Bluegrass Music: Early bluegrass: 1943-1955
Historical context
Bluegrass as a genre grew and developed through a series of connected musicians and their influences including blues, jazz, gospel, balladry, and square dance music. All of these elements contribute to the sound that we recognize today as "bluegrass." In its essence, bluegrass is string band music -- music played in an ensemble format by stringed instruments and vocalists. It incorporates traditional repertoire and new original music, and highlights the musicianship of the band members. American string band music as a whole is a diverse, multi-faceted world encompassing a variety of genres including blues, mariachi, old-time, swing, and more. Bluegrass as a genre followed the growth of the radio and recording industries in the early 20th century and the segregation of the genres "hillbilly" records and "race" records. Due to the limitations of this LibGuide, the resources here do not include these musical relatives to bluegrass music.
Scholar Mark Miyake frames the story of bluegrass, and especially that of Bill Monroe as a creation myth of sorts. There is a standardized community narrative that tells how bluegrass came into being, starting with Arnold Shultz and Uncle “Pen” Pendleton Vandiver, emerging with the Monroe brother duet with Bill and Charlie Monroe, and culminating in the emergence of Bill Monroe’s 1946 iteration of the Blue Grass Boys featuring Bill Monroe on mandolin and tenor vocals, Earl Scruggs on banjo, Lester Flatt on guitar and lead vocals, Chubby Wise on fiddle and Howard Watts on bass.
Many of the early bluegrass musicians listed here can be linked through being members of Monroe’s band at one point or another. Flatt & Scruggs eventually formed their own band (much to the annoyance of Monroe), and even Carter Stanley sang in the Blue Grass Boys for a period of time.
Subject headings:
"Bluegrass music -- To 1951", "Bluegrass music -- 1951-1960", "Grand Ole Opry (radio program)", "fiddle tunes"
Subject and author search terms:
"Monroe, Bill, 1911-1996", "Blue Grass Boys" “Scruggs, Earl”, “Flatt, Lester”, “Foggy Mountain Boys” "Stanley Brothers", “Stanley, Ralph”, "Clinch Mountain Boys" “Lonesome Pine Fiddlers” “Osborne Brothers”, "Osborne, Bobby", "Osborne, Sonny" "Reno & Smiley", “Reno, Don”, "Smiley, Red, 1925-1972", "Tennessee Cutups (Musical group)" "Martin, Jimmy", "Sunny Mountain Boys", "Jim and Jesse"
Additional musicians by instrument:
Banjo: Snuffy Jenkins
Bass: Bessie Lee Mauldin
Dobro: Josh Graves
Fiddlers: Tommy Magness, Art Wooten, Howdy Forrester, Jim Shumate, Chubby Wise, Paul Warren, Curly Ray Cline
Guitar: George Shuffler
Mandolin: Curly Seckler
Vocals: Mac Wiseman, Wilma Lee Cooper
Highlighted archival materials
- Nancy Kalow and Anne Kimzey Recordings of Earl Scruggs Day at Gardner-Webb University, 1986Recordings from "Earl Scruggs Day" in 1986 with panel discussions by and about Earl Scruggs and his banjo style. Features Earl Scruggs, John Hartford, Ron Husky and others
- Bill Bolick Collection, 1897-1986 (bulk 1936-1986)This collection is a resource for pre-bluegrass brother duet and gospel music.
- Mike Seeger Collection, 1923-2012Suggested search terms: use the names listed above
Audio
Complete boxsets of Bill Monroe, Flatt and Scruggs, the Stanley Brothers, Reno and Smiley and Jimmy Martin are also available from the library.
Reading
The Music of Bill Monroe by
Spanning over 1,000 separate performances, The Music of Bill Monroe presents a complete chronological list of all of Bill Monroe's commercially released sound and visual recordings. Each chapter begins with a narrative describing Monroe's life and career at that point, bringing in producers, sidemen, and others as they become part of the story. The narratives read like a "who's who" of bluegrass, connecting Monroe to the music's larger history and containing many fascinating stories. The second part of each chapter presents the discography. Information here includes the session's place, date, time, and producer; master/matrix numbers, song/tune titles, composer credits, personnel, instruments, and vocals; and catalog/release numbers and reissue data. The only complete bio-discography of this American musical icon, The Music of Bill Monroe is the starting point for any study of Monroe's contributions as a composer, interpreter, and performer.
