Monroe, Bill

Latest revision as of 16:06, 31 October 2023

Left: Bill Monroe , the "Father of Bluegrass."

Bill Monroe (September 13, 1911 – September 9, 1996) was an American singer, songwriter, band leader, and mandolin player, often referred to as the "Father of Bluegrass Music." Bluegrass takes its name from Monroe's band, the "Blue Grass Boys," which in turn pays affectionate homage to his home state of Kentucky, the "Bluegrass State."

Monroe developed his technique and the furious tempo that often characterizes bluegrass while performing and recording with his brother Charlie in the 1930s, as one of the Monroe Brothers. Bluegrass is notable for the lightning-fast interchange of instruments, typically a guitar, banjo, mandolin, and fiddle. Monroe's virtuoso mandolin playing and plaintive tenor singing style, known as the "high, lonesome sound," have come to typify bluegrass music. The roots of bluegrass can be traced to earlier traditional forms, but Monroe is rightly credited with combining these elements into a unique musical idiom. Monroe's many compositions over a seventy-year career have become part of the repertoire of nearly all bluegrass musicians.

Monroe was an intensely competitive and demanding bandleader. His forceful personality molded his Blue Grass Boys into a virtual "school of bluegrass," graduating some of the genre's most important artists, including Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs, Don Reno, Jimmy Martin, and Del McCoury. Beyond direct musical influence, Monroe largely defined the thematic conventions of bluegrass with his emphasis of the fragility of love, reverence for nature, and, particularly, the ties of heart to one's home and family. Monroe authored many gospel bluegrass songs, and themes of religious faith have become standard to the genre.

Monroe and his band have influenced musicians as diverse as the Everly Brothers, Elvis Presley, George Jones, Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton, and Jerry Garcia. Contemporary country stars such as Alison Krauss, Ricky Skaggs, Vince Gil, and others have strong associations with Monroe's music.

Monroe was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1970. In 1989, he received the first ever Grammy award for a Bluegrass record, and in 1995, he was given the National Medal of Honor by Bill Clinton at a White House ceremony. In 1996, a year after his death, Monroe was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Biography

Monroe was born in Rosine, Kentucky, the youngest of eight children. His father was a prosperous farmer while his mother, née Malissa Vandiver, was of more humble social origins. Malissa and her brother, Pendleton "Pen" Vandiver, were both musically inclined. Bill's mother passed on her knowledge of traditional ballads originating in the British Isles, while "Uncle Pen" taught him the old-time fiddle-playing that became a characteristic of the bluegrass sound. Monroe learned guitar from a black musician named Arnold Shultz, who sometimes played with Bill and "Uncle Pen" at local dances.

Early career

Monroe's professional career began in the 1930s when he and his older brothers, Birch and Charlie, began performing as a trio at a radio station in South Bend, Indiana, near Hammond, where all three worked in an oil refinery. During this time Bill also performed as a square dancer on Chicago’s WLS National Barn Dance show. Birch soon left the music scene, but the younger two brothers continued to perform and record as the Monroe Brothers. They developed considerable popularity beginning in 1935, through their appearances on the powerful WBT radio station out of Charlotte, North Carolina. Bill's mandolin playing already displayed a blues-influenced, hard-driving virtuosity and set their act apart from several other guitar-mandolin acts of the day.

RCA record producer Eli Oberstein recorded the Monroe Brothers for the first time in 1936, and the act had several hits. Bill and Charlie parted ways, however, in 1938. Bill recorded two more sessions for RCA with his new band, the Blue Grass Boys.

The Blue Grass Boys

Bill Monroe (seated) with an early version of the Blue Grass Boys.

Auditioning in Nashville for the WSM Grand Ole Opry, Monroe reportedly impressed the show's executives with his up-tempo rendition of “Mule Skinner Blues,” an earlier hit by the legendary Jimmie Rodgers. The song became Monroe's trademark and was later successfully covered by Dolly Parton. Monroe rose quickly on the strength of the Opry's popularity. He was reportedly grossing over $200,000 a year by 1943, making him a major star.

