When the Del McCoury Band won its fourth straight Entertainer of the Year award at last fall's International Bluegrass Music Alliance awards, few were surprised. As with most years, sure enough there was stiff competition. Yet in bluegrass, no band has been hotter than McCoury's over much of the past decade.

Indeed, album after critically acclaimed album has built as if with bricks one strong career. With their latest, "Del and the Boys," put another brick in the wall.

Not that they've fallen into a same ol' same ol' groove, either. Songs from the non-bluegrass sources of Richard Thompson ("1952 Vincent Black Lightning") and even Frank Sinatra ("Learnin' the Blues") mix well with McCoury originals "Unequal Love" and "A Good Man," assuring the band of an edge that its attained over the past decade or so.

Whoa, back up buddy....Frank Sinatra? The Del McCoury Band covers Ol' Blue Eyes?

"Jason Carter (McCoury's fiddler) played 'Learnin' the Blues' to me," says Del McCoury from San Francisco. "When Jason was born, his dad played bluegrass and sang bluegrass. Jason has a brother who plays jazz, a horn player. Jason had heard a lot of the jazz things because of his dad."

Gradually, Carter convinced an initially understandably reluctant McCoury to take a shot at singing the song. With a some pause, McCoury stepped lightly into learning the tune, albeit with his own touches.

"I'd heard Frank Sinatra sing, but I'd never heard him do this one. I told Jason a little bit later that I could do it, but I wouldn't have those same notes. It's worked out real good. We get a lot of requests for it already," McCoury says, adding with a laugh, "Frank would turn over in his grave if he heard this version."

Maybe so. But then, maybe Hoboken's finest would tap a toe instead, maybe even nod in approval. Still, that's it for Sinatra's link with bluegrass. For now, anyway. Elsewhere in the album, DMB sticks more closely to the cuff, as with Grand Ole Opry member Jeanne Pruett's "Count Me Out."

"I heard (Nashville's WSM disc jockey and Opry announcer) Eddie Stubbs play it on the radio one day," McCoury says. "I called Eddie and said, 'Man, can you get me a tape of that?' I really liked that tune."

Likewise, McCoury says Cindy Walker's "The Bluegrass Country" caught his ear just so.

"Mac Wiseman had sent me an envelope full of songs and said that he wasn't recording right now," McCoury says. "I forgot about them. So I had this song and heard this lady singing. It was about Kentucky, and she's from Texas. So, Ronnie (McCoury) said, 'why don't we get Ricky (Skaggs) to sing with you and that'd make it authentic,' cause Ricky's from Kentucky, you know. It's a great song, ain't it?"

Ditto Verlon Thompson's "Gone But Not Forgotten." Need a pick-me-up? Try this one out. It grabs pavement and peels through all the gears, burning rubber in no time flat, flat-out flying. McCoury says that they'd finished the album and were previewing it for Skaggs, on whose Ceili Music label DMB records and that Skaggs said that the album could use a real barn-burner.

"I was thinking the same thing," McCoury says. "Verlon gave us that song years ago, two, three four years ago, something like that. We liked the song, but just never did record it. We were all done, but went back in and cut that. When we went in the studio I told Ron, 'You know, I'm not too familiar with these chords. Why don't you sing it, and we'll record it, and then I'll come back and do it.' He sang the verses, and when we got it cut, I said, 'Now, it's done. All I'm gonna do is put a little tenor to it.' So, I went back and put a little tenor to it."

Sounds simple. But look closer at McCoury's career and the man's talent came through years of touring, gigging with one band after another and paying close attention to those who built the house of bluegrass in which so many stand today.

Namely, Bill Monroe. McCoury worked for Big Mon for about a year, from February 1963 through early the following year when he moved west to California.

"I learned a lot from him without him even saying anything," McCoury says. "I had wondered what it would be like to play with him. He had great timing. The hardest part was learning the words to all those songs because I had never been a lead singer before that. I was a part singer, mainly tenor. When I went to work with him, I had to sing lead, and that was easy too except that I had to learn all these words to all these songs. That was the hardest part."

Still, the schooling held tight. Perhaps more than anything, McCoury's time with Monroe best prepared him for becoming a bandleader himself.

"It did that. It was better for me later on when I got my own band," McCoury says. "He told me, 'Del, I need a guitar player and a lead singer in the worst way.' That year, he didn't have a banjo player or a lead singer until Bill Keith came along. He just told me that that was what I was gonna do. But the first thing I'd learned to do was play the guitar, so I knew guitar playing."

