More "American Legacies" reviews in Paste, East Bay Express, and Audiophile Audition

Here's some more great reviews on the new "American Legacies" Album:

 Del McCoury and Preservation Hall Jazz Band:
American Legacies
[McCoury Music and Preservation Hall Recordings]
Album Review by Andy Whitman


When the saints go marching in the holler

The intersection of bluegrass and jazz isn’t exactly a bustling one, but the successful fusions of the past – Bela Fleck’s genre-defying albums, David Grisman’s Dawg music – have placed a heavy emphasis on improvisational interplay and breakneck solos. So the meeting of Dixieland revivalists The Preservation Hall Jazz Band and bluegrass traditionalists The Del McCoury Band is more than a little perplexing and intriguing. Both have had their forays into adventurous musical waters, but both are primarily known for their excellence in strict, formal, and relatively hidebound genres. Foggy mountain breakdown on Basin Street, anyone? Just how does that work again?

As American Legacies amply illustrates, the answer is that it works just fine. McCoury, who started his five-decade career playing with the original bluegrass iconoclast Bill Monroe, has shown an increasing elasticity and flexibility of late, touring with Phish and recording with Steve Earle, and here he seamlessly blends his bluegrass band with the brass and rhythm section of PHJB...

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Preservation Hall Jazz Band & Del McCoury Band – American Legacies – McCoury Music and Preservation Hall Recordings
On American Legacies, bluegrass and jazz come together with stellar results.

By Doug Simpson

Published on April 12, 2011

The 47-minute American Legacies album – starring the Preservation Hall Jazz Band & the Del McCoury Band – is collaboration in the truest essence of the word and a confluence of two of America’s greatest musical inventions, bluegrass and jazz. Some might believe bluegrass and jazz are miles apart but they share numerous similarities and the two genres have come together in quite a few ways over many decades. First, both styles require dazzling virtuosity, respect for the past and devotion to well-defined creative forms. Secondly, jazz and bluegrass (and thus country) have had extensive, continuing connections. Certain songs have become standards in both musical circles, while several artists have combined country/bluegrass shadings with jazzy swing, from Bob Wills to Louis Armstrong and from Chet Atkins to Herb Ellis.

American Legacies mines tradition and listeners could not ask for better interpreters than the Preservation Hall Jazz Band & the Del McCoury Band. McCoury apprenticed with Bill Monroe before starting his own band more than four decades ago and has sustained a time-honored bent ever since. The Preservation Hall Jazz Band was founded a few years after McCoury began his group and has carried forward a New Orleans-inclined heritage...   

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Preservation Hall Jazz Band and Del McCoury Band
American Legacies
By Lee Hildebrand

The thin line between jazz and country music has too seldom been crossed over the years, notable exceptions being Louis Armstrong's 1930 trumpet contribution to Jimmie Rodgers' "Blue Yodel #9"; the hot soloists and swinging rhythm sections in Bob Willis' and Spade Cooley's bands; Merle Haggard's 1973 LP I Love Dixie Blues; and Wynton Marsalis' recent hookups with Willie Nelson. For the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, today's most prominent purveyor of traditional New Orleans jazz, to team up with the Del McCoury Band, one of the most popular bluegrass groups on the planet, may seem odd, but both genres have firm grounding in blues and place high value on improvised instrumental virtuosity. They go together like gin and vermouth, and the combined ensembles shake it up with aplomb...

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