Binding: Audio CD
EAN: 0829305000825
Label: Mccoury Music
Manufacturer: Mccoury Music
MPN: 8
Number Of Discs: 1
Publisher: Mccoury Music
Release Date: 2007-10-02
Studio: Mccoury Music

Haggard’s first-ever foray into bluegrass-to be released by bluegrass luminary Del McCoury’s McCoury Music label-includes some new Haggard penned tune, several of his favorite hit songs, as well as Bluegrass standards. The bluegrass sessions was recorded in two days of intimate living room style sessions, as Marty Stuart explains in the disc’s line notes. Each take became a performance. Merle’s singing was totally inspired, Stuart writes. In fact, he got to the point where he didn’t even go in the control room to listen to playbacks. There was no need. All of us new what we were doing was right.
The Hag's "first ever foray into bluegrass," as his publicist tags it, isn't really so much traditional bluegrass, even though it's produced by Ronnie Reno and released on 'grass giant Del McCoury's McCoury Music label. Instead, it's a gathering of refurbished Haggard tunes ("Big City"), several new songs from the Country Music Hall of Famer ("Pray," "What Happened?"), and a couple of nods toward the blues (a medley of Jimmie Rodgers songs, as well as the Delmore Brothers' "Blues Stay Away from Me") that helped form Haggard's country-blues-and-Western-swing core. He makes no attempt to try for a high tenor head voice, throw in a few bluegrass yips, adapt to bluegrass phrasing, or go for a lightning-fast, hard-charging bluegrass sound. But he's got the right pickers to transform his country material into something resembling the bluegrass idiom, calling on Marty Stuart to play mournful mandolin like an ensemble musician and not a star, as well as famed sidemen Carl Jackson, Rob Ickes, and Aubrey Haynie. (Alison Krauss also offers a vocal duet on "Mama's Hungry Eyes.") There are no big surprises here--"What Happened" recalls his familiar theme of America going to hell in a handbasket, and throughout he sings of a woman who left him in the lurch ("Runaway Momma," "I Wonder Where to Find You"). But the great country icon sounds inspired and almost rejuvenated here, giving his all, and taking pains to do some of the most disciplined singing of his career. --Alanna Nash

Customer Rating:
Summary: merle haggard bluegrass
Comment: very good musicians on this session, but merle haggard is still merle and blugrass instrumentation does not change that.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Not bluegrass, but it's not bad . . .
Comment: Merle Haggard is for me the Tony Bennet of country music. With age, his voice has grown mellower and even easier on the ear. He can make a song sound like a classic, even if it isn't particularly memorable. As others have said here, it's not bluegrass by a long shot, but the unplugged arrangements give an intimacy that feels nicely personal. If you like Haggard's deep, resonant voice, you'll enjoy listening to all the songs on this CD. They range from the light-hearted opener "Runaway Mama" to the tearful "Learning to Live With Myself" and the anti-urban lament "Big City." Speaking of which, it makes for great freeway listening on that slow commute home from work.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: seaview
Comment: I'm a great Merle Haggard fan so with this CD bluegrass style is a real plus . Love it

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Good CD, Not Bluegrass.
Comment: I like the CD very much, but it not bluegrass. It's typical Merle Haggare music, only with bluegrass type iinstraments.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Okay but lacking
Comment: I heard an interview about this CD on the radio and they played one song "Learning to Live With Myself" which I really, really liked and granted, after buying the CD, a few songs were great, but there were also the normal 'ho-hum' songs that gives this CD (for me), the need to burn the songs off of it I liked, and give the CD to the library for them to loan out - Not a keeper.

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