Bluegrass vs. Mainstream Country

 It doesn't matter whether you're talking traditional or progressive. If you don't hear this high lonesome sound, this tension of emotional opposites, you're not hearing bluegrass music. These are the earmarks, the sounds and techniques that set true bluegrass music apart from even classic country, to say nothing of mainstream country.

Many people will tell you that bluegrass music was first heard in 1946, when Earl Scruggs introduced the sound and speed of the three-finger banjo roll to a national audience. That is true, as far as it goes.

But the sound of bluegrass was not complete until Jimmy Martin joined Bill Monroe, and Monroe moved everything up a whole step or so to make the most of his new lead vocalist and his unusual tenor range.

This. This is bluegrass.

Bill Monroe and Jimmy Martin with "In the Pines".

For much more about their relationship, read Richard D. Smith's exhaustive and earth-shattering Bill Monroe biography, Can't You Hear Me Callin'.

Bill Monroe's Playful Side

Kenny Baker set the standard for every bluegrass fiddler who came after. So, why have I picked this obscure performance to highlight his genius?

I picked it because Baker’s kickoff here is one of my top five bluegrass kickoffs of all time. I picked it because it’s sassy and playful – attributes never associated with Monroe, but often with Baker (although “sprightly” is the adjective more often applied in Baker’s case).

I picked it, because the creativity and playfulness never let up – just listen to Baker’s backup, Lonnie Hoppers’s banjo fills.

Speaking of creativity, Monroe introduces his break by quoting the final notes of “Taps” at a tempo that makes it sound more like “Reveille”. After all, everybody needs an army to protect their playhouse, er, stillhouse. The original lyric says “stillhouse”.

Monroe, who had been beaten and bullied by an alcoholic older brother, would have none of it. And that makes the whimsy driving this track all the more remarkable.

This is Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys, featuring bluegrass fiddle pioneer, Kenny Baker, with “Darling Corey”.

How Bluegrass Grew

If a couple of college students named Mike Seeger and Ralph Rinzler hadn’t prodded Bill Monroe out of his bluegrass depression-era funk, moments like this might never have happened.

As it was, Monroe transformed himself over the years into a benevolent-ish bluegrass patriarch, sharing his musical wisdom with the generations that followed during post-show jams and random yet momentous encounters.

What was a dying, regional musical style became a movement, paving the way for musical pyrotechnics like this.

The Del McCoury Band, featuring mandolinist, Ronnie McCoury, joins Marty Stuart for a blistering version of Bill Monroe’s “Rawhide”.

Pure Bluegrass, Poisonous Times

How can you make a case for the exceptional quality of one recording when every recording made by this lineup was exceptional?

There was nothing good about Monroe’s life in this period: woman trouble; the bluegrass depression; the bookings in smaller, dreary venues; the hastening obscurity and increasing combativeness of the man that nobody had yet acknowledged as the father of bluegrass music – all of it was garbage.

Except the music.

During this period, Monroe made the most painful, incandescent, and enduring music of his life. It helped that he had an equally-troubled duet partner in Jimmy Martin (No, that’s not Martin in the video still, but Bill’s older brother, Charlie – speaking of problematic relationships).

This is “Poison Love”.

Swinging For the Fences

“It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing”. Not a rule normally associated with bluegrass, but it should be. Just listen to how hard Monroe and his band from 1941 are swinging on this one; it’s like a master class on bluegrass timing.

It’s funny: So much is made of Monroe’s 1946 band that nobody remembers that he and his musicians were geniuses way before that.

This is their take on Jimmie Rodgers’s “Blue Yodel #7”.

Bluegrass From Another World

“Otherworldly” is not an adjective I’ve ever applied to a bluegrass record, but if ever a bluegrass record deserved to be called otherworldly, it’s this one. Stranger still is that it’s sung by two of the least otherworldly singers you could name – Bill Monroe and Jimmy Martin, along with banjoist Rudy Lyle. In fact, that’s young Jimmy Martin playing the guitar in the video still.

A few people have tried to cover this number, with no success whatsoever. They only succeed in pulling it down to earth when it needs to float up and away, as it does in the opening credits of the bluegrass documentary, “High Lonesome”. That opening sequence sends chills up my spine every time I hear it.

This is “A Voice From On High”.

What Is Bluegrass, Anyway?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Re-upping this piece from November 3, 2017.

It's a question that has perplexed even veteran bluegrass artists, with the possible exception of Bill Monroe, who fathered the genre; a question revisited so often that, in bluegrass circles, it has its own acronym -- WIBA.

What is bluegrass, anyway?

You'll never hear the same answer twice.

Even I, in the relatively-short lifespan of this blog, have suggested different answers.

