Some things sound like they really don’t belong together. For instance, whose playlist would include bar rocker George Thorogood, cosmic avant-garde master Sun Ra, banjo savant Béla Fleck, singer-songwriter Nathaniel Rateliff, jazz-folk siren Madeleine Peyroux and prog-rock stars Rush?
It could only be on Rounder Records, the visionary Boston music collective that helped change the way American music was recorded and distributed.
Before there were “Americana” or “roots” charts, fans found bluegrass, blues, Western swing, jazz, protest songs, gospel, world music, Cajun and Celtic sounds on Rounder discs starting in 1970.
The label’s big-tent credo and die-hard passion for preserving obscure music sparked veteran rock critic David Menconi to dive into the countercultural roots of Rounder Records. The result is Oh, Didn’t They Ramble: Rounder Records and the Transformation of American Roots Music. Published last year via University of North Carolina Press, the book offers a critical dive into 50 years of American cultural and musical history.
‘They do all that folk music stuff, don’t they?’
If Menconi’s name sounds familiar to Boulder County readers, that’s because he worked as the rock music critic for the Daily Camera from 1985 to 1991. Now based in North Carolina, the veteran journalist has written four other books, including 2020’s Step It Up and Go: The Story of North Carolina Popular Music, from Blind Boy Fuller and Doc Watson to Nina Simone and Superchunk.
Far from being a folkie, Menconi readily admits he was aware of Rounder Records but didn’t pay much attention until he heard an album by the cow-punk Texas rock band True Believers featuring Alejandro Escovedo.
“I remember being kind of puzzled,” he says. “Rounder — they do all that folk music and stuff, don’t they?”
As he interviewed Rounder’s three founders — Ken Irwin, Marian Leighton Levy and Bill Nowlin — Menconi discovered the source of the label’s eclectic orientation. In the resulting book, he weaves a remarkable story involving these college friends against a tumultuous backdrop of social change and protest movements.
“Rounder is a passion project that just unexpectedly lasted for 50 years,” he says. “Three people who met fairly randomly meshed and gelled in a wonderful way. They put out albums of music they liked, and it organically grew into a record label.”
While focused on folk music, the label encountered unexpected hits along the way that helped keep the bootstrap operation alive. George Thorogood’s Move it on Over album climbed the rock charts in 1978, for example, followed decades later by the teaming of Alison Krauss and Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant, who penned a short forward to the book.
The Rounder-Boulder Connection
Serendipity favors the dedicated, and the 1986 film The Big Easy unexpectedly boosted Rounder’s sales due to the label’s strong focus on Louisiana music. But the Deep South wasn’t the only part of the country that caught the attention of this seminal roots-music operation.
“Rounder and Colorado have felt a musical affinity for decades, almost as long as Rounder, Telluride and Rockygrass [bluegrass festivals] have existed,” Rounder co-founder Marian Levy wrote in an email to Menconi. “Going back to the earlier years of KBCO and college radio, you could hear Rounder acts on Colorado stations much more than in major metropolitan media markets.”
If you check out the lineups for the early decades of the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, you’ll see a lot of familiar names.
“It’s hard to imagine Telluride without Jerry Douglas, Sam Bush and Del McCoury,” Menconi says. He points to other Telluride-Rockygrass Rounder regulars such as Peter Rowan, John Hartford, Ricky Skaggs and Norman Blake.
One of the first acts signed to Rounder was an outfit called Country Cooking, featuring banjoist Pete Wernick who went on to bluegrass fame in Boulder’s Hot Rize. Other local traditional bluegrass bands on the label include Open Road and the Dry Branch Fire Squad.
According to Menconi, creative control was a major reason so many artists chose to work with Rounder instead of a better-paying major label.
“They told [legendary banjoist] J.D. Crowe: ‘We’ll let you record what you want to record,’” Menconi says. “It’s a very smart way to run a label if you have confidence in your vision and your ears.”
The resulting 1976 Rounder album, J.D. Crowe and the New South, is widely regarded as one of the most influential bluegrass records ever made. According to Menconi, Alison Krauss keeps a framed copy of that best-selling album on her wall for inspiration.
“That album is the starting point for a lot of people,” he says. “The way that modern bluegrass is played, including how the guitar is used, came out of that band. It launched the careers of Tony Rice, Ricky Skaggs and Jerry Douglas.”
In later years, Rounder expanded into alternative rock, releasing albums by Cowboy Junkies, Marky Ramone and They Might Be Giants. Despite initial reservations from the band, Rush released a series of best-selling concert videos through Rounder.
While the label’s co-founders have gone on to form a new enterprise called Down The Road Records to release new albums, there’s no denying the music business has changed.
“Rounder had averaged more than a record a week for 50 years,” Menconi says. “Last year, they put out eight albums.”
But more than a half century since its launch, the once-prolific label — now owned by Concord Music Group — is revered for its Smithsonian-like back catalog and newer music from young acoustic stars like Molly Tuttle, Billy Strings, Sierra Hull and Sierra Ferrell. Despite the challenges of an ever-shifting shifting industry, it’s clear that Rounder isn’t done making history just yet.
ON THE SHELF: Oh, Didn’t They Ramble: Rounder Records and the Transformation of American Roots Music is available now via University of North Carolina Press.