Tony Rice - The Bill Monroe Collection

[Darren Bailey]

Don't know if this has been brought to many people's attention but it is a great disc and well worth purchasing. Tony's playing with various incarnations of various famous group names appear to terrific effect. Some excellent mandolin to be heard as would be expected.

[Mike Bunting]

Tony's playing is great, but these are only reissues of old recordings, all of which I already own. In fact, the Bluegrass Album Band put out a CD exclusively of Monroe's tunes. Grisman's tribute is the same. The only tribute album that I liked was Del McCoury's which was a collection of newly recorded versions of Monroe tunes.

[Gerry Hastie]

The Frank Wakefield Tribute CD is a belter of an album of newly recorded versions of Bill Monroe songs and tunes. The version of That's Alright is awesome. The Del McCoury tribute is excellent. Del's passion for those songs is undiminished. Thank goodness he gave up on the banjo as a main instrument. Music content aside I felt slightly cheated by the idea of the Tony Rice Monroe tribute being a release of previously available stuff. Sounds a bit like cashing in but I appreciate that it's a great collection of Tony Rice's fabulous guitar playing.

[Mike Bunting]

The Grisman bunch released a bunch of previously recorded material too, and I have to agree with Gerry, the freshly recorded material by Del and Frank seems far less opportunistic and more sincere.

[Marty Henrickson]

I'm a HUGE fan of Tony Rice, but I've passed on his Monroe collection despite a very tempting price on Amazon, since I probably have all of the song, anyway.

Sounds like I need to add the Del and Frank Monroe tributes to my collection.

[mandolirius]

There's a perspective that those of us who have a lot of Rice and Grisman records could easily adopt but not everyone has extensive collections of those two. I think these compilation records could introduce Monroe to fans of Grisman and Rice who don't already have the cuts on other records.

[Mike Bunting]

There's a perspective that those of us who have a lot of Rice and Grisman records could easily adopt but not everyone has extensive collections of those two. I think these compilation records could introduce Monroe to fans of Grisman and Rice who don't already have the cuts on other records.

No problem with that, it's just that Del and Frank actually sat down to record a tribute, which rings truer to me. I'm not even sure that TR necessarily had anything to do with it other than authorize the record when Rounder came to him with the idea. Nevertheless I'm happy if more people are aware of Monroe. Del's record sure is powerful though, I like his versions better than the Rice versions, but that's just personal taste.

[Fretbear]

I would usually feel the same way, but in this case having the recorded "songbook" of WSM by one of bluegrass's greatest (now silenced) lead singers and guitarists all in one place seems appropriate.
Same with The Bluegrass Album Band's "Down the Road - The Songs of Flatt & Scruggs."

[Mike Bunting]

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/ima...56011&s=dmusic
They have already done that. Anyhow, I'm not protesting the Rice record, I'm just saying that I think the Del and Frank records are better tributes.