American Bluegrass Music

The traditional country music that we associate with Kentucky, Tennessee, the Virginias, and the Carolinas evolved, like America itself, out of immigration and ingenuity. From the early 1600s onward, English, Scottish, and Irish settlers brought with them the music and dance of their native countries. Enslaved Africans, who sang as they worked, influenced its development. German and central European immigrants also made their contribution to the music. Everyone who arrived over the centuries made their mark. The language of the Bible and prayer books, the hymns people sang in church, and the old songs they learned at home, passed down from generation to generation, all played their part in the evolution of that rich music. With the passing of generations, the music became American, like the people themselves.

Remoteness and isolation helped to foster the different styles and sounds that evolved in different areas. In big cities, fashions and styles change fast, but in remote country areas the speed of change is much slower and gentler. The traditional music of the hills and mountains is the sound of a people who created their own entertainment at home and at social gatherings where they came together to dance, sing, and celebrate Christmas, harvest-time, birthdays, and weddings. Their songs were about their own lives: hard times, good times, life on the farm, life on the road, the changing seasons, love, hope, beauty, life, and death.

Bluegrass Pioneers

The invention of the phonograph and the arrival of radio in the early part of the twentieth century brought this old-time music out of the rural Southern mountains to people all over the United States. Stars emerged, like Jimmie Rodgers. Family bands like the Carter Family from Virginia and teams like the Monroe Brothers from Kentucky made great contributions to the advancement of traditional country music.

The Monroe Brothers were a popular country music act of the 1920s and 1930s. Birch played fiddle, Charlie played guitar, and Bill played mandolin. They began their career performing square dance songs as well as traditional and gospel numbers. In 1932 Bill and Charlie began touring professionally as dancers and singers with the WLS touring company, and in 1934 they became full-time musicians with radio station KFNF in Shenandoah, Iowa. Radio made the Monroe Brothers stars, and they made their first record in 1936 on RCA Victor's Bluebird label, the imprint the company reserved for race and hillbilly records. Their first recording session included "What Would You Give in Exchange for Your Soul?" their most popular and commercially successful song. The brothers went on to make sixty more recordings for Bluebird and created one of the most influential bodies of work in country music.

When the Monroes went their separate ways in 1938, Bill formed a new band. Since he was a native of Kentucky, the Bluegrass State, he called it Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys, and a new form of country music was born. After experimenting with various instrumental combinations, Bill settled on mandolin, banjo, fiddle, guitar, and bass for his lineup. The new band first appeared on the Grand Ole Opry in 1939 and soon became one of the most popular touring bands out of Nashville's WSM studios. Bill's new band was different from other traditional country music bands of the time because of its hard driving and powerful sound, the particular way it utilized traditional acoustic (non-electric) instruments, and its highly distinctive vocal harmonies that used two, three or four voices, with Bill's characteristic "high lonesome sound" always taking the lead. The music incorporated songs and rhythms from string band, gospel (black and white), work songs and "shouts" of African American laborers, and songs from the traditional repertoires of country music and the blues. One of the songs they played on their first appearance at the Grand Ole Opry was "Mule Skinner Blues." The song became one of the mainstays of their repertoire, and the style and drive that Bill Monroe brought to it became his hallmark. "Mule Skinner Blues" became the standard for all of their subsequent songs and for Bluegrass music in general.

When Earl Scruggs, a twenty-one-year-old banjo player from North Carolina, joined Monroe's Blue Grass Boys in 1946, he gave a new dimension to the music. Scruggs was a virtuoso who employed an innovative three-finger picking style. This enabled him to play with an electrifying speed and energy that galvanized the sound and thrilled audiences. Scruggs called it simply "Scruggs style." The name stuck, and generations of banjo-pickers followed his example. The classic 1946 lineup of the Blue Grass Boys was completed by Lester Flatt on guitar and vocals, Chubby Wise on fiddle, and Howard Watts-also known by the stage name he used as a comedian, "Cedric Rainwater"-on acoustic bass. Flatt's wailing tenor blended superbly with Monroe's "high, lonesome" vocal style, and together they developed the characteristic Bluegrass harmony technique where the harmonizing voice rides above the lead, creating a plaintive effect. Flatt also contributed the "chopping" or "chunking" guitar sound that is so characteristic of Bluegrass, hitting the offbeat hard to create a tension that works against the buzzing continuity of the banjo. The Blue Grass Boys introduced another innovation, by "passing the break" from one instrument to another, so that every player had an opportunity to play a solo. This was an important stylistic departure from old-time southern string-band tradition, and it is still one of the central features of Bluegrass.

When Scruggs and Flatt left Monroe's band and formed their own group, The Foggy Mountain Boys, they introduced the resophonic guitar, or Dobro®, into their band format. Burkett H. "Uncle Josh" Graves, from Tellico Plains, Tennessee, had first heard Scruggs' three-finger style of picking in 1949 and adapted it to the slide bar instrument. Graves played with Flatt and Scruggs from 1955 to 1969. His hard-driving, bluesy Dobro® style has influenced generations of players and is an essential part of the texture of Bluegrass.

Repertoire

From 1948 to 1969, Flatt and Scruggs were a major force in introducing bluegrass music to America through radio, national television, and films. Scruggs wrote and recorded one of bluegrass music's most famous instrumentals, "Foggy Mountain Breakdown," which was used in the soundtrack for the film Bonnie & Clyde (1967). In 1969 he established an innovative solo career with his three sons as The Earl Scruggs Revue. He also appeared on the television show, The Beverly Hillbillies. Scruggs still records and performs selected dates in groups that usually include his two sons, Randy and Gary, on guitar and bass. After parting with Scruggs in 1969, Flatt performed with his own band, Nashville Grass, until his death in 1979.

In 1965 the first Bluegrass festival was held in Fincastle, Virginia. At first the audiences were sparse as bands competed (or seemed to compete) with one another. In reality, the competition was just an excuse for a good time, with good music, and very soon attendance grew and Bluegrass festivals were springing up all over the country. They are still a popular feature of summer weekends and holidays. The music was given further prominence when the movie Deliverance (1972) featured the Scruggs-inspired "Dueling Banjos." Bluegrass music is a great creator of atmosphere, and it has been used and featured in many films-most recently the Coen Brothers' Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000).

1970s to the Present

There is a joke told among musicians which indicates the importance of the acoustic tradition in this style of music: How many Bluegrass musicians does it take to fix a light bulb? four-one to get up a ladder and change it, and three to stand around and complain because it's electric. During the 1970s and 1980s traditionalist bands, such as the Johnson Mountain Boys and Larry Sparks and the Lonesome Ramblers, continued performing the great Monroe-Scruggs-Flatt repertoire from the "Golden Age" of 1945-1955. At the same time, "progressive" and "newgrass" groups and artists, such as David Grisman, Muleskinner, Old & In the Way, Seldom Scene, and New Grass Revival fused rock techniques with acoustic bluegrass instrumentation and performing style. Change comes slowly in country music, but in the 1990s Bluegrass changed significantly with the emergence of women like Alison Krauss, Laurie Lewis, and Rhonda Vincent as featured vocalists, instrumentalists, and bandleaders. Meanwhile the repertoires and styles of other leading performers like Sam Bush, Bela Fleck, Psychograss, and Nickel Creek tend toward an ever more eclectic mix of traditional, jazz, rock, and Rhythm and Blues.