Kentucky's Bluegrass Music
()
About this ebook
Related to Kentucky's Bluegrass Music
Related ebooks
All or Nothing: The Story of Steve Marriott Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHidden History of Louisiana's Jazz Age Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsKorn on track Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCork Rock: From Rory Gallagher To The Sultans Of Ping Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPaint It Black! The Reverend's Archives, Volume 5 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHotter Than a Match Head: My Life on the Run with The Lovin’ Spoonful Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Another Mickey: Ruminations of a Texas Guitar Slinger Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAnd on Guitar...: The Autobiography of Jim Cregan Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Sing Me Back Home: Love, Death, and Country Music Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Jimi Hendrix Reader Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMaking the Scene in the Garden State: Popular Music in New Jersey from Edison to Springsteen and Beyond Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Smiths FAQ: All That's Left to Know About the Most Important British Band of the 1980s Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsKeeping the faith: A history of northern soul Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Perfectly Good Guitar: Musicians on Their Favorite Instruments Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Encyclopedia of the Blues, 2nd Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Chrissie Hynde: A Musical Biography Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJimi Hendrix Black Legacy: (A Dream Deferred) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIf You See Me: My Six-Decade Journey in Rock and Roll Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFrom Squeaky Clean to Dirty Water - My Life with the Sixties Garage Rock Trailblazers the Standells Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMillion Dollar Bash: Bob Dylan, The Band and the Basement Tapes. Revised and updated edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Music of Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds: Musicians of Note Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBig Star: The story of rock's forgotten band Revised & Updated Edition Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Oh, Didn't They Ramble: Rounder Records and the Transformation of American Roots Music Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5History of the Groove, Healing Drummer: Personal Stories of Drumming and Rhythmic Inspiration Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLiving the Blues Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tear Down the Walls: White Radicalism and Black Power in 1960s Rock Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMichael Bloomfield: The Rise and Fall of an American Guitar Hero Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Transatlantic Roots Music: Folk, Blues, and National Identities Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRalph Peer and the Making of Popular Roots Music Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Backstage & Beyond Vol. 1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Entertainers and the Rich & Famous For You
I'm Glad My Mom Died Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Finding Me: An Oprah's Book Club Pick Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Elvis and Me Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Counting the Cost Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Radical Love: Learning to Accept Yourself and Others Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Mother of Black Hollywood: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Open Book Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Coreyography: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Recovery: Freedom from Our Addictions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Whiskey in a Teacup: What Growing Up in the South Taught Me About Life, Love, and Baking Biscuits Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Can't Make This Up: Life Lessons Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bad Mormon: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Is This Anything? Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The History of Sketch Comedy: A Journey through the Art and Craft of Humor Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNo Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Trejo: My Life of Crime, Redemption, and Hollywood Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Playground: A Childhood Lost Inside the Playboy Mansion Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Foundling: The True Story of a Kidnapping, a Family Secret, and My Search for the Real Me Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Scrappy Little Nobody Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Robin Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Yes Please Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Taste: My Life Through Food Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bowie: An Illustrated Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Stories I Only Tell My Friends: An Autobiography Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rememberings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mommie Dearest Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Reviews for Kentucky's Bluegrass Music
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Kentucky's Bluegrass Music - James C Claypool
completed.
INTRODUCTION
Two things that naturally go hand in hand for bluegrass musicians are the abounding pride they have for their music and the high value they place upon their heritage. Core values such as patriotism, religion, love for the land, nostalgia for the past, and reverence for home and family are the themes oft repeated by the bluegrass musicians who perform the songs they and their audiences love.
What is it that makes bluegrass music so alive, so dynamic and so appealing? For certain, bluegrass is a uniquely American music genre, a musical format undeniably born in the USA.
There is controversy concerning the origins of bluegrass, a term that now defines a wide range of musical expression. Kentucky’s Bill Monroe has been labeled The Father of Bluegrass Music,
but others say Earl Scruggs and Lester Flatt, two of the mainstays in Monroe’s legendary mid-1940s bluegrass band, deserve much of the credit.