In the early 1940s, Monroe added the banjo, played by "Stringbean" (Dave Akeman), who dressed as a hillbilly clown with his pants belted far below his waist. The band also included an accordion player and, occasionally, a harmonica player. In 1945, the phenomenal young banjo player, Earl Scruggs, joined the band, and the accordion was dropped. Scruggs's revolutionary, lightening-speed three-finger picking style was a perfect match for Monroe's unrivaled speed and power on the mandolin. Lester Flatt's baritone crooning, meanwhile, blended well with Monroe's "high, lonesome" tenor voice. Not to be overlooked in this seminal group was Chubby Wise, whose unique blend of blues, swing, and country fiddle styles would become the standard for future bluegrass fiddlers. The band's late 1940s recordings for Columbia are now widely recognized as classics.

A crisis hit the band in 1948, when Flatt and Scruggs left the group to form the Foggy Mountain Boys. Jimmy Martin, whose voice more closely resembled Monroe's than did Flatt's, took over as Monroe's singing partner, while the teenage prodigy, Sonny Osborne, handled Scruggs's former duties on the banjo admirably. While Monroe reportedly felt betrayed by the disloyalty of Flatt and Scruggs, their departure from the group was also a blessing in disguise for Monroe's legacy, as their "bluegrass" music won wide recognition. By the early 1950s several successful bluegrass bands had emerged: the Stanley Brothers, Jim and Jesse McReynolds, and Reno & Smiley, as well as Flatt & Scruggs.

Legacy

In the future, Monroe's band would serve as a training ground for countless bluegrass singers and musicians. More than 150 musicians played in the Blue Grass Boys over the years. Many later became stars in their own right, including Mac Wiseman, Clyde Moody, Sonny Osborne, Jimmy Martin, Don Reno, Del McCoury, Vassar Clements, Peter Rowan, and Carter Stanley, among others. Hank Williams, Sr. teamed with Monroe to write Monroe's hit "Blue and Lonesome." Monroe's own waltz number, "Blue Moon of Kentucky," was one of the first songs recorded by Elvis Presley, who played it in a 4/4 rockabilly style.

While Monroe did not score many hit singles on the country charts after the 1950s, he maintained a loyal audience for his numerous albums and appearances, and his audience widened considerably in the 1960s, as a result of the rise in popularity of folk music. Audiences attracted to bluegrass music through television performances of Flatt & Scruggs and the Dillards often learned that the “Father of Bluegrass” was Bill Monroe. Hundreds of young "pickers" formed bluegrass bands all over America, nearly always incorporating several Monroe songs into their repertoire. Bluegrass festivals and banjo-and-fiddle contests sprang up from California to Virginia, with Monroe and his band much in demand. This phenomenon became more pronounced in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. As a result, Monroe's traditional bluegrass albums continued to find an audience even while "newgrass" groups flooded the market with innovative approaches to the genre.

In 1982, the National Endowment for the Arts gave Monroe its prestigious Heritage Award, and in 1988, he won a Grammy for his album Southern Flavor—the first bluegrass Grammy ever bestowed. Bill Monroe was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1970, the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Honor as an inaugural inductee in 1991, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (as an "early influence") in 1997. He is the only performer honored in all three. He was also the 1993 recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), placing him in the company of Louis Armstrong, Chet Atkins, Ray Charles, and Paul McCartney, among others. As of 2006, Monroe ranked #16 on Country Music Television's list of 40 Greatest Men of Country Music, just behind Elvis Presley.

Until shortly before his death, Monroe continued to bring his music to worldwide audiences. He appeared in all 50 states of the U.S. and many foreign countries, including Japan, Canada, England, Ireland, Holland, Switzerland, and Israel. He had reunion concerts with several of the early Blue Grass Boys, and also performed with younger inheritors of his legacy. Bluegrass festivals throughout America honored him as the originator of the music to which they were devoted. He also played at numerous urban performing arts centers and the White House.

