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COUNTRY GENTLEMEN - THE AWARD WINNING (REB-1506), 1972

Musicians
Charlie Waller: Guitar, Lead Vocals
Doyle Lawson: Mandolin, Vocals
Bill Emerson: Banjo, Vocals
Bill Yates: Bass, Vocals

Special Guest:
Mike Auldridge: Dobro

Production Credits
Produced by Charles R. Freeland
Recorded at R.D. Homer & Associates, Clinton, MD
Engineered by Roy Homer
Recorded: September-December 1971
Remastered by David Glasser, Airshow Mastering, Boulder, CO

Except for founding member Charlie Waller, the Country Gentlemen by 1971 had become a haven for Jimmy Martin graduates. Earlier, his fellow founder and banjo master Bill Emerson had recruited Charlie (along with John Duffey) for the original Gents in 1957. Eddie Adcock replaced Bill in 1959 and stayed for the next eleven years. His novel approach to the banjo was a major contribution to their 1960s sound, just as Bill’s driving banjo was to the Sunny Mountain Boys at various times between 1962 and 1966. Emerson joined Wayne and Bill Yates with Red Allen as the Kentuckians in 1964-65, and co-led a band with Cliff Waldron from 1968 to 1970. He rejoined the Gentlemen until 1973, when he signed on with the U.S. Navy Band’s Country Current. Bill Yates played bass with Jimmy Martin from 1966 until he joined the Gents in 1969, and was an essential to their music and spirit until his death in 2015. When John Duffey and Tom Gray departed in 1969, Charlie Waller became the most prominent Country Gentleman, and his warm baritone voice was central to the group’s sound in all the years to come.

The Award Winning Country Gentlemen was the first LP by the Waller-Emerson-Lawson-Yates quartet, and their last on Rebel for several years. As with the Seldom Scene, they balanced traditional songs with contemporary country, pop and folk material that suited Charlie’s style. Mike Auldridge joined on Dobro, as he did on most Gentlemen records in the 1970s, more to fill out the band’s studio sound than as a featured soloist.

The tracks for the Award Winning album were recorded between September and December 1971. They introduced Doyle Lawson as a Country Gentleman, and included repertory classics that everyone knew. “The Girl Behind the Bar” and “The Fields Have Turned Brown” were early Carter Stanley originals from the 1940s that the Gentlemen had recorded earlier. “The Son of Hickory Holler’s Tramp,” by the Bakersfield songwriter Dallas Frazier, tells of surviving rural poverty through love, courage and endurance.

“Redwood Hill,” written by Gordon Lightfoot, was a nod to the growing environmental movement in 1971, when John Denver’s “Country Roads” also debuted. The latter was just one of many covers, but it was popular with CG fans, and the band got a lot of mileage out of it. “Secret of the Waterfall” returns to the dark-sided “Girl Behind the Bar” theme of a jealous lover responding to rejection with homicide. Bob Dylan’s “Walkin’ Down the Line” features Doyle Lawson’s solo voice and mandolin on a simple, catchy tune that works well in a bluegrass setting. “New Freedom Bell” is credited to Louise Osborne, who sang it over her brother Bob’s low tenor and their brother Sonny’s banjo, on a published 1951 home recording. It celebrates the Freiheitsglocke (freedom bell) that toured American cities in 1950 as part of a privately sponsored Crusade for Freedom. Its journey ended when it was hung in the old City Hall at the eastern edge of West Berlin on October 24, 1950, and heard far and wide in East and West