Track Listing

1. Blue Mountain Hop
2. Buffalo Nickel
3. When Joy Kills Sorrow
4. Spanish Point
5. Polka on the Banjo
6. Clarinet Polka
7. Over Grown Waltz
8. Ode to Earl
9. Home Sweet Home
10. Valley of the Rouge
11. Plunky's Lament
12. Maure on a Bicycle, Stout and Molassws, Way Back When
13. Dark Circles
14. Old Jellico, Puddle Jumper, Dead Man's Hill
15. Katmandu
16. Do You Have Room?
17. Foggy Mountain Special
18. Major Honker

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #173006 in Music
• Released on: 2001-02-27
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Enhanced

Amazon.com's Best of 1999
In a jaw-dropping return to his roots, banjoist Béla Fleck led a stellar lineup (Jerry Douglas, Earl Scruggs, Tony Rice, and Sam Bush, to name a few) through one of his finest albums. With incredible musicianship and a smidgen of Fleck's genre-hopping personality ("Polka On The Banjo"), The Bluegrass Sessions is fun, nostalgic, and inspiring. --Jason Verlinde

Amazon.com essential recording
Béla Fleck, the banjo-wizard leader of the fringe-jazz quartet the Flecktones, returns to more-bluegrass-oriented concerns with this 18-song outing, a complement to 1988's Drive and a more-traditional follow-up to 1995's fusion-leaning Tales from the Acoustic Planet. Most of these songs are instrumentals boasting Drive's core group of Sam Bush on mandolin, Stuart Duncan on fiddle, Tony Rice on guitar, Jerry Douglas on Dobro, and bassist Mark Schatz; they're augmented in spots by fine guest players such as Vassar Clements, John Hartford, and the incomparable banjo pioneer Earl Scruggs. Fleck's spidery, tasteful plucking style lends originals like "Major Honker" and "Katmandu" an ever-so-slightly offbeat air, while he gives classics like Scruggs's "Foggy Mountain Special" and "Polka on the Banjo" traditional readings that wouldn't be out of place at the Opry. Flecktones fans will find much to like in Fleck's rootsy playing, and so will bluegrass purists. --Gregory McNamee

From Jazziz
One may wonder what a review of a disc called The Bluegrass Sessions is doing in a jazz magazine. Truth is, Béla Fleck's latest project takes the eclectic world-view of his usual band, the flecktones, down to a grass-roots level. In the process, he celebrates the complex strains that make up this music, and he uncovers some interesting intersections between two worlds of improvisational creativity. I wanted to encompass all types of bluegrass, from stone-cold traditional to the edges of Newgrass, says banjoist Fleck in the liner notes. He's assisted by a band including guitarist Tony Rice, dobro player Jerry Douglas, banjoman Earl Scruggs, fiddle player Vassar Clements, and vokja and banjo player John Hartford. The strong interplay of the various string voices - no drums here -- falls like masterful latticework over the graceful spirals of melody in Clarinet Polka and the hauntingly beautiful Buffalo Nickel. The Beer Barrel Polka-influenced Polka on the Banjo is a sublime pleasure, as is the lovely, sad The Over Grown Waltz. But it's Stout and Molasses, with Clements on violin, that best exemplifies the close kinship between jazz and western swing. With the bluesy panache of a Jelly Roll Morton ensemble, the stunningly empathic players create honest, down-home music, that also resonates with the pulse and pleasure of improvisation.

--- Larry Nai, JAZZIZ Magazine Copyright © 2000, Milor Entertainment, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Make Room In Your Heart For the 5-String Banjo
This album is a joy from start to finish. As much as I enjoy the innovative work Bela Fleck has done in the past decade with the Flecktones and pushing the boundaries for the banjo as a lead instrument outside the context of bluegrass music, I have always had a passion for straight ahead bluegrass music. Over the past twenty-plus years, Fleck as earned the right to be mentioned in the same company as Earl Scruggs, J.D. Crowe and Tony Trischka as a pioneer of the banjo. Beginning with his formative years alongside mandolinist Jack Tottle in Tasty Licks to joining Sam Bush and John Cowan in the Newgrass Revival, Fleck has showed impeccable taste in his playing.

