Country Songs, Old and New

The Country Gentlemen were the godfathers of progressive bluegrass, a band that looked pretty trad on the surface but started to incorporate pop and rock elements early on. Their 1960 debut album sounds entirely straight-ahead at first: classic material like “Drifting Too Far from the Shore,” “Come All You Fair and Tender Ladies,” a rollicking “Paul and Silas,” etc. But that arrangement of “Under the Double Eagle” would have raised a few purists’ eyebrows, and their take on “Honky Tonk Rag” was pretty… rocking. This was all a harbinger of things to come.