Before commercial country music was called "country," it was called "folk" (the genre affiliation assigned to Hank Williams' generation), and before that, believe it or not, "old familiar melodies." Old familiar melodies were just that: what remained of the maudlin popular music of the 19th century, forgotten by all in the next but culturally conservative rural and small-town people.

The songs were not traditional in the sense that "Barbara Allen" and "Shady Grove" were and are. Professional songsmiths wrote them, and in their first iteration they were intended for pianos and orchestras. The urban audiences heard them that way before they abandoned them for newer, more lively styles, first ragtime, then jazz, and popular songs and instrumentals influenced by them. In the 1920s and after, old familiar melodies survived among far-from-the-limelight musicians who played them on guitars, fiddles, banjos, autoharps, mandolins and other instruments associated with local and regional styles.

Step Back in Time is devoted to old songs and newer songs written like old ones. JB Dailey is the father of Jamie Dailey, a prominent bluegrass/country artist who usually performs with Darrin Vincent. Its genesis was Jamie's determination to capture his father's playing and singing while his dad, beset with health problems, was still able.

Jamie's production respects the music's spirit, called up by such notables as Vincent, Doyle Lawson and ex-Statler Brother Jimmy Fortune who sensitively accompany JB and Jamie's lead vocals in a selection of sacred and secular material linked by tragedy, sorrow and Jesus. I imagine that some listeners will squirm at the airing of songs of Victorian sensibility and pre-Freudian perspective on Mother, but if they do, it's their loss.

Unsettlingly sincere, devoid of humor or irony, the songs are sung with open hearts for open hearts. In later years, along with mountain ballads and fiddle tunes, they would help define bluegrass. I associate the pure quality and presentation of Step Back's songs specifically with the Carter Family and the Blue Sky Boys (Bill & Earl Bolick), but comparable material is scattered through oldtime and bluegrass recordings and reissues of the 1940s, 1950s and even later.

Jimmie Davis's "Nobody's Darlin' But Mine," the one Step Back number you are most likely to recognize, is just about my favorite heart song, but there's plenty else to like. It's been years since I heard "It Was Only the Wind," and I was startled to be reminded that Tom T. Hall wrote it. It's a pitch-perfect neglected-mother ballad. In other words, (1) it sounds older than it is and (2) you will have to fight the tear that is the natural response to its sad, sad story. The hymn "Great Speckled Bird" gets a touching instrumental treatment in a Bashful Brother Oswald-influenced dobro arrangement. "Have You Lost Your Love for Me?" is not expressed quite in the manner that forlorn question would be raised today, but the emotion is as real and contemporary as it is ubiquitous.

Beneath an exterior of what people more sophisticated than I am would call "corny" are human truths spoken and sung without artifice. Set to wonderful melodies, too. Congratulations to those who conceived this project and followed through. Rest assured, no cookie cutters were employed in its production.