All forms of music are unique in their own fashion, but bluegrass is unique in a singular manner. It is a genre that combines at one and the same time elements of euphoria and melancholy. Euphoria in the sheer audacity and speed with which much of the music is played. The late Ralph Rinzler famously called it “country music in overdrive,” and the solo runs that punctuate bluegrass songs frequently leave treadmarks on one’s ears. Melancholy both in the manner with which the lyrics of bluegrass songs often refer to things that are passed or lost as well as the manner in which the words are sung. The keening, aching sound of the vocalists possesses a quality that has been called “high lonesome.” Quite a curious combination. A music that is both speedy and sad.
Bluegrass didn’t get referred to by name until the late 1950s. Before then, it was a portion of Country music or it was called “old-timey,” a way to refer to both the sound - acoustic through and through and devoid of drums - and the way of life the songs mirrored. While many forces and figures contributed to the genre’s creation, it was one man, Bill Monro e, to whom we can credit its codification. Monroe was born in Western Kentucky, and he began his career, along with guitarist brother, Charlie, on radio stations throughout the country. BMI played an important role in the development of Bluegrass specifically, and American popular music in general, by its payment for the playing of the music on radio. Without this support, the creators of American vernacular music might not have been able to sustain their efforts.
The Monroe brothers first recorded for RCA Victor in 1936, one of the many brother acts in Country music at the time. Charlie left the duo in 1939, and Bill formed the first of many versions of the Blue Grass Boys. The group took to the stage of the Gran Ole Opry in the fall of the year. In 1940, they recorded one of their most influential tracks, a version of Jimmie Rodgers’s “Blue Yodel Number 8” called “Mule Skinner Blues.” Bluegrass was off and running.
Through Monroe’s groups passed many of Bluegrass’s master musicians, all of them BMI songwriters. They include Jimmie Martin, Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs and others. Flatt and Scruggs were, along with Monroe, the public face of bluegrass in the 1960s, when their record of “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” was featured in Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and each week they were heard singing the theme song to The Beverly Hillbillies. BMI has also been the home of many other of the Bluegrass masters who followed in these men’s wake: the Osborne Brothers, the Stanley Brothers, Doc Watson, Chris Hillman of the Desert Rose Band, and Del McCoury.
Today, Bluegrass may include electrified instruments. Groups that led by the banjo player Bela Fleck, the Flecktones, take advantage of the newest in musical technology. However, notwithstanding the degree to which Bluegrass has been brought up to date, the basic sound has remained true to itself, one of America’s unique musical resources.
For more information, contact:
International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA)
1620 Frederica Street
Owensboro, KY 42301 USA
1-888-GET-IBMA
270-684-9025
ibma@ibma.org
On the web: http://www.ibma.org