5 Nods In A Circle – Today In Country Music History [VIDEO]

January 11th, 1990

The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's album Will The Circle Be Unbroken, Volume 2 receives five Grammy nominations.The group would be nominated for Best Country Vocal Collaboration, Best Country Vocal Performance - Duo or Group, Best Country Instrumental Performance (Randy Scruggs - "Amazing Grace"), Best Blue Grass Recording (with Bruce Hornsby - "The Valley Road") and Album of the Year.

The album's title comes from a song by Ada R. Habershon (re-arranged by A. P. Carter) and reflects how the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band was trying to tie together two generations of musicians. The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band was a young country-rock band with a hippie look. Roy Acuff described the band as "a bunch of long-haired West Coast boys."

Circle II features largely acoustic, bluegrass music instrumentation with a line-up of contemporary country music artists that includes Johnny Cash, Rosanne Cash, Emmylou Harris, Micheal Martin Murphey and Ricky Skaggs. Returnees from the first Circle are bluegrass musician Jimmy Martin, banjoist Earl Scruggs, fiddler Vassar Clements and Acuff.

Other artists represent the rock, folk and pop genres, including Levon Helm from The Band, John Denver, John Prine, John Hiatt and Bruce Hornsby.

Among the tracks is the Bob Dylan composition, "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere", sung as a duet by former members of The Byrds, Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman, their first reunion in many years.

The roster of session musicians for the album included many notable performers, including fiddler Mark O'Connor, resonator guitarist Jerry Douglas, banjoist Béla Fleck, guitarist Chet Atkins and bassist Roy Huskey, Jr., son of bassist Junior Huskey, who had played on the first Circle.