Dude, Check This Out: Bill and the Boys

At some point in the mid-Sixties us kids bought this album, probably as a gift for Dad. We had no idea what it was. We just liked the cabin and the instruments. When we actually listened to it we thought it was the funniest stuff we'd ever heard in our lives. Hillbilly music. Dog House Blues, needless to say, really cracked us up. Oh yeah, and Dad didn't like it.

Only much later, when I grew up and discovered Bluegrass, did I realize what a treasure we had stumbled upon. Our album, a 1962 release, was a compilation of music recorded in the early Forties. And it was Bill himself, and the Boys, and the first and the greatest bluegrass ever recorded.

I put the whole album on a cassette tape, and it went with me everywhere I went for the next few years. Now it's lost, along with the album itself. So I'm glad that I can go online now and hear Bill and the Boys barking like dogs again anytime I want to.