Now, by that time bluegrass was changing. Not only the audience, but life in a bluegrass band changed with the times. Gone, at least for Monroe, were the behemoth cars in which they rode, replaced by large buses. McCoury, for one, welcomed the change.

See, McCoury's career dates to a time when bluegrass bands traveled in those stuffy and stuffed cars, not buses. Back before interstates crisscrossed America, men huddled shoulder to shoulder for hours and hundreds of miles at a time.

"We got a bus when I was with him, but at first he had a '59 Oldsmobile station wagon. That '59 Oldsmobile was an expensive car, but it didn't have any air conditioning," McCoury says. "You know, I gotta say something about Bill. He was a tolerant feller because everybody in that station wagon smoked, including Bessie Lee Mauldin. Kenny (Baker) smoked, I smoked, Bill Keith smoked. He never smoked and never complained at all. That's really something. You know one day he told as we were riding along, 'you didn't know I smoked, did ya?' I said, 'No I didn't.' He said, 'Give me one of them.' I handed him a cigarette and he said, 'Ain't you gonna light it.' So, I lit it up, and it was funny to watch him smoke that cigarette. He'd just puff on it a little bit and blow him a little smoke. He didn't inhale any you know."

But back to the bus.

"So, Bill went to see Johnnie Wright and Kitty Wells. They had a bus for sale, and he bought it. I had drove a truck when I was about 18. He asked me if I had drove anything like that, and I said, 'well, I drove a truck.'"

Good enough for Monroe.

"Buses are easier to drive than a truck, and so he bought it. I used to be his night time driver. You know, there were no intestates in those days. Oh, there was a few. There was a few interstates, but I remember that you could go 40 miles on I-40. It was after you left Knoxville going to Nashville and there it would end at that big mountain, and we'd have to go over that mountain."

Yet while with Monroe, McCoury managed to set to wax several for-the-ages performances, namely 1964's "Roll On Buddy, Roll On." Check out McCoury's moon-scraping high tenor on that song and a burgeoning talent made itself obvious. Still, shortly thereafter, McCoury was gone.

Despite Monroe's rekindled career via folk music's interest and the efforts of music promoter Ralph Rinzler, McCoury struck out for California, new wife in tow. After a short time there and with the Golden State Boys, the Bakersville, N.C. native returned to York County, Pa. and the region that he'd known since childhood.

But bluegrass would have to wait for McCoury. He took on a variety of non-musical jobs until, in 1967, he formed the Dixie Pals. McCoury's acumen grew as he grew more serious.

In 1981, son Ronnie came on board as a 13-year-old mandolin phenom. Six years later, son Rob was added to play banjo. By 1992, with fiddler Jason Carter and bassist Mike Bub, the Del McCoury Band was set, a still stable crew with years and talent to boot.

"You know, it's the longest I've had a band. I've had bands for a pretty good stretch of time, had good sounds and all, but this one has really stayed with me. That means a lot," McCoury says. "It's easier to record because you don't have to show people things. If you record a record and go out on the road, they know the stuff you're doing so it makes it a lot easier."

Along the way, the band has developed a style all its own. Hear Ralph Stanley and you know it's Ralph Stanley. Ditto Bill Monroe. Well, the same goes for the Del McCoury Band. Yet not at the expense of tradition. Traditional bluegrass and Del McCoury like Monroe and his mandolin.

"It's what I heard, and I just can't get it out of my head," McCoury says. "I think that's why I never did stray from that makeup of a band. That's the way I heard it the first time, and it was so exciting. That's probably why it's stayed that way. And you know, I enjoyed back in the 1960's and '70's when there was a lot of newgrass bands. I enjoyed hearing those guys, but not enough for me to even try to attempt to play that stuff."

Still, McCoury wonders about whether bluegrass could get too big for its own good. Few would argue the phenomenal success of "O Brother! Where Art Thou?" but what's the price?

"I don't know. The thing I hate about it is seeing bluegrass get watered down," McCoury says. "It's just like that 'Man of Constant Sorrow.' Now, that boy Dan (Tyminski) could've sang it in that same key that Ralph did it in cause he's got that good high voice, but see, for the movie they had him sing it lower. It would have been so much better, in my opinion. Course, not everybody likes to hear bluegrass the way I like to hear it. I like to hear it get way up there and really grind it."

Kinda like how Del and the boys, do it - bluegrass in overdrive.

Photo by Morello Gherghia