A Brief History of Bluegrass Music

With a Scotch-Irish heritage and Jimmie Rogers on the airwaves, a young Bill Monroe grew up around old time fiddling, yodeling, and blues in the small town of Rosine, Kentucky. He learned to play music by backing his fiddling Uncle Pen on guitar at local square dances.

In 1929, Bill and his older brothers, Birch and Charlie, began performing music together as the Monroe Brothers. They became very popular and quite successful, putting out over 60 tracks for RCA Victor, but disbanded in 1938.

Bill hired guitarist Cleo Davis, fiddler Art Wooden, and bassist Amos Garren as what would become the first incarnation of Bill Monroe's Bluegrass Boys. In an effort to steer away from the "hillbilly" image that was popular among rural string bands, Bill put an emphasis on his home state, the Bluegrass state, and had the band dress as if members of the Kentucky derby.

As band members came and went, Bill continued to experiment with the sound of the Bluegrass Boys, at some points even employing a harmonica player, a bones player, accordion player, and an organ player (and a couple baseball teams, but I digress). In 1945, Bill had hired guitarist and vocalist Lester Flatt, formerly from Charlie Monroe's Kentucky Pardners, to lend his distinctive lead voice to Bill's tenor. Dave "Stringbean" Akeman's departure from the band (and baseball team, as Bill said "He was a powerful pitcher") in December of 1945 left an opening for a banjo player, enter Earl Scruggs and his unique brand of banjo picking. Very soon, the new lineup of Bill Monroe's Bluegrass Boys became sensational. Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs, Chubby Wise, Howard Watts (aka Cedric Rainwater) and Bill Monroe together made up what would later be called the Original Bluegrass Boys. They defined the bluegrass sound that so many aspiring musicians were drawn to.

Soon, other bands began trying to emulated that sound that set the Opry stage, and radio waves on fire. The Stanley Brothers soon became the second bluegrass band to become members of the Grand Ole Opry. Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs joined forces shortly after leaving the Bluegrass Boys to become a wildly successful mainstream bluegrass band, even making appearances on TV's hit sitcom The Beverly Hillbillies. Bluegrass music inspired artists from many genres of music and is one of the main inspirations of Rock N Roll. Bluegrass music found renewed success during the Folk Revival of the 60s and 70s, and saw the birth of many new sub-genres, such as Newgrass.

Bluegrass is still alive and well in the 21st century, finding a new audience when the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack re-introduced Ralph Stanley, Dan Tyminski, a five string banjo and tight vocal harmony to movie goers in 2000. Come see and hear bluegrass anytime at a bluegrass festival near you to find out where this genre is going and enjoy the traditions of where it has been!