There are few things pleasanter to my ears than the combination of guitar, fiddle, mandolin and banjo. Throw in a standup bass and I am transported. I guess I love these instruments and bluegrass music because there’s a little of it in my DNA. There’s physical distance between the Appalachians and the Ozarks, but bluegrass puts them close together, on either side of a split-rail fence. I found two family groups–the Brandenbergers, whom I think are Mennonite (there are many in Missouri) and the Petersens, who do pop tunes as well as bluegrass. The lyrics will appear if you hit the “cc” button at the bottom of the frame. So pull up a chair…

“Maple on the Hill” sounds like one of those songs that might’ve come from the British Isles and then got transmuted in the hills of America:

Here, of course, coming from a devout family, is a little Gospel, a song that would’ve been sung in so many country churches.

The Petersen Family is sparkly clean and the girls are lovely and pristine. This disturbed me immensely until they started to sing. This is a another beautiful old Gospel hymn. I need to add one more instrument to the ones above: The slide guitar. The young man on the right is marvelous. The little girl on the mandolin finds her voice in the song’s final third, and she’s marvelous, too.

The same young man also has a sweet voice, and the mandolin player evokes Irish keening near this song’s end. It’s an example of them sampling pop music, in this case, the song’s from Coldplay.

Just one more. Winter’s Bone, about the meth epidemic that’s poisoned the Ozarks, would’ve been bleak without Jennifer Lawrence, indomitable and daring. And she’s like a teenaged earth mother to her little brother and sister. This was her breakout role as Ree, the daughter of a dealer who’s vanished. Marideth Sisco sings “Little Sparrow” (aka “Fair and Tender Ladies”) in this brief excerpt from the film:

And here’s Sisco with Blackberry Winter, performing the song in its entirety:

And here are the lyrics to the song, so evocative of the heartbreak common to Hill People—and to women everywhere.

Come all ye fair and tender ladies
Take warning how you court your men
They’re like a star on a summer morning
They first appear and then they’re gone

They’ll tell to you some loving story
And they’ll make you think that they love you well
And away they’ll go and court some other
And leave you there in grief to dwell

I wish I was on some tall mountain
Where the ivy rocks were black as ink
I’d write a letter to my false true lover
Whose cheeks are like the morning pink

I wish I was a little sparrow
And I had wings to fly so high
I’d fly to the arms of my false true lover
And when he’d ask, I would deny

Oh love is handsome, love is charming
And love is pretty while it’s new
But love grows cold as love grows older
And fades away like morning dew