Will the Circle Be Unbroken sold out several times in the ’70s, and the band recorded two more volumes. The album was recorded at breakneck speed, with the group putting down 36 songs in less than a week. Nonetheless, the band’s record label doled out $22,000 for the entire record, and NGDB delivered it on budget. Although it’s become a classic and storied album, record executives at the time doubted it would sell.
Scruggs and Watson were just the first two of a deep roster of country and bluegrass musicians who would record on the album, including Roy Acuff, Maybelle Carter, Randy Scruggs, Merle Travis, Pete "Oswald" Kirby, Norman Blake and Jimmy Martin. “Everyone who was enlisted for this band that lived in Colorado, it started at Tulagi.” “It was all because of Boulder, Colorado,” he says.
Earl Scruggs and Doc Watson, who were already considered bluegrass legends, had been playing shows in Boulder, and McEuen approached them separately to ask if they would join in on an NGDB album. The record wouldn't have happened if it weren't for a fortuitous summer gathering of musicians in 1971 in Boulder, according to McEuen, who spent much of the ’70s and ’80s living in Denver. “Forty-five of these photographs haven’t been published before.” “I told my brother, ‘Your photographs need to be out there,’” he says. The pictures boast a warm, late-’60s/early-’70s color palette, and McEuen notes that every photograph has a story behind it. Some of the photos are shown on the record packaging, but they’ve only been seen in that small format until now. William McEuen The book also showcases contemporaneous concert posters and dozens of color photos taken by William McEuen, who produced the Circle album. He ended up peering at the show through a window just as Lester Flatt brought out Maybelle Carter to perform "Wildwood Flower." In one passage, McEuen reflects on traveling to Nashville as a child and hoping to go to the Grand Ol’ Opry, only to find it was sold out. Another topic discussed is Merle Travis’s unusual way of fretting chords and the way “it made his guitar ring." Music lovers will revel in the book's details, which go into the instruments used on the album, the style in which the songs were played, and the recording process. "Episode six of their documentary Country Music was called ‘Will the Circle Be Unbroken?’” McEuen asked documentarians Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns to pen the book's forward. (McEuen’s brother, William, was a manager for both Martin and NGDB.) There are reflections on his childhood in California, and passages about people from his life and music career, including members of NGDB, collaborators on the Circle album, his high school friend Steve Martin and musicians such as Marty Stuart. The book doesn’t have a straightforward narrative, and includes McEuen's numerous personal essays. “It’s really interesting to look back on my 24th year.and see these photos,” McEuen reflects. He adds that at 76, he’s older than anyone who recorded on the famous record.
You’ll be opened up to another side of them, as well as the Dirt Band guys.” “You could be a Roy Acuff fan, or Earl Scruggs or Doc Watson or anyone.
“I don’t think you need to be a Nitty Gritty Dirt Band fan ,” he says. McEuen, who left NGDB in 2017, says the book should be interesting to anyone who enjoys bluegrass or country music. “I’ve had people tell me, ‘I got rid of all my rock-and-roll instruments and bought a mandolin,’ or ‘I quit playing the violin and started on the fiddle.’” “There are always questions about the Circle album,” he says. The record is considered by many to be the first Americana album, and McEuen says that he's been told through the decades how it has bonded families, or how some musicians have changed their whole style after listening to it. The book is currently available for pre-order on Amazon and bookstore websites. Now he's written a book about it, and Will The Circle Be Unbroken: The Making of a Landmark Album is set to be released on Monday, August 1. For fifty years, John McEuen has been talking about Will the Circle Be Unbroken, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s 1972 bluegrass magnum opus.
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