It might seem strange, but I was pushed to solidify my position on this issue after viewing a superb documentary called "How Britain Got the Blues", which I wrote about here.

The parallels between the way the Mississippi Delta blues gained popularity with British middle class kids in the 50s and the way American college kids embraced traditional bluegrass music just a few years later are striking: White kids, middle class, well-educated, on the liberal end of the socio-political spectrum, with a healthy respect for the original artists, a profound understanding that they had nothing in common with the life experiences of those artists, and the steadfast refusal to act as though they did.

Fast forward to 1996, and award-winning "bluegrass" wunderkind, Alison Krauss, interviewed by Jim Macnie for Rolling Stone in January of 1996.

"You and your band have changed some perceptions about what bluegrass can be and what country is," Macnie observes. 

Krauss: "I think whatever we have slipped by somebody is great. [Laughs.]"

It's hard not to think of Led Zeppelin, who have been sued more than once for ripping off traditional blues artists, and have demonstrated only the most flippant regard for the consequences of their actions. It's interesting to note that Krauss and Zeppelin's Robert Plant were romantically linked for years.

Could it be that what bluegrass is, has do to with morals and ethics?

For me, the answer is definitive: It's how you -- as a fan, promoter, journalist, DJ, publicist, record company exec, or artist -- treat the art and culture of people who have almost nothing but their art and culture to mark their place in the world.

It's whether you seek to redefine or replace that art and culture to entertain privileged, white audiences while reinforcing the idea that they and you are preserving an artistic and cultural expression that is both cutting-edge and authentic.

But, it's the 21st century! If you don't do bluegrass the way everyone else is doing it, how can you do it at all?

Theologian, Eugene Peterson, suggested a better way when he wrote, "The poor are not a problem to be solved, but a people to join."

Regardless of what their belief systems may have been, both Mike Seeger and his half-brother, Pete, exemplified this mindset in the way they collected, distributed, performed, and promoted American vernacular music, and the way they respected its original artists.

Sadly, though there are those who hold similar views today, they lack the prevailing influence on the culture that the the entire Seeger family had. Today's amateur musicologists look to American Idol and Madison Avenue for their promotional strategies, scorning preservation as drudgery, and an impossible task, besides.

If, as many bluegrass traditionalists claim, bluegrass music is dying, it's because the vast majority of "bluegrassers" don't believe they have a moral imperative not to kill it.

Just Like Old Times

Considering the epic feud -- or, was it? -- between these two, it's a wonder they ever got back together.

OTOH, perhaps it was inevitable. Many of the bluegrass faithful -- musicians, fans, and historians alike -- consider the Monroe/Flatt/Scruggs iteration of The Blue Grass Boys to be the first-ever bluegrass band.

Bill Monroe disputed that claim. Nevertheless, bluegrass bands revisit and remake the repertoire of this lineup more than any other. And, despite the brilliant lineups that came after, the only one that would cover as much artistic ground was the one featuring Jimmy Martin.

Unfortunately for the music, it is that feat of warp-speed artistic development that the bluegrass community has sought to emulate over the last 30 years -- so much so that most seem to have forgotten what real bluegrass sounds like.

Here, then, is an always-timely reminder: Lester Flatt with Bill Monroe, singing a bluegrass classic that they co-wrote – “Will You Be Loving Another Man?”

The Old Hippie Who Gets Bluegrass Right

You know, for an old hippie, Peter Rowan has made some of the most genuine, heartfelt bluegrass music you'll ever hear. He's one second-generation picker who knows that bluegrass works best when you keep the blues in it.

In this clip, however, it's Emmylou Harris and The Nash Ramblers — a band that includes Sam Bush and Jerry Douglas — doing the pickin' and sangin'.

They're covering a song that Rowan wrote with Bill Monroe, and the intensity speaks for itself when two lovers are separated by “The Walls of Time”.

Reading Music, 2018

Some perennial favorites to commemorate World Book Day.

St. Patrick's Day For Didacts

Silly me! I thought St. Patrick’s Day was all about honoring the tremendous contributions of the Irish people to American culture by celebrating with them. You know … fun. Until Slate Magazine’s didactic little tantrum over Irish and, by extension, Irish-American myth-making, that is.

St. Patrick didn’t drive any snakes out of Ireland? Shocking! Surely they’ve renamed the Blarney Stone the “Earnest Freshman Debate Stone” by now.

If you believe that, I have some CDs to sell you from a guy who says that sloppy playing, sweaty hair, and churning rhythm add up to bluegrass innovation. He’s the one making a living exploiting the bluegrass connection to Scots-Irish culture while “educating” his followers with rehashed book learning that’s supposed to pass for cultural authenticity.

