Will the Circle Be Unbroken

Will the Circle Be Unbroken is a 1972 album officially by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, but with collaboration from many famous Bluegrass and country-western players, including Roy Acuff, Mother Maybelle Carter, Doc Watson, Earl Scruggs, Merle Travis, Bashful Brother Oswald, Norman Blake, and others. It also introduced fiddler Vassar Clements to a wider audience.

Its title comes from a song by Ada R. Habershon (famously 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 them as "a bunch of long-haired West Coast boys." The other players were much older and more famous from the forties, fifties and sixties, primarily as old-time country and bluegrass players. Many had become known to their generation through the Grand Ole Opry. However, with the rise of rock-and-roll, the emergence of the commercial country's slick 'Nashville Sound,' and changing tastes in music, their popularity had waned somewhat from their glory years.

Every track on the album was recorded on the first or second take straight to two-track masters, so the takes are raw and unprocessed. Additionally, another tape ran continuously throughout the entire week-long recording session, and captured the dialog between the players. On the final album many of the tracks begin with the musicians discussing how to do the song or who should come in where, and provides a rare insight into the workmanship and approach that these highly-regarded musicians used to make their music, and how they decided to work together.