Bill Monroe

• Born: September 13, 1911
• Birthplace: Rosine, Kentucky
• Died: September 9, 1996
• Place of death: Springfield, Tennessee

American country singer, guitarist, and songwriter

Monroe was noted for his dazzling mandolin playing and his contribution to the genre of country music known as bluegrass.

Member of The Bluegrass Boys

The Life

William Smith Monroe was the youngest of the eight children of J. B. “Buck” Monroe and Malissa Vandiver of western Kentucky. Though hardworking farmers, Buck was an educated man, and Malissa was musically gifted, playing the fiddle, the accordion, and the harmonica. Malissa was also a talented dancer and a singer, who knew the old Southern ballads and mountain songs. However, it was her brother, Pendleton Vandiver—later immortalized in one of Monroe’s songs, “Uncle Penn”—who was perhaps the biggest musical influence on Monroe. Most of the Monroe children played instruments, and legend has it that Monroe took up the mandolin because his older brothers had already claimed the household guitar and fiddles. In his teens, Monroe accompanied his Uncle Penn, who was playing for dances. Monroe also picked up the blues idiom from Arnold Schultz, a local African American day laborer, said to be one of the best bottleneck blues guitarists in the area.

With his brothers Birch on fiddle and Charlie on guitar, Monroe began playing locally for dances and parties. However, when their father died in 1928, the brothers left the farm to work in the oil refineries in Gary, Indiana, and in Chicago. In their spare time, they established themselves as dancers and musicians, highly in demand, and they often appeared on WLS Radio’s National Barn Dance program. Though Birch left, Monroe and Charlie became one of the many country brother duos of the period, recording sixty songs by 1938. However, personal and musical differences caused the brothers to go their separate ways early that year.

This split gave Monroe the opportunity to develop musically in ways that the duet format had not allowed. He wanted to reinvigorate country music, starting with old string-band and fiddle tunes—largely based on traditional British, Irish, and Southern American folk songs—and expanding them in ways that would make them more popular, commercial, and accessible. He would do this by adding elements of African American blues, traditional gospel songs, and instrumental improvisations found in jazz. The challenge, however, was to remain connected to the music’s rural roots.

In 1939 Monroe formed a new group, and he went to Nashville, Tennessee, to audition for the live Grand Ole Opry show on the fifty-thousand-watt radio station WSM. A performance at Grand Ole Opry could make an entertainer an instant success because of the station’s far-reaching range. Performing Jimmie Rodgers’ earlier hit, “Muleskinner Blues,” with such energy in such an intriguing arrangement earned Monroe and his Bluegrass Boys the Grand Ole Opry’s first encore. They were immediately hired as regulars, and Monroe stayed at the Grand Ole Opry until he died of a stroke sixty years later.

The Music

Breakneck Bluegrass. Monroe’s new form of music (called bluegrass, after Monroe’s home state of Kentucky) was to be played at breakneck speed, imitating the fast fiddle “breakdowns” of the rural dances. Bringing all these elements together created a sound that was something quite radical. Although some people believe that bluegrass is pure, unspoiled, and noncommercial country music from the hills, that is not the case. Monroe always intended for his bluegrass music—which he unabashedly credited himself with inventing—to have wide appeal.

By about 1945, Monroe had finally brought all the parts together: an acoustic group with fiddle, banjo, and mandolin exchanging lead melody breaks, supported by a strong rhythm guitar and acoustic bass (with an accordion for a brief period). The whole group would back the strong vocals that Monroe called the “high lonesome sound.” The tenor voice would be dominant, sometimes singing in a key slightly higher than the vocalist’s natural range. Below would be woven intricate lines of harmonies, sometimes in quartet fashion reflective of old country gospel music. This format—Bill Monroe and His Bluegrass Boys—would change the face of American music.