The argument concerning the origins of the term bluegrass
revolves around the fact that in 1939, Monroe formed a band called Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys (both to identify his heritage and to honor his home state of Kentucky). Later, in 1950, he put out a songbook, Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Country Songs, which was the first such publication to use the term bluegrass
in its title. The counterclaim, as recounted by Earl Scruggs, centers upon the fact that Flatt and Scruggs left Bill Monroe’s band in 1948 to form their own country music band. Soon, however, audiences were calling out to Flatt and Scruggs to play some of those songs
they had recorded and performed when they were Blue Grass Boys. Somehow, this morphed into the audience yelling out for Flatt and Scruggs to play us some more of that bluegrass music.
Fittingly, bluegrass music, a music that is so much the music of the people, thus may very well have been named by the people themselves rather than by any of the musicians who were performing it.
What is certain, however, is that Bill Monroe and those who worked with him should be credited with defining, standardizing, and then preserving what can best be described as classic bluegrass.
The components of classic bluegrass are well known. It is music that is played by an acoustic ensemble consisting of five or six musicians playing standardized stringed instruments: a banjo, a fiddle, a mandolin, an upright bass, and one or two guitars, one of which is sometimes a resonator guitar, frequently called a dobro.
The lead singer, who is often a high tenor, is likely to be the only one singing all the words to the songs being performed, and he is joined in the choruses by various members of the band in order to add tight harmonies. The band’s repertoire of songs stresses themes related to rural life, simpler times, memories of times gone by, and strong family values, with a flavoring of gospel songs thrown in for good measure. Good bluegrass musicians are the masters of split-second timing, and the tempo of bluegrass music is many times faster than country tempos, or as Library of Congress music scholar Alan Lomax would assert, bluegrass music was folk music with overdrive.
Whatever questions might linger about the origins of the term bluegrass,
there is one constant in this story—Bill Monroe’s steadfast determination to preserve the stylized musical format he had helped to create.
William Bill
Smith Monroe was born on September 13, 1911, in Ohio County, Kentucky. His family’s farm was located on land known as Jerusalem Ridge, where today a nonprofit foundation oversees the restoration and preservation of the Monroe family’s properties. An annual bluegrass festival is held at Jerusalem Ridge in the fall, and the profits help to fund the maintenance and improvement of the buildings that remain on the grounds. The Monroe family was hit hard by the Depression and the death of Bill’s mother, Malissa, when he was only 10 years old. Bill was the youngest of eight children. His father, Buck,
had to scramble to keep afloat, so Bill was essentially raised by his siblings and by his mother’s brother, Pendleton Vandiver (who was immortalized in Bill’s 1950s song Uncle Pen
). Vandiver was a talented musician who took Bill under his wing and showed young Bill the musical ropes.
Monroe’s life story is well documented. Bill joined his siblings in 1929 in a town located outside of Chicago, Illinois, and he and other members of the family soon landed jobs singing on Chicago’s radio station WLS, one of the 500,000-watt mega-stations broadcasting during the early years of radio. By 1934, Bill and his brother Charlie had struck out on their own, soon becoming country music and gospel recording stars in North Carolina. When the brothers parted ways in 1938, Bill continued in music as a solo artist.
Bill formed two country music bands, first in Arkansas and then in Georgia, and had only limited success. He then hired guitarist and vocalist Cleo Davis, who accompanied him to Asheville, North Carolina. There they were hired to perform on a daily radio music show. During this period, Bill began hiring the band that would become known as Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys. By 1939, Monroe and his band were performing as regulars on the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee, and the rest is history. Monroe and the bands he formed were slowly refining what came to be referred to as the bluegrass style of music.
Bill added the phenomenal three-finger-style banjo player Earl Scruggs and talented guitarist Lester Flatt to his band in 1945, along with fiddler Chubby Wise and bassist and comedian Cedric Rainwater (Howard Watts), producing what many deem one of the best bluegrass bands ever assembled. When Flatt and Scruggs left Monroe to form their own