Stars & Stripes Forever

 (17 customer reviews)

I first got interested in the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's music after one of my sisters got the original "Circle" album, which came out in '72. While I was in college in Greeley, Colorado, I became a real fan of these guys and even saw them in concert when they played on campus. I've remained an NGDB fan since, although I haven't been back to one of their shows, and in my music collection, I have quite a few Dirt Band records on LP, CD and tape. Though some of the Dirt Band's albums have been allowed to go out of print because of record companies' concern with the "bottom line"(at least in my opinion), there is still a lot of good NGDB music out there. Stars and Stripes Forever, originally put out as a double LP in 1974 and re-released a few years ago on CD, is a classic NGDB concert album.

The record starts out with one solid Cajun rocker, the Hank Williams classic "Jambalaya On The Bayou", and closes with another great Cajun tune, Doug Kershaw's "Diggy Liggy Lo". In between,...Read more

In 1970, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band released their breakout album UNCLE CHARLIE which contained the band's first Top 10 single "Mr. Bojangles." Two years later they released the critically acclaimed WILL THE CIRCLE BE UNBROKEN. So it was only natural that there would be a great deal of excitement when STARS & STRIPES FOREVER was released in 1974.

At first glance, it's a curious album comprised of live cuts from a March 1972 concert and two June 1973 concerts, along with a couple of interviews and eight studio recordings (tracks 8-12, 18-19 and 23) from a single January 14, 1974 session in Nashville. Of the studio recordings, the only band-penned song is "Glocoat Blues," a blues spoof written by Jimmie Fadden.

What this album did was to help solidify the band's reputation as a legitimate country band. They perform two Hank Williams classics ("Jambalaya" and "Honky Tonkin'"), as well as Jimmie Driftwood's "Battle of New Orleans" and Doug Kershaw's hit "Diggy Liggy...Read more

I loved the NGDB back in their "jug band/bluegrass/eclectic rock" days (before they went mainstream and began sucking with a vengeance), and this is an album I've always mostly enjoyed a lot.
The music is great... kickin' versions of classics like "Mr. Bojangles", "Buy for me the Rain", "Diggy Liggy Lo", "Battle of New Orleans", "Jambalaya". Funny songs like "GloCoat Blues", "The Fish Song", "Cosmic Cowboy". Fabulous fiddling from Mr. Vassar Clements throughout, and excellent bluegrass instrumentals.
The "interviews" are less successful, but are still interesting, for the most part.
Now we come to the two cuts that both make and break this album...
"The Mountain Whippoorwill"... Oh man, the rest of this album could even have been "(c)rap" and I'd have given it 5 stars just for this cut! A brilliant interpretation by John McEuen. With his muted delivery and old-timey banjo accompaniment, he makes this wonderful poem by Stephen Vincent Benet (one of my top 5...Read more