Bill Monroe's 99th Birthday

Arguably the most important small combo leaders of the 20th century were Muddy Waters, Art Blakey, and Bill Monroe, the Father of Bluegrass Music. None of these guys completely invented his genre, but each shaped his genre in his image. There was electric blues before Muddy. After Muddy, the term meant something very specific. Ditto with hard bop and Blakey.

Bill Monroe crystallized and shaped string band music in a radical way, albeit not overnight. We see his initial moves toward the new string band music first in 1934, with his brother Charlie. They start recording for Bluebird in '36, and cut about five albums' worth of really incredible duos. After he and Charlie split up, he went about the research and development that would result as bluegrass. Different instrumental combinations -- including accordion, played by Howdy Forrester's wife Shirley -- until December 1945. Lester Flatt on guitar and vocals, Chubby Wise on fiddle,and Cedric Rainwater on bass were joined by a new banjo player. David "Stringbean" Akeman was replaced.

Monroe initially wanted Don Reno for the job, but he was serving in the military at that point (in Burma). Flatt heard Scruggs' powerful three-finger style, with its rhythmic drive and piercing high note thrust, and ... the rest is not only history, but also much of the present. The Bill Monroe and his Bluegrass Boys sides cut for Columbia from 1946-8 are still the template for bluegrass performance.

This was only the first great wave of his career, and only his first truly great lineup. The talent that would go through that band and take shape is as rich as that from the bands of Muddy, Blakey, Miles, and Basie. Likewise, his new discoveries always upped the stylistic ante. Jimmy Martin's vocals gave the band the piercing, anguished "high lonesome sound" (and his guitar playing did aggressive new rhythmic things). Bill Keith's banjo took the instrument to places even Earl hadn't considered. And the fiddle playing of Kenny Baker might be comparable only to the alto saxophone of Cannonball Adderley for its blend of originality, invention, and earthiness. And Bill Monroe's mandolin playing remains at the core of the bluegrass language for its blend of Scots-Irish fiddle tunes and pure blues. Like Louis Armstrong, Bill Monroe was not only the premiere instrumental influence on his genre, but the primary vocal influence as well.

"Uncle Pen" was cut in the fifties. I'm not sure when this clip is from, but it's a nice performance. I wish I could find a nice clip of him performing "Scotland", a sixties offering that shows his finger to be on the pulse of hundreds of years of deep tradition. "Uncle Pen" is Monroe at his most autobiographical. Pen was his uncle, Pendleton Vandevier. The fiddle tune in it is "Jenny Lind".

Today, as I am writing, it is Bill Monroe's 99th birthday. He died in 1996, but his spirit and influence are still moving mountains.