Skaggs & Rice

When they recorded this album in 1980, neither singer and multi-instrumentalist Ricky Skaggs nor guitar superhero Tony Rice was yet 30 years old, but both were already elder statesmen of bluegrass: Skaggs had toured with Ralph Stanley and with the Country Gentlemen, while Rice had long since picked up the mantle left by Clarence White and taken the guitar into uncharted territory as a lead bluegrass instrument. But for Skaggs & Rice they went seriously old-school, performing a set of pre-bluegrass “brother duet” songs of the kind that had been purveyed in the 1930s by the likes of Bill and Charlie Monroe, the Blue Sky Boys, and the Louvin Brothers. Just two voices, a mandolin, a guitar, and a mix of religious and romantic country classics like “Bury Me Beneath the Willow,” “Mansions for Me,” and “The Old Crossroads.” Skaggs’ penchant for modal, high-lonesome harmony lines brings extra gravitas even to a good-time song like “There’s More Pretty Girls Than One,” and Rice’s solos flirt with (but never entirely lapse into) the jazzy extravagance that would later become the hallmark of his style. The result is a perfect balance of old and new.