External links

All links retrieved October 31, 2023.

The Florida Memory Project. Recording of "Wayfaring Stranger" from the 1993 Florida Folk Festival.
IMDB.com. Bill Monroe Filmography.

Credits

New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here:

Bill_Monroe ^history

The history of this article since it was imported to New World Encyclopedia:

History of "Bill Monroe"

Note: Some restrictions may apply to use of individual images which are separately licensed.

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-[[Image:Bill Monroe.jpg|thumb|right|Bill Monroe]]
+{{Ebcompleted}}{{Paid}}{{Approved}}{{Images OK}}{{submitted}}{{copyedited}}{{2Copyedited}}
+{{epname|Monroe, Bill}}
-'''Bill Monroe''' (September 13, 1911 – September 9, 1996) developed the style of [[country music]] known as [[bluegrass music|bluegrass]], which takes its name from his band, the "[[Blue Grass Boys]]," itself named for his home state of Kentucky.  Monroe's performing career spanned 60 years as a singer, instrumentalist, composer and bandleader. He is often referred to as ''"the Father of Bluegrass Music."''
+[[Image:MonroeBrothers.jpg|thumb|225px|Left: Bill Monroe , the "Father of Bluegrass."]]'''Bill Monroe''' (September 13, 1911 – September 9, 1996) was an American singer, songwriter, band leader, and mandolin player, often referred to as the "Father of Bluegrass Music." Bluegrass takes its name from Monroe's band, the "Blue Grass Boys," which in turn pays affectionate homage to his home state of Kentucky, the "Bluegrass State."
-Although many other singers and musicians contributed to the genre and its roots can be traced to earlier traditional forms, Monroe is rightly credited with having created a unique musical form within the country music field. For more than half a century, with his blues-influenced driving mandolin playing, his intensely high-ptiched tenor singing, and and his leaderhip of the Blue Grass Boys, Monroe was the unquestioned master of his art. His band became a training ground for many outstanding musicians, and his style influenced musicians as diverse as the Everly Brothers, Elvis Presley, George Jones, Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton, and rock star Jerry Garcia. His early records with the Blue Grass Boys are considered classics, and many of his songs have been covered later country and bluegrass recording artists.
+Monroe developed his technique and the furious tempo that often characterizes bluegrass while performing and recording with his brother Charlie in the 1930s, as one of the Monroe Brothers. Bluegrass is notable for the lightning-fast interchange of instruments, typically a guitar, banjo, mandolin, and fiddle. Monroe's virtuoso mandolin playing and plaintive tenor singing style, known as the "high, lonesome sound," have come to typify bluegrass music. The roots of bluegrass can be traced to earlier traditional forms, but Monroe is rightly credited with combining these elements into a unique musical idiom. Monroe's many compositions over a seventy-year career have become part of the repertoire of nearly all bluegrass musicians.
-==Biography==
+Monroe was an intensely competitive and demanding bandleader. His forceful personality molded his Blue Grass Boys into a virtual "school of bluegrass," graduating some of the genre's most important artists, including [[Lester Flatt]], [[Earl Scruggs]], [[Don Reno]], [[Jimmy Martin]], and [[Del McCoury]]. Beyond direct musical influence, Monroe largely defined the thematic conventions of bluegrass with his emphasis of the fragility of love, reverence for nature, and, particularly, the ties of heart to one's home and family. Monroe authored many gospel bluegrass songs, and themes of religious faith have become standard to the genre.
-Monroe was born in Rosine, Kentucky, the youngest of eight children.  His father was a prosperous farmer while his mother, née Malissa Vandiver, was of more humble social origins.  Malissa and her brother, Pendleton "Pen" Vandiver, were both musically inclined. Bill's mother passed on her knowledge of traditional ballads having their origins in Britain and Ireland, while "Uncle Pen" taught him the old-time fiddle playing that became a characteristic of the bluegrass style. Monroe learned guitar from a black musician named Arnold Shultz, who sometimes played with Bill and "Uncle Pen" at local dances.
