CCMusic.com

This incredible footage from a 1984 performance at the Church Street Station Theatre in Orlando features The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band with special guests Stella Parton and Gus Harding. One of the few bands to have success on both the rock and pop as well as the country charts, The Nitty Gritty Dirt band has had hit records in five different decades and has lasted longer than virtually any other country-based rock group of their era. Younger contemporaries of the Byrds, they played an almost equally important role in the transformation from folk-rock into country-rock, and were an influence on such bands as the Eagles and Alabama and released the seminal triple album, Will the Circle Be Unbroken, in January of 1973, that became a million-seller. The band have since performed and recorded with any number of country/bluegrass crossover artists whose career paths were made easier by that first record, including John Hiatt, Mary Chapin Carpenter, and Rosanne Cash.