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”.
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.