+Monroe and his band have influenced musicians as diverse as the [[Everly Brothers]], [[Elvis Presley]], [[George Jones]], [[Emmylou Harris]], [[Dolly Parton]], and [[Jerry Garcia]]. Contemporary country stars such as [[Alison Krauss]], [[Ricky Skaggs]], [[Vince Gil]], and others have strong associations with Monroe's music.
+{{toc}}
+Monroe was inducted into the [[Country Music Hall of Fame]] in 1970. In 1989, he received the first ever [[Grammy]] award for a Bluegrass record, and in 1995, he was given the National Medal of Honor by [[Bill Clinton]] at a [[White House]] ceremony. In 1996, a year after his death, Monroe was inducted into the [[Rock and Roll Hall of Fame]].
-Monroe's professional career began in the 1930s when he and his older brothers, Birch and Charlie, began performing as a trio, the Monroe Brothers, at a radio station in South Bend, Indiana, near Hammond, where they worked in an oil refinery.  Birch left the music scene early on in the Monroes' career, and the younger two brothers continued to perform and record as the Monroe Brothers.  In 1939, after the brothers parted ways, Monroe formed the first edition of the Blue Grass Boys, and in October of the same year became a regular on the [[Grand Ole Opry]].
+==Biography==
+Monroe was born in Rosine, Kentucky, the youngest of eight children. His father was a prosperous farmer while his mother, née Malissa Vandiver, was of more humble social origins. Malissa and her brother, Pendleton "Pen" Vandiver, were both musically inclined. Bill's mother passed on her knowledge of traditional ballads originating in the British Isles, while "Uncle Pen" taught him the old-time fiddle-playing that became a characteristic of the bluegrass sound. Monroe learned guitar from a black musician named Arnold Shultz, who sometimes played with Bill and "Uncle Pen" at local dances.
-As a [[mandolin]] player, Monroe brought a virtuosity previously unknown in country music to his instrument.  In 1945 he hired [[Earl Scruggs]], whose three-finger picking style similarly elevated the role of the [[banjo]]. This version of the Blue Grass Boys, which also included singer/guitarist [[Lester Flatt]], Chubby Wise on fiddle, and  Cedric Rainwater on upright bass, made the first recordings that featured all the elements that later came to be known as bluegrass music.
+===Early career===
+Monroe's professional career began in the 1930s when he and his older brothers, Birch and Charlie, began performing as a trio at a radio station in South Bend, Indiana, near Hammond, where all three worked in an oil refinery. During this time Bill also performed as a square dancer on Chicago’s WLS National Barn Dance show. Birch soon left the music scene, but the younger two brothers continued to perform and record as the Monroe Brothers. They developed considerable popularity beginning in 1935, through their appearances on the powerful WBT radio station out of Charlotte, North Carolina. Bill's mandolin playing already displayed a blues-influenced, hard-driving virtuosity and set their act apart from several other guitar-mandolin acts of the day.
+RCA record producer Eli Oberstein recorded the Monroe Brothers for the first time in 1936, and the act had several hits. Bill and Charlie parted ways, however, in 1938. Bill recorded two more sessions for RCA with his new band, the Blue Grass Boys.
+===The Blue Grass Boys===
+[[Image:Monroe-and-Band.jpg|thumb|250px|Bill Monroe (seated) with an early version of the Blue Grass Boys.]]
-More than 150 musicians played in the Blue Grass Boys over the years.  Many later became stars in their own right, including [[Mac Wiseman]], Clyde Moody, [[Sonny Osborne]], [[Jimmy Martin]], [[Don Reno]], [[David "Stringbean" Akeman]], [[Del McCoury]], [[Vassar Clements]], [[Peter Rowan]], [[the Stanley Brothers|Carter Stanley]], and [[Randall Franks]].