ISBN: 0252031210Publication Date: 2007-06-07
Bill Monroe by
From cradle to great, the comprehensive real story of Bill Monroe The Father of Bluegrass Music, Bill Monroe was a major star of the Grand Ole Opry for over fifty years; a member of the Country Music, Songwriters, and Rock and Roll Halls of Fame; and a legendary figure in American music. This authoritative biography sets out to examine his life in careful detail--to move beyond hearsay and sensationalism to explain how and why he accomplished so much. Former Blue Grass Boy and longtime music journalist Tom Ewing draws on hundreds of interviews, his personal relationship with Monroe, and an immense personal archive of materials to separate the truth from longstanding myth. Ewing tells the story of the Monroe family's musical household and Bill's early career in the Monroe Brothers duo. He brings to life Monroe's 1940s heyday with the Classic Bluegrass Band, the renewed fervor for his music sparked by the folk revival of the 1960s, and his declining fortunes in the years that followed. Throughout, Ewing deftly captures Monroe's relationships and the personalities of an ever-shifting roster of band members while shedding light on his business dealings and his pioneering work with Bean Blossom and other music festivals. Filled with a wealth of previously unknown details, Bill Monroe offers even the most devoted fan a deeper understanding of Monroe's towering achievements and timeless music.
ISBN: 9780252041891Publication Date: 2018-09-07
Earl Scruggs and Foggy Mountain Breakdown by
Recorded in 1949, "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" changed the face of American music. Earl Scruggs's instrumental essentially transformed the folk culture that came before it while helping to energize bluegrass's entry into the mainstream in the 1960s. The song has become a gateway to bluegrass for musicians and fans alike as well as a happily inescapable track in film and television. Thomas Goldsmith explores the origins and influence of "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" against the backdrop of Scruggs's legendary career. Interviews with Scruggs, his wife Louise, disciple Bela Fleck, and sidemen like Curly Seckler, Mac Wiseman, and Jerry Douglas shed light on topics like Scruggs's musical evolution and his working relationship with Bill Monroe. As Goldsmith shows, the captivating sound of "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" helped bring back the banjo from obscurity and distinguished the low-key Scruggs as a principal figure in American acoustic music.Passionate and long overdue, Earl Scruggs and Foggy Mountain Breakdown takes readers on an ear-opening journey into two minutes and forty-three seconds of heaven.
ISBN: 9780252042966Publication Date: 2019-09-30
What Earl Scruggs Heard by
When the story of banjo superstar Earl Scruggs is told, the rich musical environment that produced him is often ignored. During his lifetime Scruggs spun a creation myth around his playing, convincing many that he was the sole originator of a three-finger, up-picking, banjo style. For the first time, this book tells the full story of the music and musicians of the western Carolinas that influenced Earl Scruggs. Based on more than 15 years of in-depth research, this book includes the story of country music recording pioneers Parker and Woolbright, Fisher Hendley and Martin Melody Boys; rare images of area music makers; and the history and development of fiddlers' conventions and radio barn dances. Together, these stories are woven into the biographies of Earl's mentors to reveal the musical atmosphere in which they developed the "three-finger picking" style that so enchanted a young Earl Scruggs.