So, go ahead, have fun. Indulge in a bit o’ the blarney. And don’t let the hall monitors get you down.

Oh, and if you want to hear a bit of what the Ulster Scots brought to bluegrass, here's the father of bluegrass music, Bill Monroe, with a tune his Uncle Pen Vandiver taught him -- "The Dead March".

A Chilling Bluegrass Breakup Song Out of Un-Bluegrass Elements

Some songs, some performances, are so good you don’t know what to talk about first.

What strikes me about this record from the classic lineup of The Seldom Scene is how the band makes an absolutely-chilling bluegrass breakup song out of such un-bluegrassy elements.

Where Ralph Stanley would howl, the Scene gets deathly quiet. Where Jimmy Martin would go full-out, the Scene makes precise and careful use of dynamics. Where Monroe would wear his heart on his sleeve, this band tells this story from a distance.

The impact of a life no longer lived together is palpable in Starling's conscious decision to use near-whispers the way a drummer might use cymbal hits. If he lets go, God only knows what might come forth, who might hear, who might know that his callous, careless treatment of the woman he loved was nothing more than an act.

This is The Seldom Scene, and a progressive bluegrass masterpiece called “Another Lonesome Day”.

What the Founders Knew and the Young Punks Don't

Is it any wonder that Jimmy Martin – and Bill Monroe, too, to some extent – forbade his sidemen from jamming with other bands at festivals, preferring instead that they stick with him and improve their grasp of his music?

Former Sunny Mountain Boy, Bill Emerson, quotes Martin in the documentary, King of Bluegrass: “You ought to be back in the dressing room … practicing my stuff, ‘cause if you think you’ve got it right, you don’t.”

Jimmy Martin was right.

The vocal jump from m3 to M2 is wickedly hard to hear over those major chords, but emblematic of bluegrass singing as Bill Monroe designed it. The microtonal slide that is often used to make the jump has inspired some to compare bluegrass to the classical music of India. It may sound out of tune, but it is a by-product of precise and painstaking technique.

Here are Bill Monroe and Jimmy Martin, proving that precision + soul = bluegrass. The song is “Letter From My Darling”.

Come See the Fireworks

The very first bluegrass festival was a one-day event staged by Bill Clifton in Luray, Virginia on July 4, 1961. This is Bill Monroe’s set from that day.

Suitable for the occasion, there were fireworks that were still being heard when historians started to write this stuff down in the ‘80s and ‘90s.

Carter Stanley, half in the bag, was a guest vocalist during this set, as was Mac Wiseman, but it was left to Brother Carter to smooth things over when Monroe got a teeny bit offended over the glaring absence of his former sidemen, Flatt and Scruggs.

Monroe's meltdown made it into more than one of the history books. So, maybe it was for all the wrong reasons, but Bill Monroe was on fire that day. The songs he sings with Stanley are crazy-intense, but the whole set is an absolute must-listen.

Years later, Bill Monroe changed his mind about a couple of things. He decided that Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs, and all those who came after had not stolen bluegrass music from him, but had, instead, paid a kind of tribute to his genius. Monroe eventually reconciled with Flatt and Scruggs, and reinvented himself as the father of bluegrass instead of the abused baby brother.

In truth, he had been both.

The “Father of Bluegrass” title was not Monroe’s idea, however. It was bestowed by folklorist and one-time Greenbriar Boy, Ralph Rinzler, in an article for the influential folk magazine, Sing Out! Rinzler aimed to correct some long-standing, revisionist history concocted as liner notes for a Flatt and Scruggs LP by none other than Earl Scruggs’s wife, Louise.

Maybe Lester and Earl weren’t the ones Monroe was mad at.

In any case, here’s a juicy and essential chunk of the soap opera, in the form of an incendiary show. Enjoy.

30-Day Music Challenge: Day 24

24. A song by a band/group you wish were still together.

This record was made in the waning years of the first wave of bluegrass -- 1952, to be exact. Four years later, Elvis Presley would come along, ushering in the period known as the Bluegrass Depression.

During the remaining years of the 50s, the bluegrass faithful deserted the Monroes, the Stanleys, and their second-tier imitators. Audiences that once travelled for miles to see first-generation bluegrass acts flocked to shows by Presley and other early rock figures. Simultaneously, country music moved uptown to Nashville. It got slicker, and less embarrassing to the middle class, in the process.

In the late 50s, college kids like Mike Seeger and Ralph Rinzler discovered bluegrass as a dying art form. They recognized its genius, but they processed it as just another form of folk music, never quite understanding its roots in the blues.

They took bluegrass to American colleges and universities, where it metamorphosed into a musical movement that bluegrass musicians refer to as the Folk Scare, only half in jest.