The Bluegrass Boys. The band that Monroe had gathered in the late 1940’s—Monroe on mandolin, Lester Flatt on guitar, Howard Watts on bass, Chubby Wise on fiddle, and an innovative artist named Earl Scruggs on banjo—is often thought to be the quintessential bluegrass band, the band by which all others have been measured. Its two dozen recordings defined the genre, with these songs now part of the bluegrass canon. Between 1946 and 1951 Monroe also began to compose in earnest, rather than relying mostly on traditional ballads as he and his brother had done when singing duets. These included both virtuoso instrumentals such as “Rawhide” and “Jerusalem Ridge” as well as vocals such as “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” “Kentucky Waltz,” and “My Rose of Old Kentucky.” As much as Monroe sought superstardom, the times—and perhaps his own stubborn personality and singular musical vision—worked against him. The definitive bluegrass band lasted only a few years when Flatt and Scruggs went on to form their own group by 1948. This pattern would continue throughout Monroe’s career; more than one hundred musicians would call themselves the Bluegrass Boys over the next fifty years. Monroe’s bluegrass alternative to the honky-tonk of Hank Williams, the rockabilly of Johnny Cash, the smooth country crooning of Eddy Arnold, and the rock and roll of Carl Perkins was not widely accepted outside the relatively smaller niche of traditional country-music enthusiasts. For example, though the Bluegrass Boys recorded “Blue Moon of Kentucky” in 1946 to some commercial success, it was Elvis Presley who made it a hit record (his first) in 1954.

Lean Times. By the 1960’s and 1970’s Monroe’s records were getting little airplay on country radio, largely because he refused to electrify his instruments or to use drums in his band. Country music fought the (often British) rock-and-roll avalanche in 1960’s by using the studio-production techniques of the Nashville sound—making country smooth, pop, homogenized, and mainstream. Monroe would not go along; while the banjo and fiddle were thought to be a legacy of country music’s hillbilly heritage, and best forgotten, they were at the forefront of the bluegrass sound. Monroe continued to be a member of the Grand Ole Opry, although it was merely a courtesy. He continued to record and tour prolifically, but these were lean times for both Monroe and bluegrass music.

Bluegrass Revival. Monroe’s career was revitalized by an unexpected audience: “Folkie” and “Yankee” urban folk music enthusiasts and college students saw in Monroe an authenticity lacking in other forms of country music. In 1965 the first bluegrass music festival was sparsely attended, but the number of festivals and sizes of the crowd mushroomed in the coming years. The following year, the fan base became large enough to support a magazine, Bluegrass Unlimited, which was instrumental in spreading the genre and Monroe’s name by listing upcoming festivals, printing record reviews, and giving aficionados a way to keep in contact with one another.

Throughout the 1960’s and 1970’s, the festival circuit fostered and propagated bluegrass music. Establishing his own festival park in Bean Blossom, Indiana, Monroe began to receive belated recognition from mainstream country musicians who were acknowledging his influence in their music. Tours to Japan, the countries of the Pacific, and Europe (where he was always enthusiastically welcomed) started to give bluegrass music an international following.

The 1980’s, however, saw some personal setbacks. Monroe married his second wife, Della, in 1985, but they divorced less than two years later. Vandals almost destroyed his two famous 1920’s “Lloyd Loar” Gibson mandolins. Monroe also was charged with assault by a woman who claimed to be having a relationship with him, though the charges were dropped and he was exonerated. Family business ventures faltered. Slowly his musical energies began to wane.

Many critics, however, argue that some of his best music was made during this period. Through the 1990’s Monroe recorded and toured in spite of declining health and several backstage collapses. He played the Grand Ole Opry on Friday, March 15, 1996, but he could not come back for his Saturday performance. The effects of an undetected stroke in February had finally taken their toll. Monroe died on September 9.

