The youngest of eight children of a Kentucky farmer and entrepreneur, Monroe was exposed early to traditional folk music by his mother. Another important early musical influence on the young Monroe was Arnold Schultz, a local African American miner who also was an accomplished fiddler and guitarist and who played both blues and country music.
Monroe began playing the mandolin professionally in 1927 in a band led by his older brothers Birch and Charlie. In 1930 they moved to Indiana, and in 1932 they joined a barn-dance touring show; their reputation grew, but, because Birch did not like to travel, Bill and Charlie maintained the Monroe Brothers as a duo, touring widely from Nebraska to South Carolina.
In 1936 they made their first recordings on the RCA Victor label, recording 60 songs for Victor over the next two years. In 1938 Bill and Charlie decided to form separate bands. Bill’s second band, the Blue Grass Boys (his first, called the Kentuckians, played together for only three months), auditioned for the Grand Ole Opry on radio station WSM in Nashville, Tenn., and became regular performers on that program in 1939.
Monroe’s signature sound emerged fully in 1945, when banjoist Earl Scruggs and guitarist Lester Flatt joined his band. Scruggs was among the first banjoists in country music whose principal role was musical rather than comical; Monroe’s original banjoist David (“Stringbean”) Akeman had provided a humorous touch to the proceedings.
The Blue Grass Boys established the classic makeup of a bluegrass group—with mandolin, fiddle, guitar, banjo, and upright bass—and ultimately bequeathed the band’s name to the genre itself. Bluegrass is characterized by acoustic instruments; a driving syncopated rhythm; tight, complex harmonies; and the use of higher keys—B-flat, B, and E rather than the customary G, C, and D. The band played traditional folk songs and Monroe’s own compositions, the most famous of which were “Blue Moon of Kentucky” (later famously covered and transformed by a young Elvis Presley), “Uncle Pen” (a tribute to another early influence on Monroe, his fiddle-playing uncle Pendleton Vandiver), and “Raw Hide.” Although Monroe had sung only harmony as a member of the Monroe Brothers, his high, mournful tenor (both as lead and backing voice) established the convention of bluegrass music’s “high lonesome” vocals, and his breakneck-tempo mandolin playing set the standard for other bluegrass performers.
The Blue Grass Boys enjoyed wide popularity, but Scruggs and Flatt quit in 1948 in order to form their own influential bluegrass band, the Foggy Mountain Boys. Soon other bands playing this style of music began to appear, many of them led by former members of Monroe’s band, such as Sonny Osborne (the Osborne Brothers), Carter Stanley (who with his brother Ralph formed the Stanley Brothers), Don Reno, Jimmy Martin, and Mac Wiseman. Bluegrass was promoted at numerous annual festivals, such as the one founded by Monroe in 1967 at Bean Blossom, Ind. He continued to perform until shortly before his death.
Dimitry Shostakovich
