EDITORIAL REVIEWS
During the late '50s and early '60s, the Newport Folk Festival was THE place to see folk, blues and country legends strut their stuff in front of a newly appreciative public, and this specially priced 3-CD set collects the best bluegrass performances by a host of big names, with 16 unreleased tracks! Includes Molly and Tenbrooks Bill Monroe & His Bluegrass Boys; Man of Constant Sorrow Stanley Brothers & the Clinch Mountain Boys; Ballad of Jed Clampett Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs & the Foggy Mountain Boys; Border Ride Jim & Jesse & the Virginia Boys, and more.

AMAZON
Although the college kids and liberal urbanites who flocked to the first Newport festivals may have romanticized bluegrass as traditional mountain music, at least they knew great pickers when they heard them. In the early '60s, most bluegrass artists were struggling to build a new audience in the wake of rock & roll and Nashville countrypolitan, and Newport gave them both a venue and a community. The Stanley Brothers, Flatt & Scruggs, Hylo Brown, and especially Bill Monroe responded with a palpable energy and joy. These three discs document some uniformly excellent performances, many never released before, and even those familiar with the Lilly Brothers or Jim & Jesse McReynolds will treasure these rare, live, and exhilarating moments from a pivotal period in American music. --Roy Kasten