Word: bluegrass
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Through The Morning is about fifty percent hard core country music, expertly performed. Doug Dillard comes from a family of bluegrass musicians and plays banjo, fiddle and guitar more than competently. David Jackson, bass, piano, and cello, scales down the harshness of the other instruments: and Jon Corneal (drums) gives the music the rhythmic patterns of rock. Sneaky Pete, listed as a "Special Picker," plays a very fine steel guitar, sometimes mimicking Clark's mouthharp or the piano, sometimes taking the role of lead guitar...
...BLUEGRASS AND COUNTRY-WESTERN music have long been like gin on the rocks--either you're born with a taste for it, or you get nauseous every time it comes near you. For the majority of people, who fall into the latter group, it has looked like a long dry rock season. With Dylan and The Band leading the industry to Nashville, and groups like The Pentangle and The Incredible String Band spawning a return to acoustical instruments, one had a hard time repressing visions of The Grand Old Opry on WMEX...
Even the name Dillard is enough to provoke a shift in the mind frame to "fiddle and banjo"--the guts of bluegrass. This and the acoustic guitar also make up the insides of Expedition. But the trimmings here, electric harpsichord, dobro, drums and harmonica, put the whole album in a different cast. Willie Dixon called the music of the Chicago Blues All-Stars "Modernated blues," and the term "modernated" fits this record well, It jumps from Lester Flatt's "Git It On, Brother" to the almost-rock of "Out On The Side," maintaining a uniformity of tone which reflects...
...music which forms the baseline for the record is best typefied by Bill Munroe, who coined the term "bluegrass." (Actually a sub-division of Country & Western, Appalachia as opposed to Texas.) It is instrumentally dependent on banjo and guitar, with an occasional mandolin or harmonica. The nasal vocals revolve around lost love and mother, both topics being kept quite separate...
...cover photo doesn't show you how far Expedition has moved from bluegrass (Did Homer and Jethro ever pose on motorcycles, passing a joint?) just listen to a couple of cuts. The lyrics put a far greater emphasis on the entire thought-world than one finds in C&W, and a better understanding of poetics...