+Auditioning in Nashville for the WSM [[Grand Ole Opry]], Monroe reportedly impressed the show's executives with his up-tempo rendition of “Mule Skinner Blues,” an earlier hit by the legendary [[Jimmie Rodgers]]. The song became Monroe's trademark and was later successfully covered by Dolly Parton. Monroe rose quickly on the strength of the Opry's popularity. He was reportedly grossing over $200,000 a year by 1943, making him a major star.
-Bill Monroe was inducted into the [[Country Music Hall of Fame]] in [[1970]], the [[International Bluegrass Music Hall of Honor]] as an inaugural inductee in [[1991]], and the [[Rock and Roll Hall of Fame]] (as an "early influence") in [[1997]].  He is the only performer honored in all three.  His well-known song "[[Blue Moon of Kentucky]]" has been covered by both rock and roll and bluegrass artists.
+In the early 1940s, Monroe added the banjo, played by "Stringbean" (Dave Akeman), who dressed as a hillbilly clown with his pants belted far below his waist. The band also included an accordion player and, occasionally, a [[harmonica]] player. In 1945, the phenomenal young banjo player, [[Earl Scruggs]], joined the band, and the accordion was dropped. Scruggs's revolutionary, lightening-speed three-finger picking style was a perfect match for Monroe's unrivaled speed and power on the mandolin. Lester Flatt's baritone crooning, meanwhile, blended well with Monroe's "high, lonesome" tenor voice. Not to be overlooked in this seminal group was Chubby Wise, whose unique blend of blues, swing, and country fiddle styles would become the standard for future bluegrass fiddlers. The band's late 1940s recordings for Columbia are now widely recognized as classics.
-In [[2003]], [[CMT]] had Bill Monroe ranked #16 on ''[[CMT 40 Greatest Men of Country Music]]''.
+A crisis hit the band in 1948, when Flatt and Scruggs left the group to form the [[Foggy Mountain Boys]]. Jimmy Martin, whose voice more closely resembled Monroe's than did Flatt's, took over as Monroe's singing partner, while the teenage prodigy, Sonny Osborne, handled Scruggs's former duties on the banjo admirably. While Monroe reportedly felt betrayed by the disloyalty of Flatt and Scruggs, their departure from the group was also a blessing in disguise for Monroe's legacy, as their "bluegrass" music won wide recognition. By the early 1950s several successful bluegrass bands had emerged: the Stanley Brothers, Jim and Jesse McReynolds, and Reno & Smiley, as well as Flatt & Scruggs.
-==External links==
+===Legacy===
-*[http://www.floridamemory.com/Collections/folklife/folklife_cd2.cfm Recording of "Wayfaring Stranger" from the 1993 Florida Folk Festival (available for public use from the State Archives of Florida]
+In the future, Monroe's band would serve as a training ground for countless bluegrass singers and musicians. More than 150 musicians played in the Blue Grass Boys over the years. Many later became stars in their own right, including Mac Wiseman, Clyde Moody, Sonny Osborne, Jimmy Martin, Don Reno, Del McCoury, Vassar Clements, Peter Rowan, and Carter Stanley, among others. [[Hank Williams|Hank Williams, Sr.]] teamed with Monroe to write Monroe's hit "Blue and Lonesome." Monroe's own waltz number, "Blue Moon of Kentucky," was one of the first songs recorded by [[Elvis Presley]], who played it in a 4/4 rockabilly style.
-*[http://www.countrymusichalloffame.com/site/inductees.aspx?cid=144 Biography from the Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum]
+While Monroe did not score many hit singles on the country charts after the 1950s, he maintained a loyal audience for his numerous albums and appearances, and his audience widened considerably in the 1960s, as a result of the rise in popularity of folk music. Audiences attracted to bluegrass music through television performances of Flatt & Scruggs and the Dillards often learned that the “Father of Bluegrass” was Bill Monroe. Hundreds of young "pickers" formed bluegrass bands all over America, nearly always incorporating several Monroe songs into their repertoire. Bluegrass festivals and banjo-and-fiddle contests sprang up from California to Virginia, with Monroe and his band much in demand. This phenomenon became more pronounced in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. As a result, Monroe's traditional bluegrass albums continued to find an audience even while "newgrass" groups flooded the market with innovative approaches to the genre.
