YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE from West Virginia to notice that America is having a bluegrass renaissance. Call it rural renewal. It’s made bluegrass pioneer Ralph Stanley, at age seventy-six, a bona fide superstar, thanks to the overwhelming success of “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” and its bestselling, Grammy-award-winning soundtrack. Major country-western artists such as Ricky Skaggs, Travis Tritt, and Dolly Parton have abandoned the slick, commercial Nashville sound for what used to be called hillbilly music. Established bluegrass acts are thriving–including Alison Krauss & Union Station, the Del McCoury Band, and the Nashville Bluegrass Band. Rare is the college town nowadays–especially in the West and the South–where you can’t find live bluegrass on a Saturday night. Regional bluegrass festivals have multiplied to become a summertime staple. And while America’s urban airwaves may suffer the yoke of Clear Channel tyranny, with its bland, digitally perfected pop, regional public radio serves up generous mounds of dirty acoustic music.
Bluegrass derived its sound from the Celtic-based “Old Time” string music of the southern Appalachians and the black gospel tradition in the South, both dating from the eighteenth century. It’s possible, however, to be more precise and say bluegrass was born in rural Kentucky, around 1920 or so, as the brothers Bill and Charlie Monroe learned fiddle tunes from their Uncle Pen Vandiver (with Bill on the mandolin, Charlie on the guitar). On Sundays, the boys were hustled off to the local Baptist church by a pious mother who insisted they participate in singing hymns. These dueling influences led the brothers to discover bluegrass’s original formula of gospel singing plus acoustic picking. The combination reflected the deep influence of the church in the everyday life of Appalachia and, of course, proved enduring. For this contribution, Bill and Charlie Monroe–especially Bill–are honored as the first true proponents of bluegrass. Although other early figures–in particular the brothers Ralph and Carter Stanley, contemporaries of the Monroes–deserve honorable mention, the conventional wisdom is correct in designating Bill Monroe the inventor of bluegrass. He towers above all other figures who have contributed to the form, as dominant as Louis Armstrong, Woody Guthrie, Hank Williams, Robert Johnson, and Elvis Presley were in their genres.
The Monroes started up their first band, the Blue Grass Boys, in Hammond, Indiana, in 1932, and were soon touring the Midwest and South, making bluegrass’s foundational recordings and playing live on local radio shows (a promotional tool used by many Depression-era musicians). The sibling relationship, however, became strained, and the brothers parted professional company in 1938. On his own, brother Bill thrived, using constant experimentation and personnel changes to develop his new music. By 1940, the Blue Grass Boys were Nashville radio stalwarts, had recorded such classics as “Muleskinner Blues” and “John Henry,” and were regulars at the Grand Ole Opry.
While individual hits marked the band’s progress, the progress of bluegrass could be marked by the band’s changing roster of musicians. Earl Scruggs was not the Blue Grass Boys’ first banjoist, but he certainly became its most famous. Monroe had worked with a number of banjo sidemen in the late thirties and early forties, the talented David “Stringbean” Akeman among them. But Scruggs was in a class by himself. His virtuoso three-finger picking demanded that Monroe feature the banjo for solos rather than just for rhythmic backup, as he had previously done. Before Scruggs, the five-string banjo was played primarily in the Appalachian “claw hammer” style by strumming and picking with two fingers.
Hailing from a large North Carolina family where everybody played an instrument or sang, Scruggs easily mastered claw hammer techniques while still a teenager. He honed his influential, rolling three-finger style (using a plastic thumbpick and steel picks on the index and middle fingers), while playing barn dances and church socials in local bands. In 1945, he arrived in Nashville and auditioned for the famously dismissive Monroe, who, after hearing Scruggs play a couple of tunes, immediately put him to work on tour dates and soon hired him as a full band member.
THE BLUE GRASS BOYS of 1945-48 are considered by musical scholars to be the finest ensemble in the history of the genre. Monroe’s mandolin prowess derived, oddly enough, from his Uncle Pen’s fiddle techniques. This, along with the fast and fluid sound of Robert “Chubby” Wise’s fiddle, Lester Flatt’s strong rhythm guitar-playing, Cedric Rainwater’s thudding standup bass, and Scruggs’s speed-of-light banjo-picking, made for a sublime collective virtuosity. Flatt also brought extraordinary singing ability to the band, and this, combined with Monroe’s own “high lonesome” tenor voice, allowed the latter to experiment with complex harmonies. The importance of good singing to a bluegrass band is hard to overstate. Like good pitching in baseball, no other element, however strong, can compensate for its absence. During this period, the Blue Grass Boys recorded twenty-eight popular singles for Columbia Records, including such gems as “Footprints in the Snow,” “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” “Blue Grass Breakdown,” and “Molly and Tenbrooks”–songs that might be thought of as the core curriculum of the bluegrass canon. Add to this nineteen separate shows performed at the Grand Ole Opry that are legendary in the annals of recorded live bluegrass.
Like many geniuses, Bill Monroe wasn’t the easiest guy to work for. An impoverished youth left him tightfisted, and he paid paltry salaries. Relentless touring dictated they share driving duties, and many a night found them traveling the backroads of the South and sleeping on their small bus, christened “The Blue Grass Special.” Monroe would play anywhere people would pay to listen, and one famous story has the Blue Grass Boys performing in a church basement for an audience of three.