In the process, bluegrass was saved, but it was lost, too. Today, it sounds like the whitest, safest music you could imagine. I wish this iteration of Bill Monroe his Blue Grass Boys were still together to make bluegrass real and true and dangerous again.

This is Bill Monroe, Jimmy Martin, and all the rest of the Blue Grass Boys with "In the Pines".

Monroe Family History

Recorded in 1969 for an event at the Smithsonian, this interview excerpt features Bill Monroe, along with his brothers, Charlie and Birch, being interviewed by Mike Seeger, and an unidentified man.

The clip begins with Charlie’s description of the brothers’ early instruction in shape note singing, and ends with the three singing two gospel numbers — “He Will Set Your Fields On Fire” and “I Know My Lord’s Gonna Lead Me Out”. Birch is on bass, Charlie on lead. Bill’s tenor, of course, is unmistakable.

Bill an' 'Em, 1946

Just think: Lester Flatt on guitar; Earl Scruggs on banjo; Chubby Wise on the little fiddle; Cedric Rainwater on the bass fiddle, led by Bill Monroe on mandolin.

It was too much talent for one room. Lester and Earl would stay for two years, then split off in 1948 to form their own band.

Most commentators credit five acts with being the five pioneers of bluegrass music: Bill Monroe, Flatt and Scruggs, The Stanley Brothers, Jim and Jesse, and Reno and Smiley. Most fans recognize three: Monroe, Flatt and Scruggs, and the Stanleys.

While Flatt and Scruggs made bluegrass safe for the somewhat-adventurous members of the middle class; and the Stanleys kept it traditional -- almost to the point of pre-bluegrass -- for the old-timers and an eventual audience of tattooed millennials; Bill Monroe was the only one who landed in the Songwriter's Hall of Fame, the Country Music Hall of Fame, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

That's partly because he was the originator of this music, but also because of masterpieces like this. At first listen, it's just a bunch of bluegrass pickers -- albeit, highly skilled ones -- trying their hands at the then-current trend of swing music. But listen to Monroe's break, and tell me Chuck Berry didn't listen, too -- and learn.

 Here are Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys with the autobiographical "Heavy Traffic Ahead".

A Certified Classic ... What There Is Of It

The absolute euphoria I felt when I was bitten by the bluegrass bug was tempered with sadness. As I learned more about the music, I discovered that many of my new heroes -- Bill Monroe, John Duffey, Jimmy Martin, Chubby Wise, and Jim McReynolds, to name a few -- had recently passed on. Sonny Osborne had retired fron the stage, and Ralph Stanley had quit playing the banjo.

Thank God for "High Lonesome", which immortalizes selected performances of these bluegrass titans on film, while providing heartfelt personal reflections, unflinching historical context, and exceptionally apt musical examples. The historical sweep is epic, the music prodigious (There must be between 50 and 75 songs, divided between live performances and soundtrack music here).

There are dozens of little moments to break your heart -- Jimmy Martin's consummate showmanship, even playing for a camera crew in his den; the rapturous looks on the faces of Sam Bush and David Grisman in the presence of their hero, Bill Monroe; the Osborne Brothers' infectious humor, offset by their sober recollections of the Bluegrass Depression; the Seldom Scene's easy camaraderie and brilliant musicianship.

The only problem with "High Lonesome" is that it's far too short to fully explore this greatest of American art forms. Director Rachel Liebling poured her heart into this project, and had to scramble for funding. If she'd been a big-name Hollywood director, then "High Lonesome" would have been the multi-part mini-series that bluegrass music truly deserves -- the huge, cinematic celebration I'm still waiting for.

One River, Two Branches

In “Can’t You Hear Me Callin’”, his award-winning biography of Bill Monroe (a must-read for anyone who seeks to understand bluegrass music), Richard D. Smith talks about how bluegrass music separated into two strains – one influenced by the pioneers of the genre, the other by the collegiate sensibilities of the late 50s-early 60s folk boom.

Mandolinist Chris Hillman, who would later become a founding member of The Byrds, was clearly in the latter camp with his bluegrass band, The Hillmen. There are precious few blue notes in this blues, but the driving rhythms of traditional bluegrass are here in abundance. Oh, and a tag respectfully lifted from first-generation bluegrassers, Flatt and Scruggs.

This is The Hillmen with a song they learned from Pete Seeger, who learned it from Leadbelly – “Winsborough Cotton Mill Blues”.

A Rare Duet Partner for Bill Monroe

You don’t see footage like this every day. This is the Father of Bluegrass, Bill Monroe, on stage with country singer, Rattlesnake Annie, at Wembley Stadium. These keening, bluesy harmonies are something else! The song is “Trouble In Mind”.