Musical historians may dispute the origins of Bluegrass music, but few would argue that one of its principal architects was Bill Monroe. Contrary to popular opinion, Bill Monroe did not grow up on a hardscrabble farm in the Appalachians, during his early childhood he lived on his family’s 600-acre farm in western Kentucky’s Ohio County, far removed from the Appalachian Mountains and even to the west of the traditional Bluegrass area of central Kentucky. His father “Buck” Monroe was an entrepreneurial businessman who operated the farm, timbered the forest, had his own sawmill, and even sold coal from his own mine.
Bill’s father was a talented dancer who enjoyed a local dance called the Kentucky Backstep. His mother, Malissa was a singer and talented musician who played the fiddle, accordion and harmonica, and her brother Penn Vandiver was an accomplished fiddler who performed locally
Bill was born into this musical family on September 13, 1911, the youngest of eight children. Although his family had lived in Western Kentucky for four generations his childhood musical influences and early career still led him to a progression from traditional mountain music and Appalachian folk songs to what became known as bluegrass music. Fast tempos, complex melodies, and high-pitched vocals mark bluegrass. Monroe once described the bluegrass sound as “Scottish bagpipes and ole-time fiddlin’. It’s Methodist and Holiness and Baptist. It’s blues and jazz, and it has a high lonesome sound.”
Two of his older brothers Birch and Charlie played the fiddle and guitar, so young Bill was relegated to playing the mandolin. His older brothers made him remove four of the eight strings so he didn’t play too loudly.
Bill lost his mother when he was only ten and his father seven years later. Being the youngest he was raised by his siblings, but as they moved away, he found himself in the care of various aunts and uncles, especially his Uncle Penn Vandiver. Penn played the fiddle and young Bill often accompanied him with his mandolin at Penn’s performances. These were pivotal moments in his young life and his love for his uncle was revealed in one of his most memorable songs from 1951, “Uncle Penn.” Vandiver has been credited with giving Monroe “a repertoire of tunes that sank into Bill’s aurally trained memory and a sense of rhythm that seeped into his bones.”
Also significant in Monroe’s musical life was Arnold Shultz, a black fiddler and guitar player who introduced Monroe to the blues. Schultz played fiddle in a bluesy, syncopated style, getting sounds out of the instrument not commonly heard in country playing. Bill often accompanied Schultz on guitar as well. Young Bill’s musical style was also influenced when he heard black workers whistle and sing while they toiled.
Little Known Facts About Bill Monroe
Although it has been suggested that Bill was a direct descendant of US President James Monroe, this is not the case. Revolutionary War Veteran, John Monroe, the patriarch of Bill’s family, received a land grant in Kentucky. He was born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, the same county where President Monroe was born. Both men were born in the same decade, with John being born in 1749 and President Monroe in 1744. The elder Monroes could have been cousins, but due to their ages, Bill could not have been a direct descendent of the President. Perhaps a distant cousin, but not in the direct bloodline.
While Bill was still a teenager, his brothers Birch and Charlie joined the great urban migration and moved to the Chicago area to work for Standard Oil. Bill followed them in 1929. They continued to play music in their spare time and picked up occasional paying gigs until they were selected to be part-time exhibition square dancers on WLS radio’s Barn Dance Roadshow.
In 1934, Bill and Charlie left Standard Oil to become a full-time country music duo. Charlie, who was 31 at the time, played guitar and sang lead, trying to get the audience to have a good time. On the other hand, Bill, who was only 23, was more reserved and focused on playing the mandolin and singing high-lonesome harmonies.
The Monroe Brothers began singing on the radio every day for the patent medicine company, Texas Crystals in Shenandoah, Iowa, and Omaha, Nebraska. After a short time, the company sent them to the east coast to perform on WIS in Columbia, South Carolina. However, sales for Texas Crystals didn’t go well, and the brothers ended up switching to a different company, Crazy Water Crystals, which was based in Charlotte. By 1936 they were doing two shows a day, one in Charlotte on WBT and the other in Greenville.
RCA Victor executive Eli Oberstein discovered the Monroe Brothers’ talent when he came to Charlotte for a week of recording in 1936. It took some convincing, but the duo finally agreed to record with RCA. Their first release from that session, the hymn “What Would You Give In Exchange for Your Soul,” was a huge hit in the South. By the time of their last recording session in Charlotte in 1938, the Monroes had moved to Raleigh and were performing on WPTF.
