To mark his half century as a professional musician, banjo player, sideman, producer and songwriter, Ray Edwards has issued as entertaining an album of deep bluegrass and country as you're likely to hear this year. Of the dozen cuts, nine are of hard-core Monroe/Stanley-style bluegrass, and the other three are of fiddle- and steel-drenched honkytonk of the kind that once upon a time, as Merle Haggard put it, crowded every jukebox.

A Golden Anniversary Celebration does not follow the usual format, though. Edwards is, true, on each cut in one capacity or another. Even so, though he is a superior country vocalist, he does not feel the need to showcase his voice on every song. Other lead singers strut their stuff: Junior Sisk, Will Jones, Tim Terry, Ronnie McCranie, Danny Paisley, Bradley Walker and Steven Dowdy. One can only admire Edwards' modest willingness to turn a song over to others when one doesn't doubt he could have done an able interpretation of it himself. Maybe it's his long career as a member of backup bands supporting Tom T. Hall, Jeanie C. Riley, Randy Travis and other notables.

The honkytonk numbers spotlight the spirit of the late George Jones, arguably the greatest of all. Jones's influence spreads, or at least once spread, wherever hard country, now an endangered species, lives. Jones died in 2013, so I assumed "Out of the Blue" (an Edwards co-write), was an older, previously unreleased cut. I soon learned that it was, but that the singer is the late Ronnie McCranie. You can't say Jones simply influenced this native Louisianan; it's more as if he inhabited him. It's both exhilarating and eerie.

The bluegrass side of the album -- which is most of it -- is of the variety taught in the old school, featuring obscure and familiar ("Tennessee," "When the Golden Leaves Begin To Fall") cuts, played and sung to perfection. I hope the album surmounts its drab title to draw the attention it deserves.

One particular pleasure of being a reviewer is the periodic encounter with the album that sneaks past and then wallops you. Old Country Store is one of those. It arrived in a package with several other discs (including Ray Edwards'). On first exposure, I remember thinking, "This is pretty good," and not much else. It was only later, as I listened to it again, that I began to comprehend how good. A few spins later, I was enthralled.

Turning Ground, its fourth release though the first to reach my ears, is a young five-member band out of East Kentucky, rooted in bluegrass's home field while incorporating contemporary influences in a fashion that feels entirely organic. One thinks of the Gibson Brothers and the Steep Canyon Rangers who have created strikingly original blends of old and new, but Turning Ground doesn't sound like either. It is blessed with solid songs, nine of them written by band guitarist Nathan Arnett, whose lead vocals are as virile as his compositional skills. His "I'm Gonna Wear a Crown" should be a gospel standard inside bluegrass circles and beyond. "Will Heal Over Time" is a top-flight country heart-wrencher. If Arnett isn't radically reinventing the subject matter of bluegrass, he is letting us know that there are still superior songs to be written with the conventions.

Four wisely chosen covers stretch the album to a welcome 13 cuts. Carter Stanley's "The Lonesome River," written out of Appalachia's deep ballad tradition, could have circulated through the hills and hollers of another century. Likewise "Waymore Blues" -- Waylon Jennings recorded it as "Waymore's Blues"; his friends gave him that nickname -- boasts a prehistory in authentic hobo song. Jennings and Curtis Buck rewrote it from the railroad folk ballad known variously as "Milwaukee Blues," "Jay Gould's Daughter" and more. It is outstanding, not at all what would expect to hear even from an artist as distinctive as Jennings.

It bears mentioning, perhaps, that it contains a shockingly raunchy line, matter-of-factly delivered, that seems to have registered on practically no one who sings or hears it. It has that in common with, for one example, an image in Big Joe Turner's 1950s r&b hit "Shake, Rattle and Roll." Now go listen to the words this time.

To hear Mac Wiseman is to love him. Otherwise, there may be something wrong with you. OK, I'm joking. Sort of. I was first alerted to Wiseman's special endowment on an album of performances from the Newport Folk Festival, on which he sang "Love Letters in the Sand" and "Homestead on the Farm" (aka "I Wonder How the Old Folk Are at Home," a title quoted in Wiseman fan Gordon Lightfoot's "Carefree Highway"). These, I learned subsequently, are the two most beloved numbers in his large repertoire. His magnificently evocative tenor voice and gorgeous heart songs speak an emotional intimacy that has to be experienced to be fully appreciated.

Born in 1925 and active up to just a few years ago, Wiseman already had a country career going (most notably with Molly O'Day, herself inspired by mountain music) when he joined Bill Monroe's band as bluegrass was in the process of invention. He sang lead on the early Monroe classic "Travelin' This Lonesome Road." After Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs went on to form their own legendary band, Wiseman joined up for a time, then led his own group. He recorded many albums thereafter, mostly (and most successfully) in bluegrass arrangements. He even cut an album with John Prine, under the Prine-esque title Standard Songs for Average People, in 2007 and Timeless with Merle Haggard in 2015.

Though these are pleasant enough, the best of Wiseman stretches over the three decades of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. (On the subject of collaborations, you can't do better than the two-disc Essential Bluegrass Album with his longtime friends the Osborne Brothers, issued originally in 1979 and then on remastered CD in 2003.) Major and minor Wiseman releases are still in print on a variety of bluegrass and country labels such as Rural Rhythm, County and Bear Family.

That being the case, Thanks, Mac! amounts to an expression of gratitude and a labor of love. For those reasons Milwaukee-based bluegrass guitarist Jerry Wicentowski, obviously sufficiently sane to be moved by Wiseman, performs 15 songs associated with Mac, "Love Letters" and "Homestead" being numbers one and four respectively. Not reinterpretations, these are done as close to Wiseman style as he can get them. In a note on the cover Wiseman bestows his endorsement: "I'm very pleased you're carrying on my legacy."

That's not a bad thing. Today Mac's voice suffers the ravages of age, and there will be no more from that lovely instrument. There was, is and will be only one Mac Wiseman. Yet if Wicentowski plans to go on in the Thanks, Mac! vein, he may want to assemble his own collection of heart, bluegrass, folk, country, gospel and parlor songs and carry on the legacy in a way that proves he's something other than a talented Wiseman mimic.