Flatt and Scruggs eventually tired of Monroe’s autocratic ways and quit the Blue Grass Boys. Like the master’s break with his brother Charlie, it was probably acrimonious. The two men set out on their own with a new band, the Foggy Mountain Boys. Their eponymous theme song, “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” (1949), became famous the world over, even among people with no particular knowledge of bluegrass.
The 1950s, however, saw an eclipse of the genre’s popularity. A more commercial Nashville sound was developing, and rock ‘n’ roll had arrived. Yet the late 1950s ushered in a small revival for bluegrass as the music became trendy with northeastern college kids. Both Pete Seeger (then in the Weavers) and the Kingston Trio discovered the folk possibilities of the banjo. While the fastidious Bill Monroe avoided the folkies, put off by their leftist politics, the apolitical and pragmatic Flatt and Scruggs had no such misgivings. The Foggy Mountain Boys performed at the 1960 Newport Folk Festival.
Bluegrass had been driven into the arms of the folk scene after increasingly cool relations with Nashville record company executives, who tended to slight the genre as crude backwoods music. The suits of country music were also unimpressed by the music’s jazzy, improvisational side. The famous musical scholar Alan Lomax once called bluegrass “folk music in overdrive.” Yet another point of contention was that Nashville tended to the view that bluegrass hits had to be novelty songs. Monroe seems to have been responsible for this perception, as his early bands had vaudevillian interludes of jokes and comic skits between tunes.
FLATT AND SCRUGGS, however, weren’t ready to donate their instruments to the Smithsonian. Hollywood beckoned. They scored a big break when they were commissioned by CBS to write and record “The Ballad of Jed Clampett,” the theme song to “The Beverly Hillbillies,” the network’s hugely popular sitcom, which ran for nine years starting in 1962. Coinciding with the show’s debut, the song hit No. 1 on the country-western charts. Thumbing their noses at Nashville, Flatt and Scruggs became household names, with their Foggy Mountain Boys gaining lucrative concert and nightclub bookings.
Flatt and Scruggs’s CBS contract also called for yearly appearances on the show. The two musicians would enter starry-eyed, visiting the mansion to see their old friends, the Clampetts. Dressed like classic Blue Grass Boys in natty dark suits, string ties, and white Stetsons, Lester and Earl would come looking for some of Granny’s homecooking, but have to pick and sing for their supper. This would occasion a few minutes of Flatt’s honey-voiced singing, accompanied by Scruggs picking so fast as to make waves in the cee-ment pond, as Jed Clampett might say.
Not to be outdone, the writers of “The Andy Griffith Show” came up with a family of comic hicks named the Darlings, who–led by a crusty patriarch played by Denver Pyle–periodically showed up in Mayberry with the idea of marrying off their lovesick sister Charlene to Sheriff Andy Taylor. But the Darlings weren’t just your average yokels, they could pick up a storm. In real life, the Darlings were the Dillards, Missouri musicians transplanted to Los Angeles, where they had become a popular part of the early 1960s folk scene.
Flatt and Scruggs’s success continued when their “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” appeared three times on the soundtrack of “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967). And bluegrass music made other prominent appearances in Hollywood fare, famously on the soundtrack of “Deliverance” (1972).
But there was more to the bond between bluegrass and California. A new scene was being born, and this obscure folk form originating in the least fashionable region of America had begun to enter the mainstream as something far greater than mere sitcom kitsch.
One place to examine the love affair between California and bluegrass is in the life of Jerry Garcia. As a teenager in San Fransisco, the future frontman and songwriter of the folk-influenced Grateful Dead acquired a pawnshop five-string banjo and some Flatt and Scruggs records. He would adjust his HiFi phonograph down to 16 speed, so he could better learn the rudiments of Scruggs’s blistering solos. Garcia was never more than a journeyman banjo player, though he remained attached to the music and played with various bluegrass bands, including Old and in the Way. The young Garcia once attended a bluegrass festival with the idea of seeking an audition with Bill Monroe, but a case of cold feet kept him from approaching his idol. Garcia always envied his fellow Old and in the Way compatriots Peter Rowan and Vassar Clements because they were former Blue Grass Boys.
THE LOS ANGELES MUSIC SCENE of the late 1960s was much influenced by bluegrass. Chris Hillman, a charter member of the Byrds, played mandolin in bluegrass bands while growing up in San Diego early in the decade. A later Byrd and cofounder with Hillman of the Flying Burrito Brothers was Gram Parsons, who almost singlehandedly introduced the country-western component to rock ‘n’ roll. Parsons, a Georgia native who died at twenty-six of a drug overdose, was the primary force behind “Sweetheart of the Rodeo,” the Byrds’ groundbreaking country-rock album, recorded in Nashville in 1968 with the help of bluegrass guru John Hartford and Clarence White. While recording these sessions, the Byrds became the first rock band to play onstage at the Grand Ole Opry. White, an influential flatpicking guitarist and veteran of the Kentucky Colonels, was with the Byrds when he was killed by a drunk driver in a nightclub parking lot. Jimi Hendrix once said that Clarence White was his favorite contemporary guitarist. The Byrds offshoot, the Flying Burrito Brothers, did an acoustic bluegrass set as part of their stage show, and this showcased fiddler Byron Berline, yet another Blue Grass Boys alumnus.