Musical Legacy

Monroe’s many awards include induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1970, the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1971, the Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music in America’s Bluegrass Hall of Fame in 1984, the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame in 1991 (charter member), and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997. He performed before four presidents: Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. He was honored as a Cultural Figure by the U.S. Senate in 1986, and he received the National Medal of Arts from Clinton in 1995. He received several Grammy Awards: for Best Bluegrass Recording (Vocal or Instrumental) in 1989 for the album Southern Flavor (first Grammy awarded to a bluegrass record) and a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1993. In 1988 “Blue Moon of Kentucky” was adopted as the state song of Kentucky, replacing Stephen Foster’s “My Old Kentucky Home.” While bluegrass now has a large international following (from Japan to Eastern Europe), it is impossible to overestimate Monroe’s influence on all of American music. He will be remembered as one of the country’s greatest composers, instrumental innovators, and musical stylists.

Bibliography

Amatneek, Bill. Acoustic Stories: Playing Bass with Peter, Paul, and Mary, Jerry Garcia, and Bill Monroe, and Eighteen Other Unamplified Tales. Sebastopol, Calif.: Vineyards Press, 2003. An eclectic collection of stories about playing with Monroe, the Bluegrass Boys, and other greats artists, such as Peter Rowan, Tony Rice, and Frank Wakefield.

Black, Bob. Come Hither to Go Yonder: Playing Bluegrass with Bill Monroe. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005. An intriguing behind-the-scenes look at life as a Bluegrass Boy in the 1970’s by one of Monroe’s former banjo players.

Cantwell, Robert. Bluegrass Breakdown: The Making of the Old Southern Sound. New York: Da Capo Press, 1992. This source explores bluegrass as a social phenomenon. Cantwell examines how bluegrass “represents”—or stands in place of—Appalachian music. A reviewer in Bluegrass Unlimited called this the most thought-provoking work on bluegrass and its father, Monroe, he had ever read.

Ewing, Tom, ed. The Bill Monroe Reader. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000. An outstanding collection of some four dozen interviews and articles on Bill Monroe—many taken from country-music magazines—by a noted journalist and former Bluegrass Boy who worked with Monroe from 1986 until his last performance.

Goldsmith, Thomas, ed. The Bluegrass Reader. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004. A noted music writer provides an excellent collection of essays, covering bluegrass music in general with several references to Monroe.

Rooney, James. Bossmen: Bill Monroe and Muddy Waters. New York: Da Capo Press, 1971. Though dated—his career would continue on for another twenty-five years—the first half of this book, with its extended hundred-page Monroe interview, provides extensive autobiographical material.

Rosenberg, Neil. Bluegrass: A History. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985. The best academic survey of bluegrass music to the early 1980’s. Though incomplete, the material on Monroe’s early contributions is outstanding.

Rosenberg, Neil, and Charles Wolfe. The Music of Bill Monroe. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007. Two of country music’s respected scholars offers an authoritative bio-discography of the thousand Monroe commercial recordings.

Smith, Richard. Can’t You Hear Me Callin’? The Life of Bill Monroe. Boston: Little, Brown, 2000. A well-written and well-researched biography of the singer, covering the strengths, weaknesses, and complexities in his character.

Principal Recordings

albums:Knee Deep in Blue Grass, 1958; I Saw the Light, 1959; Mr. Blue Grass, 1960; The Great Bill Monroe, 1961; The Father of Bluegrass Music, 1962; My All Time Country Favorites, 1962; Blue Grass Special, 1963; I’ll Meet You in Church Sunday Morning, 1964; Bluegrass Instrumentals, 1965; The High Lonesome Sound of Bill Monroe, 1966; Bluegrass Time, 1967; A Voice from on High, 1969; Kentucky Bluegrass, 1970; Bill Monroe’s Uncle Pen, 1972; Bean Blossom, 1973; Weary Traveler, 1976; Bill Monroe Sings Bluegrass Body and Soul, 1977; Bean Blossom ’79, 1979; Bill Monroe and Friends, 1984; Bluegrass ’87, 1987; Southern Flavor, 1988.