In the Mountaintops to Roam

David Peterson is proudly retro, leading his bluegrass band, 1946, named after the year Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs joined Bill Monroe's Bluegrass Boys. On his third album, Peterson, as usual, turns in faithful re-creations of a series of bluegrass and early country standards, including Mac Wiseman's "I'll Still Write Your Name in the Sand" (with its songwriter, Buddy Spicher, sitting in on fiddle) and "Bluebirds Are Singing for Me"; the Delmore Brothers' "Some of These Days (You're Gonna Be Sad)" and "Put Me on the Trail to Carolina"; and Hank Snow's "The Golden Rocket." But this time around, Peterson is also adding his own originals to the mix and, not surprisingly, they often sound very similar to the old favorites he usually likes to play. The album's title song is a sad mountain ballad Peterson wrote with Julie Lee. "Prayin' Shoes" is a gospel number, no surprise from a performer who chose music over preaching and who indicates in the album's annotations that he might reverse his decision someday. "Fool's Moon," another original, could be mistaken for a song from 60 years earlier. You can't say that about "1946," Peterson's time-capsule description of his favorite year, one he was not born early enough to experience firsthand. But the song is a clear statement of the performer's viewpoint. The first year after World War II was also a year of strikes and inflation in a country still riven by racial prejudice and beginning to suffer from the recriminations of redbaiting. But Peterson's is a rosy Reaganite fantasy of a time when doors could be left unlocked and the buck stopped at the desk of President Truman, and he's entitled to his opinion. Indisputably, it was a year when some of the best bluegrass music began to be made, and Peterson's career is a testament to that.