ISBN: 9781476686677Publication Date: 2022-03-17
Man of Constant Sorrow by
A giant of American music opens the book on his wrenching professional and personal journeys, paying tribute to the vanishing Appalachian culture that gave him his voice. He was there at the beginning of bluegrass. Yet his music, forged in the remote hills and hollows of Southwest Virginia, has even deeper roots. In Man of Constant Sorrow, Dr. Ralph Stanley gives a surprisingly candid look back on his long and incredible career as the patriarch of old-time mountain music. Marked by Dr. Ralph Stanley?s banjo picking, his brother Carter?s guitar playing, and their haunting and distinctive harmonies, the Stanley Brothers began their career in 1946 and blessed the world of bluegrass with hundreds of classic songs, including ?White Dove,? ?Rank Stranger,? and what has become Dr. Ralph?s signature song, ?Man of Constant Sorrow.? Carter died in 1966 after years of alcohol abuse, but Dr. Ralph Stanley carried on and is still at the top of his game, playing to audiences across the country today at age eighty-one. Rarely giving interviews, he now grants fans the book they have been waiting for, filled with frank recollections, from his boyhood of dire poverty in the Appalachian coalfields to his early musical success with his brother, to years of hard traveling on the road with the Clinch Mountain Boys, to the recent, jubilant revival of a sound he helped create. The story of how a musical art now popular around the world was crafted by two brothers from a dying mountain culture, Man of Constant Sorrow captures a life harmonized with equal measures of tragedy and triumph.
ISBN: 9781592404254Publication Date: 2009-10-15
The Music of the Stanley Brothers by
The Music of the Stanley Brothers brings together forty years of passionate research by scholar and record label owner Gary B. Reid. A leading authority on Carter and Ralph Stanley, Reid augments his own vast knowledge of their music with interviews, documents ranging from books to folios sold by the brothers at shows, and the words of Ralph Stanley, former band members, guest musicians, session producers, songwriters, and bluegrass experts. The result is a reference that illuminates the Stanleys' art and history. It is all here: dates and locations; the roster of players on well-known and obscure sessions alike; master/matrix and catalog/release numbers, with reissue information; a full discography sorting out the Stanleys' complex recording history; the stories behind the music; and exquisitely informed biographical notes that place events in the context of the brothers' careers and lives. Monumental and indispensable, The Music of the Stanley Brothers provides fans and scholars alike with a guide for immersion in the long career and breathtaking repertoire of two legendary American musicians.
ISBN: 0252080335Publication Date: 2014-12-15
Foggy Mountain Troubadour by
With his trademark mandolin style and unequaled tenor harmonies, Curly Seckler has carved out a seventy-seven-year career in bluegrass and country music. His foundational work in Flatt and Scruggs's Foggy Mountain Boys secured him a place in bluegrass history, while his role in The Nashville Grass made him an essential part of the music's triumphant 1970s revival. Written in close collaboration with Mr. Seckler and those who know him, Foggy Mountain Troubadour is the first full-length biography of an American original. Penny Parsons follows a journey from North Carolina schoolhouses to the Grand Ole Opry stage and the Bluegrass Hall of Fame, from boarding houses to radio studios and traveling five to a car on two-lane roads to make the next show. Throughout, she captures the warm humor, hard choices, and vivid details of a brilliant artist's life as he criss-crosses a nation and a century making music.
ISBN: 9780252040108Publication Date: 2016-05-15
Don't Give Your Heart to a Rambler by
As charismatic and gifted as he was volatile, Jimmy Martin recorded dozens of bluegrass classics and co-invented the high lonesome sound. Barbara Martin Stephens became involved with the King of Bluegrass at age seventeen. Don't Give your Heart to a Rambler tells the story of their often tumultuous life together. Barbara bore his children and took on a crucial job as his booking agent when the agent he was using failed to obtain show dates for the group. Female booking agents were non-existent at that time but she persevered and went on to become the first female booking agent on Music Row. She also endured years of physical and emotional abuse at Martin's hands. With courage and candor, Barbara tells of the suffering and traces the hard-won personal growth she found inside motherhood and her work. Her vivid account of Martin's explosive personality and torment over his exclusion from the Grand Ole Opry fill in the missing details on a career renowned for being stormy. Barbara also shares her own journey, one of good humor and proud achievements, and filled with fond and funny recollections of the music legends and ordinary people she met, befriended, and represented along the way. Straightforward and honest, Don't Give your Heart to a Rambler is a woman's story of the world of bluegrass and one of its most colorful, conflicted artists.
ISBN: 9780252082764Publication Date: 2017-07-14
