Jim Lauderdale, Ralph Stanley & The Clinch Mountain Boys - I Feel Like Singing Today (1999)

North Carolina native Jim Lauderdale is well-known in Nashville as a proficient songwriter and an excellent performer in his own right. This album finds Lauderdale taking a shot a bluegrass music. He even wrote or co-authored nine of the 15 tunes on the CD, including two of them with former Grateful Dead songwriter Robert Hunter. He also had the good sense to throw in with Ralph Stanley & the Clinch Mountain Boys, one of the premier bluegrass/mountain music bands in the world. This is a unique project for Lauderdale. The fact that he succeeds so thoroughly is due not only to his eminent songwriting chops but also because he has obviously learned his bluegrass lessons very well over the years. Given that anyone who can sing will sound like a veteran bluegrasser if they're singing with Ralph Stanley, it's still remarkable how convincingly Lauderdale has slipped into this genre.