just the right place to make musical, intellectual and emotional sense to virtually an entire generation of musicians. For anyone with an interest in bluegrass (as opposed to an individual artist here and there), they are required listening. Lawson was honored with National Heritage Fellowship award by the National Endowment for the Arts in 2006.First, the facts: These two CDs collect four of the most influential bluegrass albums ever made. Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver are the reigning Inspirational Country Music Association (ICM) Vocal Group of the Year, crowned in October 2012 at Nashville’s Schermerhorn Symphony Center, on the heels of Lawson’s induction into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame at the Ryman Auditorium on September 27, 2012. ![]() ![]() Lawson, who is legendary in the Bluegrass genre and called a “mandolin virtuoso” with “perfectly silken harmony” by The New York Times, is reigning SPBGMA Mandolin Player of the Year. With nearly 40 albums to their credit, Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver have multiple Grammy, Dove, ICM, IBMA and SPBGMA Award nominations, and are 7-time winners of IBMA’s Vocal Group of the Year.
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