-*[http://community.webshots.com/user/bluegrassphotos]
-[[category:art, music, literature, sports and leisure]]
+In 1982, the National Endowment for the Arts gave Monroe its prestigious Heritage Award, and in 1988, he won a Grammy for his album ''Southern Flavor''—the first bluegrass Grammy ever bestowed. Bill Monroe was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1970, the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Honor as an inaugural inductee in 1991, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (as an "early influence") in 1997. He is the only performer honored in all three. He was also the 1993 recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), placing him in the company of [[Louis Armstrong]], Chet Atkins, [[Ray Charles]], and [[Paul McCartney]], among others. As of 2006, Monroe ranked #16 on Country Music Television's list of ''40 Greatest Men of Country Music,'' just behind Elvis Presley.
-{{credit|Bill Monroe|65958301}}
+Until shortly before his death, Monroe continued to bring his music to worldwide audiences. He appeared in all 50 states of the U.S. and many foreign countries, including Japan, Canada, England, Ireland, Holland, Switzerland, and Israel. He had reunion concerts with several of the early Blue Grass Boys, and also performed with younger inheritors of his legacy. Bluegrass festivals throughout America honored him as the originator of the music to which they were devoted. He also played at numerous urban performing arts centers and the White House.
+==External links==
+All links retrieved October 31, 2023.
+*The Florida Memory Project. [http://www.floridamemory.com/Collections/folklife/folklife_cd2.cfm Recording of "Wayfaring Stranger" from the 1993 Florida Folk Festival.]
+*IMDB.com. [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0598463/ Bill Monroe Filmography.]
-Monroe lost both his parents by the age of sixteen, and subsequently he followed some of his brothers north to the Chicago area, where he labored in a Sinclair Oil refinery, performed as a square dancer on Chicago’s WLS National Barn Dance, and sang and played mandolin with brothers Charlie (who played guitar) and Birch (who fiddled) on local radio. Birch soon left the trio, and Bill and Charlie decided to pursue music full time as the Monroe Brothers, first gaining exposure on stations in Iowa and Nebraska.
-The Monroes really hit their stride, however, after moving in 1935 to the Carolinas, where they based themselves mainly at Charlotte, North Carolina’s 50,000-watt WBT. Their popularity soon equaled that of any of the era’s many duos, and they distinguished themselves by their hard-driving tempos, piercing harmony, and Bill’s lightning-fast mandolin solos. 1936 RCA producer Eli Oberstein recorded them for the first time. Early releases like “What Would You Give in Exchange for Your Soul” sold well, and before long the team was winning a sizable regional audience with help from WBT’s signal and recorded radio shows. However, the headstrong Monroes feuded as brothers will, and the act broke up in 1938. Bill would record two more sessions for RCA with his new band, the Blue Grass Boys, named for Kentucky, the Bluegrass State.
-After rehearsing his group and working Carolina radio, Monroe headed for Nashville to audition for the Grand Ole Opry. WSM’s George D. Hay, Harry Stone, and David Stone, impressed with Monroe’s talent and star power, hired him in October 1939 on the strength of his performance of his trademark “Mule Skinner Blues,” formerly a hit for the legendary Jimmie Rodgers. WSM’s 50,000-watt transmitter and guest spots on the Opry’s NBC network portion quickly made Monroe’s name a household word. By 1943 he was grossing some $200,000 a year from show dates, many of them staged as part of his own Opry tent show, which combined music and comedy in delighting rural and small-town audiences throughout the South.