In the 1970s bluegrass underwent a significant change as the result of many musical styles feeding back on it, especially rock and folk. Critics called this melding of styles “newgrass.” Even bands’ physical appearances changed as a more hippie look emerged, though many traditional bluegrass fans rejected the longhairs. At festivals, the lines were also drawn between the drinkers and the dope-smokers, and the culture clash often resulted in physical violence. Bill Monroe addressed the problem at his summer gatherings at Bean Blossom, Indiana, by barring any band whose members might–in Monroe’s opinion–need a haircut.
ONE BANNED GROUP was the New Grass Revival, featuring Sam Bush, a mandolinist whose playing is second only to Bill Monroe’s. Another prominent longhair bluegrass act was John Hartford and Norman Blake, a mainstay on college campuses as they opened for rock acts. Out of San Francisco came the David Grisman Quintet, associated with Garcia and Old and in the Way. Flatt and Scruggs broke up in 1969, and Scruggs inaugurated the Earl Scruggs Revue with his sons Randy and Gary, among others. This ensemble reflected the elder Scruggs’s always progressive musical ideas and his sons’ interest in the new country rock. Together they covered Bob Dylan songs and sounded more like the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers than the old Blue Grass Boys of Earl Scruggs’s youth.
At the same time, Washington, D.C.–of all places–had a lively bluegrass scene. Bands such as the Country Gentlemen, the Seldom Scene, and Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys rejected the California country-rock influences and stuck to the familiar sound that had originated in the nearby Appalachians. Many of these groups played at the Shamrock, the capital’s best-known bluegrass nightspot. The American Folklife Center at the Smithsonian Institution was known for scholarly study of American roots music and as a venue for its performance. On a typical 1970s summer weekend, a bluegrass festival could be found within a couple of hours’ drive of the Washington-Baltimore area.
These bluegrass festivals recalled the country music parks popular in the Depression-era South and the postwar folk festivals. Conditions were often primitive. For instance, it didn’t occur to Bill Monroe that the hundreds who attended his first Bean Blossom gathering in 1967 might need sanitary facilities. People slept in cars and tents in all weather. And like their rock-‘n’-roll counterparts, the festivals had their moments of rowdiness, but they had their grace notes as well, like improvisational jamming in the parking lot.
Not only a musical genius, Bill Monroe possessed a talent for promotion. His Bean Blossom festivals drew huge crowds and kept the flame burning, too indulgently perhaps, with a stage feature called “The Story,” a Monroe-centric historical pageant about bluegrass. In an interview, he once boasted: “I never wanted to copy any man. I was determined to carve out a music of my own. Bluegrass is wonderful. I’m glad I originated it.” And yet, the history of the Blue Grass Boys did comprise the central storyline of Bluegrass history. At his and other festivals, Monroe would host Blue Grass Boys reunions and present his alumni in chronological order, while signature tunes associated with each particular grouping played behind them.
These spectacles, sadly, tended to be crass and selective in their history. As Monroe introduced the musicians, he’d imply their careers would have gone nowhere without him, and most of them played along in fawning tribute. Monroe never invited–or mentioned–Flatt and Scruggs, though their contribution to the bluegrass repertoire was enormous, and they had been members of Monroe’s most famous aggregation. In fact, Monroe used his considerable influence in Nashville to keep them off the stage of the Grand Ole Opry for years (Flatt and Scruggs would both reconcile with the Master long before his passing). Still, these reenactments gave festival-goers a good idea of Monroe’s domineering contribution to the music. And they proved that bluegrass was not made up of fans, but–as Mitchell Jayne of the Dillards once put it–“believers.”
Monroe could be faulted for his unchecked egocentrism, but for six decades until his death in 1996, at eighty-five, the Blue Grass Boys in their various guises were the equivalent of an Ivy League education in bluegrass. To learn at the feet of Monroe was to pay one’s dues. The alumni list includes the very finest in the field, many of whom are still active.
TODAY, the music continues to change and expand. Ricky Skaggs, Ralph Stanley, and Alison Krauss & Union Station recently completed their popular Down from the Mountain tour. The “Jam Band” scene–an infectious mix of bluegrass and jazz reminiscent of Grateful Dead-style improvisation, featuring such bands as the String Cheese Incident, Leftover Salmon, and the Jazz Mandolin Project–has taken the tradition in a new direction and to new audiences.
Recently I saw Earl Scruggs and Bela Fleck performing together on television. As they played, Fleck, America’s most talented young banjo player, gazed upon Scruggs with beatific admiration, while the venerable Scruggs stared straight ahead, never missing an intricate note. Scruggs was in excellent form, playing like it was 1946, on a hot night in a Tennessee roadhouse, and he was backing up Bill Monroe. It was that good, and just another wonderful night among the believers.
Bill Croke is a writer in Cody, Wyoming.
