Ricky Skaggs “Honoring the Fathers of Bluegrass - Tribute to 1946 and 1947 (Skaggs Family Records)”

Nashville, Tenn. — Ricky Skaggs has earned his fourth consecutive debut at the top of Billboard’s Bluegrass albums chart with his new record “Honoring the Fathers of Bluegrass: Tribute to 1946 and 1947” on Skaggs Family Records.

Skaggs’ streak of debut success began in 2006 with the Grammy Award-winning “Instrumentals,” and continued in 2007 with his collaboration with Bruce Hornsby and the album “Salt of the Earth” with the Whites, which also won a Grammy Award for Best Southern, Country, or Bluegrass Gospel Album.

His latest CD features 12 of the songs with which Bill Monroe and the “original bluegrass band” created the genre.

“Honoring the Fathers’“has been met with thumbs-up reviews. USA Today said Skaggs and his ace pickers Kentucky Thunder “set the modern standard” for bluegrass, while Billboard praised the disc as “nothing short of brilliant.” The New York Times said of the disc: “There is an unmistakable integrity to his effort here … it’s subject, like its execution, comes across as admirably vivid.”

Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder will headline the New York City portion of the 8-city Green Apple Festival, with a show at Rumsey Playfield in Central Park on Sunday (April 20). The third annual Green Apple Festival is “America’s Largest Earth Day Celebration,” culminating in a series of eight free festival shows occurring simultaneously at landmark locations across the U.S.

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Ricky Skaggs “Honoring the Fathers of Bluegrass Tribute to 1946 and 1947″

Over the past several years, it would be difficult to read a Ricky Skaggs interview without him paying homage to “Mr. Monroe.” Yes, that would be Bill, as in the Father of Bluegrass music.

Now, Skaggs is immortalizing his love and great respect for Monroe — as well as bluegrass music in general — in a new CD, “Honoring the Fathers of Bluegrass: Tribute to 1946 and 1947.”

It’s due for release on March 25 on the Skaggs Family Records label, but pre-orders at a special price and the prospects of obtaining a copy with Skaggs’ autograph are spelled out on the label’s Web site, SkaggsFamilyRecords.com.

The CD is Skaggs’ tribute to Bill Monroe’s first trail-blazing bluegrass band, which included a couple of guys by the name of Flatt and Scruggs, fiddler Chubby Wise and bass player Howard Watts. In the two-year span that Skaggs’ CD covers, Monroe and his Bluegrass Boys literally forged the foundation of the genre.

Skaggs’ own head-turning group of musicians, known collectively as Kentucky Thunder, are featured throughout the album. It also includes two former Bluegrass Boys — that fellow named Scruggs playing banjo on “Going Back to Old Kentucky” and Del McCoury on “The Old Crossroads.”

The CD package also includes a booklet with several vintage photographs.

Here’s the track lineup:

1. Going Back to Old Kentucky (with Earl Scruggs)
2. When You’re Lonely
3. Toy Heart
4. It’s Mighty Dark to Travel
5. Mother’s Only Sleeping
6. Bluegrass Breakdown
7. Little Cabin Home On the Hill
8. Mansions for Me
9. Sweetheart You Done Me Wrong
10. Why Did You Wander
11. Remember the Cross
12. The Old Crossroads (with Del McCoury)

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