The Monroe Brothers recorded a total of sixty songs as a duo, and many of them, like “Roll On Buddy,” “Nine Pound Hammer,” “On Some Foggy Mountain Top,” and “Roll in My Sweet Baby’s Arms,” have become classics in bluegrass and country music.
When they first started recording in Charlotte, their music didn’t sound like bluegrass yet, especially the slower hymns with their emotional vocals. But even on their first song from the February 1936 session, “My Long Journey Home,” you can hear Bill Monroe’s distinct mandolin style, for which he would later become famous. In their later recordings, the style became more pronounced. Bill Monroe attributes this to their daily performances on WBT and other Crazy Water stations. He said, “Radio was very important. You knew people were listening to you closely every day, so you worked to play right.”
As time went on, Bill wasn’t happy with the old-time sound of the duo. Charlie, on the other hand, didn’t want to change what people were enjoying. In the summer of 1938, while in Raleigh, Bill left to start a band that would help him reach a new tighter sound. Charlie spent much of the rest of his career in the Carolinas, based in Greensboro, and recording for RCA at the 1938 and 1939 Rock Hill sessions. His band, the Kentucky Pardners, became an important training ground for future bluegrass stars, including Lester Flatt, Curly Seckler, Dave “Stringbean” Akeman, Red Rector, and Ira Louvin. They also did daily radio shows on various stations, one of which was WBT Charlotte, where they joined Grady Cole for a 5:45 a.m. “farm time” program in early 1946. Charlie retired to Kentucky in the late 1950s but returned to the Charlotte area for a final performance at the Lake Norman Opry House.
While Charlie was still a popular entertainer in the Southeast, Bill Monroe was working to create the new sound of bluegrass. Initially, Bill moved to Little Rock where he formed a band named the Kentuckians, but this was short-lived. It wasn’t until he moved to Atlanta that the Bluegrass Boys were formed. The first lineup of the Bluegrass Boys played in Atlanta and Asheville in 1939 and joined the Grand Ole Opry in October 1939. Bill’s first hire in August 1938 was Cleo Davis, who played guitar and mandolin. He and Bill rehearsed for several months before making their first appearance on Asheville radio station WWNC. Cleo was with the band when they joined the Grand Ole Opry, but left shortly after before they started recording.
Art Wooten was the first fiddler to join the Blue Grass Boys, early in 1939. He played fiddle for the band’s first Grand Ole Opry performance in October of that year. He left before the first recording session, but came back in 1941; he recorded eight tracks with Monroe, including the popular fiddle tunes “Orange Blossom Special” and “Back Up and Push”.
Tommy Millard also joined the group in early 1939, he was the emcee and comedian and played the spoons, bones and jug. He left shortly after their move to Greenville, SC that spring and did not appear with the band on the Grand Ole Opry. After World War II he left show business and entered the ministry.
Bass player, Amos Garren, replaced Millard in Greenville in the Spring of 1939. He also played with the band during its Opry debut, but left shortly after and before the first recording sessions.
After taking over for Art Wooten in the summer of 1940, Tommy Magness played fiddle in the Blue Grass Boys’ first recording session that October. He was featured on the fiddle tune “Katy Hill”. Monroe once said about him that he had a great old-time fiddle touch, rich and pure, but he could also put a little bit of blues into it. Magness went on to form his own band The Tennessee Buddies which featured Don Reno and Red Smiley.
Between 1938 and Bill’s death in 1996, there were more than 150 regular members of the band with dozens of others as either fill-ins or studio musicians.
Bill and the Bluegrass Boys hit the Grand Ole Opry stage on November 25, 1939, where they opened with “Muleskinner Blues” an old Jimmy Rodgers tune, which would become one of the group’s signature songs. They quickly became one of the hottest touring acts out of Nashville’s WSM studios. They recorded their first records in Atlanta on October 7, 1940. By the end of the 1940s, the South was obsessed with the music they called “bluegrass,” after the name of Bill Monroe’s band.