-While no one was yet calling Monroe’s style “bluegrass” (this would not come until the mid-1950s), many of its basic elements were already present, including its pulsing drive and the intensity of Monroe’s high-pitched vocals. During World War II he added the banjo, first played by Stringbean (Dave Akeman), and experimented briefly with the accordion and harmonica, which complemented the basic mandolin-guitar-fiddle-bass combination he would always retain. (Where guitar was concerned, Monroe himself was a formidable instrumentalist and set high benchmarks for his bandmembers through the years.) In 1945 he added the revolutionary three-finger banjo picking of Earl Scruggs, which provided bluegrass with its final building block. Monroe’s late-1940s recordings for Columbia, made with Scruggs and Lester Flatt, his singer-guitarist at the time, are now widely regarded as definitive.
-In 1948 Scruggs teamed with Flatt to form the Foggy Mountain Boys, and by the early 1950s several bands were playing their own variations of the bluegrass style, including the Stanley Brothers, Jim and Jesse McReynolds, and Reno & Smiley. Monroe made his band sound higher, bluer, and more lonesome than ever, with help from singer-guitarist Jimmy Martin and other expert sidemen, some of whom (including Martin) later launched bluegrass bands of their own. As ever, his repertoire included both sacred and secular material as well as both songs and instrumentals, and he composed much of his material himself or with members of his band. Over the years, Monroe originals like “Uncle Pen,” “Raw Hide,” “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” “Jerusalem Ridge,” “I Want the Lord to Protect My Soul,” and dozens of others have formed the basis of the bluegrass canon for professionals and amateurs alike.
-Through the 1950s and beyond, Monroe’s acoustic sound provided an alternative to honky-tonk, country-pop, and rockabilly. By 1963 he began to attract the attention of the urban folk music audience, with help from folklorist and promoter Ralph Rinzler, who promoted Monroe as the true Daddy of Bluegrass to listeners who thought bluegrass began and ended with Flatt and Scruggs. The year 1965 saw the first multi-day bluegrass festival making Monroe the centerpiece, and in 1967 he launched his own annual festival at Bean Blossom, Indiana, where he had long run a country music park. By 1970, when he won election to the Country Music Hall of Fame, he had become the acknowledged patriarch of the bluegrass movement, a cult figure to hordes of fans for whom bluegrass was akin to a religion.
-Until his death, Monroe continued to propagate the gospel of bluegrass to worldwide audiences, appearing in all fifty states and Canada as well as on tours of Japan, England, Ireland, Holland, Switzerland, and Israel. His venues ranged from rural festivals to urban performing arts centers and the White House. He kept recording as well, and his career total topped more than 500 selections, most of them made for MCA (formerly Decca).
+[[Category:Musicians]]
-Monroe also won recognition for his accomplishments. In 1982 the National Endowment for the Arts gave him its prestigious Heritage Award, and in 1988 he won a Grammy for his album Southern Flavor—the first bluegrass Grammy ever bestowed. A 1991 inductee into the International Bluegrass Music Association Hall of Honor, Monroe was also 1993 recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), an honor that placed him in the company of Louis Armstrong, Chet Atkins, Ray Charles, Paul McCartney, and other such legends. Although bluegrass constitutes only a small part of country music’s annual sales, such honors testify to the enormous influence Monroe’s music continues to exert among musicians in many fields.
-A stroke suffered in April 1996 ended Monroe’s career as a touring artist and hastened his death on September 9 of that year. “We all knew that if he ever got to the point where he couldn’t perform that he wasn’t going to make it,” said Emmylou Harris. “Music was his life.” Memorial services at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium and later in Monroe’s native Rosine, Kentucky, where he is buried, united hundreds of friends and fellow musicians who continue to nurture his legacy as one of country music’s great historical personalities. - John Rumble
+{{credit|Bill_Monroe|65958301}}