Jerry Douglas: Americana Master Series, The Best Of The Sugar Hill Years
Release Date: March 13, 2007

1. The Wild Rumpus (from the album Lookout for Hope)
2. Takarasaka (from the album Restless on the Farm)
3. Senia's Lament (from the album Lookout for Hope)
4. We Hide And Seek (from the album Slide Rule)
5. Lullaby Of The Leaves (from the album Yonder)
6. A New Day Medley (from the album Lookout for Hope)
7. Cave Bop (from the album Lookout for Hope)
8. Hey Joe (from the album Slide Rule)
9. Birdland (from the album The Great Dobro Sessions)
10. Monkey Let The Hogs Out (from the album Lookout for Hope)
11. Ride The Wild Turkey (from the album Slide Rule)
12. A Tribute To Peador O'Donnell (from the album Restless on the Farm)
13. Things In Life (from the album Restless on the Farm)
14. Like It Is (from the album Restless on the Farm)
15. In The Sweet By and By (from the album Lookout for Hope)
 
Compilation produced by Bev Paul

This new series presents the award-winning music of Sugar Hill's Americana Masters. Researched and compiled from the artist's body of work on Sugar Hill Records, these tracks were culled from radio chart toppers, fan mail, downloads, and songs and tunes that are recurrent favorites at live performances.
 
The series is designed to provide longstanding fans with a collection of favorites. For new fans, this series offers concise entry into the artistic output of these seminal artistswith liner notes that can help them to discover more and to delve more deeply into the artist's catalog.

Jerry Douglas:

Dobro player, composer and producer Jerry Douglas knows the scorn of the self-appointed guardians of musical purity. He talked about it in his keynote speech at the International Bluegrass Music Association's convention in 2006.

"I was told by one of my musical peers that dobros were only good for taking solos away from the real bluegrass instruments,'" he said. And he lamented that arguments about what is and isn't bluegrass have, in his experience, too often resembled a family feud or a civil war.

But blessed are the peacemakers, Jerry Douglas among them. By sliding his steel bar across the spectrum of American music, and by dedicating himself to artistry rather than orthodoxy, he has created a remarkable but far-from-finished body of work. He began in bluegrass, and he can play bluegrass as well as anyone in the world, but he has also demonstrated how malleable and robust bluegrass is, which is at least as great a tribute to a music as playing its unadulterated form.

Jerry Douglas the musician (as opposed to the pioneer with arrows in his back) is a guitarist with a tonal trick-bag that flat-pickers can only envy. Besides the dobro, that interesting interloper of an  instrument, Douglas plays the Weissenborn and the lap steel. He can cackle, slur, roar, bend, dip, carve, careen, waggle, bark and a lot more with his bar and finger picks.

Almost since he left the regular employ of country group The Whites in the middle 1980s, Douglas has been one of music's great free lances. He's matched wits and licks with an amazing array of leading instrumentalists and vocalists, including Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton, Bela Fleck, Bill Frisell, Chris Thile, Bryan Sutton, Sam Bush and many, many more. His only regular band commitment in recent years has been the astounding Union Station with Alison Krauss, a deserving Grammy magnet. It's been nothing but a pleasure to watch and listen to this series of dalliances, affiliations and band situations.

Douglas's most important work as a front man and recording artist has been on Sugar Hill. The 15 songs here are drawn from five different albums, displaying uncanny range, like a shortstop who can also pitch relief. "A New Day Medley" lets us hear him naked, instrumentally speaking of course, playing fiddle tunes and modern ballads in a solo showcase of the dobro's many expressive voices. "Cave Bop" downshifts and accelerates, featuring Douglas playing straight ahead jazz with Jeff Coffin on saxophone and Viktor Krauss on bass. Again, that company he keeps.

Jerry offers stealthy, speedy comping behind singer Tim O'Brien on "Hey Joe," along with icicle cool stabbing solos that pay homage to Jimi Hendrix's Stratocaster. Next he's working with an entirely different Joe (and vibe) altogether, interpreting Joe Zawinul's "Birdland," from the jazz fusion repertoire of Weather Report. Elsewhere, he settles into a Tin Pan Alley slumber, sweeping the weeping strings of "Lullaby of the Leaves" with singer Peter Rowan.

Douglas' own compositions like "The Wild Rumpus," "Senia's Lament," and "Takarasaka" show off a singular sensibility. One can feel how much fun and how much hard work it must be to play these tunes with him. The finest example may be "We Hide and Seek" which has become a staple of his repertoire. Its insistent little looping mandolin figure, its unsettled downbeat, its ultra-wide, ultra-smooth highway of a chorus all conspire for a quintessential slice of Jerry Douglas music.

So by all means acquire every Jerry Douglas record you can. This sampler may tide you over, but it will probably make you more hungry in the end.

--Craig Havighurst
Jan. 2007