They stood out from other country bands with their energetic and powerful sound that used acoustic instruments and featured high vocal harmonies. Bill’s music was a mix of string band, gospel, work songs, country, and blues and they sang in different styles including duet, trio, and quartet harmony, all driven by Bill’s powerful lead singing. After trying out different instruments, Bill settled on mandolin, banjo, fiddle, guitar, and bass for the core of his band.
While some bluegrass enthusiasts say the genre started in 1939 when Monroe first appeared on the Grand Ole Opry, most believe that the classic bluegrass sound came together in December 1945 when Earl Scruggs joined the band. Scruggs, a 21-year-old from North Carolina, played a unique and driving three-finger banjo style that electrified audiences. Also instrumental in the classic 1945 lineup of the Blue Grass Boys were Lester Flatt on guitar and lead vocals, Chubby Wise on fiddle, and Howard Watts on bass. Together, this group brought a fresh and exciting sound that would come to define bluegrass music.
Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys were early adopters of using microphones and amplifiers. Up until that time, bluegrass groups relied solely on acoustic instruments and un-amplified voices, but Monroe changed all that when he started using sound systems that would allow him to play before larger audiences.
In 1946, the BlueGrass Boys were a top country music act with successful hits and large crowds at their tours across America. The members of the band would erect their own large circus tent in each town they played. The day’s events would also feature Monroe’s baseball team playing against local teams before the concert. Throughout the late 1940s, the band continued to be popular with five more Top 20 singles. Other musicians started to imitate Monroe’s sound, with the Stanley Brothers being one of the most notable.
In 1946, Monroe and his band started recording for Columbia Records. And on September 22nd of that year, they recorded the song that Monroe is probably most famous for, “Blue Moon of Kentucky.”
Like most songs, there is a backstory for “Blue Moon of Kentucky.” When Monroe was touring in Florida, he saw a big full moon in the sky and it reminded him of the moons he used to see back home in Kentucky. “Blue Moon” is a phenomenon that happens when there are two full moons in one month the second full moon gets the “blue” label. The idea of two moons rising could also apply to what happened with the song for Monroe, and for the young artist who chose to record the song as his debut.
Let’s jump ahead to October 1954, backstage at the Grand Ole Opry a very nervous young singer from Memphis was preparing for his first appearance on the Opry stage when he bumped into Bill Monroe. Elvis Presley was nervous for many reasons, but one was his concern that Mr. Monroe would disapprove of his recent release of Blue Moon of Kentucky. Presley had turned the waltz into a 2/4- time rocker and a near parody of the original. Bill had a reputation for gruffness, so Elvis was relieved when Bill greeted him warmly and said, “If it helps your career, I’m for it one hundred percent.” As an even higher compliment, Bill later went on to record “Blue Moon of Kentucky” in the same style as the Elvis Presley version.
In 1949, Bill Monroe had a falling out with his record label, Columbia, because they had signed the Stanley Brothers. He thought the Stanley Brothers were just imitating his style. In 1950, he signed with Decca Records, the executives at Decca wanted Bill to experiment with a more modern sound, he agreed to try the electric guitar on a few tracks, but soon returned to his acoustic roots and dropped the electric guitar. During his time at Decca he met Jimmy Martin, who would go on to join the band as a supporting vocalist.
Throughout the 1950s and the rest of his career, Monroe performed tirelessly with hundreds of shows per year. In 1951, he established a country music park at Bean Blossom, Indiana. Hoosiers and others had been gathering at Bean Blossom to perform and jam since 1939.
After Bill played at the Brown County Jamboree in 1951 he had the opportunity to purchase the land and establish a home base for bluegrass music. Over the years, the venue has hosted thousands of fans and performers at its annual Bill Monroe Bluegrass Festival, a multi-day event that Bill originated in 1967.
In January 1953, Monroe was involved in a very bad car accident that temporarily halted his career. While driving home from a fox hunt north of Nashville, a drunk driver struck his vehicle head-on. Bill’s injuries were severe, he sustained 19 broken bones, including his spine, and had one of his eyes dislodged from its socket. Despite his injuries, Bill managed to exit the car and rescue his fellow “Bluegrass Boys” band member Bessie Lee Mauldin from the other side of the vehicle. It took him almost four months, in a full body cast, to recover and return to touring. In the meantime, Charlie Cline and Jimmy Martin kept the band going.
