Bill Monroe

File:Bill Monroe.jpg

Bill Monroe

Bill Monroe (September 13, 1911 – September 9, 1996) developed the style of country music known as bluegrass, which takes its name from Monroe's 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."

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. With his driving mandolin style, his intensely high-ptiched tenor singing, and his conscious molding of his band's musical sound, 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.

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 they worked in an oil refinery. During this time Bill also performed as a square dancer on Chicago radios’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 manifest his blues-influenced, hard-driving virtuosity and set their act apparent from several other guitar-mandolin acts of the day.

RCA rercord 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's star 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 40s, Monroe added the banjo, played by "Stringbean" (Dave Akeman), dressed as a hillbilly clown with his pants belted far below his waiste. The band also included an accordion player, and occasionally harmonica. In 1945, the phenomenonal young banjo player, Earl Scruggs, joined the band. The accordion, meanwhile was dropped. Scruggs' revolutionary three-finger picking style — coupled with Lester Flatt's baritone crooning and Monroe's "high, lonesome" tenor sound — formed the nucleus of the Blue Grass Boys' most famous incarnation. Not to be overlooked in this phenomenonal group is Chubby Wise, whose bluesy, sometimes intentionally dissonant fiddle style 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 Foggy Mountain Boys. While Monroe reportedly felt betrayed by his proteges' disloyalty, their leaving was also a blessing to his legacy, as their music too came to be called "bluegrass." Jimmy Martin, took over as Monroe's singing partner while the teenage prodigy Sonny Osborne handled Scruggs' former duties on the banjo admirably. Both of these performers, like Flatt & Scruggs before them, went on to become bluegrass stars in their own right. By the early 1950s several successful bluegrass bands had emerged: the Stanley Brothers, Jim and Jesse McReynolds, 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, Carter Stanley, and many others. Monroe's song "Blue Moon of Kentucky" was one of the first songs recorded by Elvis Presley, who played it in a 4/4 rockabilly style. Monroe would thereafter play the first verse of the song in the original waltz time in which he wrote it, and then switch to Presley's 4/4 up-tempo style.

While Monroe did not score many major hits on the country charts he maintained a loyal audience for his many recording and appearances, and his audience widened considerably in the 1960s as a result of the folk music craze. Audiences attracted to the music through television performances of Flatt & Scruggs and the Dillards soon learned that the Father of Bluegrass was Bill Monroe. Bluegrass festivals and banjo and fiddle contests sprang up from California to Virginia, with Monroe and his band much in demand. This phenomenon only became more pronounced in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. 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 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. In Monroe ranked #16 on Country Music Television's list of 40 Greatest Men of Country Music.

Until shortly before his death, Monroe continued bring his music to worldwide audiences. He appeared in all fifty states of the U.S. and many foreign countries, including Japan, Canada, England, Ireland, Holland, Switzerland, and Israel. He had re-union 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, and he also played at numerous urban performing arts centers and the White House.

Sampling Monroe's Music

Several videos of Bill Monroe's performances are available free of charge on the Internation.

• "Uncle Pen" is one of Monroe's signature songs, written in honor of Monroe's mother's brother, whose fiddle playing deeply influenced Monroe's style.
• "Rawhide" was Monroe's most-requested instrumental, featuring his unique mandolin style, played at break-neck pace.
• With four-part harmonies that showcase Monroe's falsetto voice"Wicked Path of Sin" typifies Monroe's insistence to include sacred music in every set he performed.
• "Train" gives the listener a sense of the way in which blues themes influenced Monroe's music, as well as an excellent example of the "double fiddles" that characterized some of his later bands.

External links

• Recording of "Wayfaring Stranger" from the 1993 Florida Folk Festival (available for public use from the State Archives of Florida

• Biography from the Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum
• [1]

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:

• Monroe&oldid=65958301 Bill Monroe  ^{Monroe&action=history 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.