On The Bluegrass Sessions, Fleck has collected a virtual Who's Who of bluegrass superstars: Tony Rice, Jerry Douglas, Sam Bush and a guest performance by Scruggs himself. But don't be misled by the album title. There are a only a handful of songs that might qualify as traditional bluegrass--"Blue Mountain Hop," "Polka on the Banjo" (the only vocal--provided by John Hartford), "Ode to Earl," "Home Sweet Home" and "Foggy Mountain Special"--most of the album mines a new acoustic groove which melds bluegrass and jazz into a fusion long championed by Tony Rice and David Grisman. [In fact, in his liner notes Fleck recommends several albums including Rice's Manzanita and Grisman's The David Grisman Rounder Album.]

This is a wonderful collection and an excellent companion to Tales from the Acoustic Planet. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

The king of phrases
I haven't missed a Bela in nearly 10 years now. I'm struck by the studied simplicity of Fleck's recordings. They sound just down-home simple until you begin to listen closely. Then you hear things that aren't so simple.

First, of course, is what you don't hear. You don't hear a single missed note, an unsubtle nuance, a line without shape. Unlike so much of post newgrass where speed is king, Fleck's recordings emphasize each musician's talents at phrasing. The masters of bluegrass phrasing are here: Jerry Douglas, Sam Bush, Stuart Duncan, Vasser Clements, and, of course, Bela. Tony Rice reminds us why you don't need percussion in true bluegrass.

Second, you appreciate how intricately worked out these little pieces are. Take _When Joy Kills Sorrow_, for example. You have a drone, one-note bowed upright bass in the exposition (from the 12th century), you have chromatic modulations (jazz) which always resolve on the dominant or tonic (Baroque), and you get that canon (I lost count at six voices). Henry Purcell would have been thrilled to write that in 1690.

Laying over it all is Bela's gentle touch and tone. With such good humor, how can you not smile? A worthy successor to Drive. I only miss two things: the Mark Fox graphics on the Flecktones cover days, and Mark O'Conner not stopping by.

One of Bela's best
This is the one of the finest albums Bela Fleck has released in a long time ("Live Art" being the other finest in recent memory.)

First of all, it boasts an amazing guest roster including: Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, Stuart Duncan, Tony Rice, Mark Schatz, Vassar Clements, John Hartford, Earl Scruggs, Vince Gill, Tim O'Brien, Ricky Skaggs & more!

Not all of these people appear on every song, but what a dream lineup! (The only person missing is Del McCoury!)

"Tales from the Acoustic Planet 2" has a little taste of everything Fleck is known for. It has some solo banjo "Clarinet Polka", some more pensive slow numbers like "Over Grown Waltz", a little taste of the east "Katmandu", old-timey "Polka on the Banjo" and the downright weird "Do You Have Room?"

From the sentimental to the sublime and from the frentic to the silly...this disc amply displays why Fleck will go down in history as one of the most innovative artists of all time. He has completely deconstructed the notion of what one can do with a banjo all while having total mastery over its more traditional use. He can do it all: traditional bluegrass, jazz, Celtic, avante-garde, Asian folk music, and the list goes on.

Eventhough Bela Fleck's name is on the record, this isn't just his recording. Jerry Douglas' dobro (as always) is a welcome addition to the mix, and Sam Bush steps out for more than one nice mandolin solo. "Katmandu" showcases some of Fleck's more original ideas and "Blue Mountain Hop" shows that unique ability to take an interesting idea gleaned elsewhere to its most amazing possibilities.

I've always found Bela Fleck albums hard to review (which I believe is quite a good sign.) Pick this one up, you won't be sorry.