Little Known Facts About Bill Monroe
Bill had a special relationship with his bass player. Bessie Mauldin, she not only played the bass fiddle in the Bluegrass Boys for 12 years but she and Bill may have been lovers. Bill might have first met Bessie in 1936 when she was in high school. Bessie won the contest for selling the most tickets to a Monroe Brothers’ Concert at her high school in North Carolina. During this time the Monroe Brothers had a regular radio show in Charlotte near Bessie’s hometown of Norwood, N.C. She became the bassist for the Bluegrass boys in 1953, establishing a foothold for women musicians in what was a mostly male-dominated field. Bessie and Bill only wrote a few songs together, but their most famous was a gospel song, “A Voice From on High”, which was later covered by many artists, including The Stanley Brothers, Ricky Skaggs, and Bob Dylan. Bessie passed away in 1983 from “acute myocardial infarction” exacerbated by diabetes.
In 1958, Monroe released his first album “Knee Deep in Bluegrass” and also had a hit single “Scotland” which reached number 27 on the country chart. However, his fame was overshadowed by Flatt & Scruggs during the late 1950s. Monroe’s notoriously difficult personality contributed to this, as many musicians left his band due to his demanding nature and perfectionism. He also rarely granted press interviews and seldom performed on television, he even canceled a concert at Carnegie Hall due to his belief that the promoter was a communist.
His career was in need of a boost and he got that when former Greenbrier Boy, Ralph Rinzler, became his manager. He promoted Bill’s shows at Bluegrass Festivals across the country. This was a period when bluegrass and folk music were making large inroads on college campuses, and Bill was riding the wave.
In 1965, Carlton Haney promoted the first multi-day Bluegrass festival at Cantrell’s Horse Farm in Fincastle, VA. Haney built the Sunday finale show around the history of Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys. Many of the original members of the band were on stage and performed with Bill. Fred Bartenstein, a long-time collaborator with Carlton Haney was only 14, but clearly remembers the “Bill Monroe Storeey” as Carlton called it.
After the success of the Fincastle Festival, Bill started his own annual multi-day festival at his country music park in Bean Blossom, Indiana. Bill was an active participant into the 1990’s.
In 1970, Monroe was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, and the following year, the Nashville Songwriters Association International Hall of Fame. He spent the 1970s touring extensively.
Little Known Facts About Bill Monroe
Bill was born with a genetic defect called, Esotropia, an eye misalignment in which one eye deviates inward toward the nose. The old-time term for this was “hug-eye” and young Bill was very self-conscious about his condition. He was bullied and as a shy youngster, he would hide when strangers came to visit for fear they might make fun of him. To help him detect approaching wagons he developed an increased auditory acuity which served him well as he ventured into the world of music.
Just as Bill had used his music and acute hearing to get him through the tough times in his childhood, his music would serve to help him survive health issues in his old age.
Even as he battled colon cancer in 1981, Monroe produced and released the album “My Last Days on Earth,” a testament to his indomitable spirit. Despite his illness, he continued to perform and tour for another 15 years. Through sheer will, he emerged victorious over cancer, but in 1991 he underwent a double heart bypass. Despite these challenges, he persisted in his passion for music and performance.
Monroe’s final performance was on March 15, 1996. As his health began to decline, he was no longer able to play his beloved mandolin or guitar. Sadly, on September 9, 1996, just four days before his 85th birthday, Monroe passed away in Springfield, Tennessee, following a stroke.
Bill Monroe was a true giant in the world of music. His pioneering contributions to the Bluegrass genre not only established him as a master musician and innovator but also helped to launch the careers of many of the most prominent artists in Bluegrass and Country music. His unique style and musical talent have influenced countless performers in various genres, including Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Carl Perkins, and Buddy Holly, among others. Additionally, his founding of the Bluegrass Park in Indiana created a vital venue and movement that has helped to preserve and promote the Bluegrass sound for generations to come. His legacy will continue to be celebrated and revered by music lovers everywhere.
Monroe’s contributions to the development and evolution of bluegrass cannot be overstated. He was one of the first musicians to bring the genre to a wider audience through his touring and appearances on radio and television. He was also influential in the development of other bluegrass and country musicians, many of whom have cited him as a major influence on their own careers.