Rose Maddox Sings Bluegrass
Released
Although she’s known (along with her brothers) primarily as one of the architects of the Bakersfield sound, Rose Maddox also recorded this fun collection of straight-ahead bluegrass material in 1962. The sound is just a bit overproduced, but her voice is sharp-edged and powerful, and she delivers meat-and-potatoes bluegrass fare like “Uncle Pen,” “My Rose of Old Kentucky,” and “The Old Crossroads” with complete authority. Bluegrass was almost entirely a boys’ club for the few few decades of its existence, and this album was, among things, something of a powerful feminist statement in its time.