CD Review: Ted Jones & The Tarheel Boys – Keeping The Tradition – by Bob Everhart for Country Music News International Magazine & Radio Show

TED JONES & THE TARHEEL BOYS

Keeping The Tradition

Mule
Skinner Blues – Another Day Another Dollar – Hills Of Roan County –
Pray Pray Pray – Thirty Years of Farming – Daybreak In Dixie – Because
He Lives – Those Two Blue Eyes – Little Bessie – Don’t Give Your Heart
To A Stranger – Poor Ellen Smith

Sometimes
it just plain ‘startles’ me at how good some of the Bluegrass bands
from our Eastern USA hotbed of bluegrass music really is.  This
incredible ‘traditional’ group is from Eastern North Carolina. The
Tarheel Boys are definitely the real deal.  This goes back to the very
beginning of early mountain music.  I can already hear in my mind how I
would introduce this band at a concert….”Ladies and Gentlemen get
ready to hear the music of rural America at it’s very best.  Get ready
to hear instrumental playing of such a superb nature it will astonish
even the most hardened soul.  Get ready to hear a tenor voice so
naturally suited to the music he is singing, they are one and the same,
the voice, the music, and certainly the end result of natural and
astonishing talent.  Ted Jones is one of those ‘natural’ singers that
takes this kind of music to amazingly high new standards.”  I feel so
sorry for young people today who have signed on to a mechanical robotic
electronic music as their ‘pick’ to listen to when the ‘real deal’ is
still available in America, and this CD is one of those amazing examples
of WHY new listeners need to give it a chance.  This group already has a
large following, rightfully so.  They also have blended their
instruments to an exact fit to what they are accomplishing.  Ted Jones
even gives another fine voice on the lead of “Thirty Years of Farming” a
song that almost ‘fits to a tee’ my own very existence trying to live a
musical life growing up on a sharecropper farm in the sandhills of
Nebraska.  My dad, like many of these North Carolina dads had to ‘live
with it’ and they did that the best that they could.  What it also
brought with that experience was this amazing ‘truthful’ music that
reveals what those early folks liked in music, and they liked groups
like the Tarheel Boys best of all.  There isn’t any if’s or so’s about
that.  This is the epitome of what North Carolina music has got to be
about.  Ted Jones makes no doubt about it, he’s not afraid to sing about
our Lord Jesus Christ.  How many of those young people listening to
‘their’ music will ever hear that name “Jesus Christ” in their ‘new’
music?  This CD is very traditional, it’s just exactly what these
terrific musicians want to portray.  There’s only a little time left for
me to get this off to the Rural Roots Music Commission for their CD of
the Year awards, but off it goes in the morning mail.  Good luck to
these amazing musicians, I certainly hope if they get the nod, they can
find their way to Iowa to accept.  Thanks so much for sending along this
amazing CD, one of the best I’ve reviewed this year for sure.  The CD
liner is signed “The High Sheriff of Bluegrass’ Ted Jones.  Surely this
must be true. It’s a natural ‘star.’

www.music-savers.com  RECORD REVIEW BY BOB EVERHART, President National Traditional Country Music Association for Country Music News International Magazine & Radio Show

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