REVIEW:

H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-Southern-Music@h-net.msu.edu (November 2007)

Tom Ewing, ed. _The Bill Monroe Reader_. Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 2006. xi + 301 pp. Illustrations, selected bibliography, index.
$19.95 (paper), ISBN 0-252-07399-1.

Reviewed for H-Southern-Music by Duke Richey, Department of History,
Pacific Lutheran University

How Yankees Reinvented Bluegrass


In one of the documents toward the end of this collection of newspaper and
magazine articles, liner notes, interviews, memoirs, and other materials,
a reporter for the _New York Times_ wrote about a day in 1994 when he
visited an elderly William Smith Monroe (Bill Monroe), the father of
bluegrass, at his farm in Tennessee. After mentioning to the young visitor
that the walkway to his log cabin home included a stone from each state,
the visitor replied, "Really?" Monroe "snapped," as the reporter put it,
with "Why should I lie? I ain't a Yankee" (p. 222).

Although the _Bill Monroe Reader_ is a collection of primary documents
without much in the way of an introduction, with no conclusion whatsoever,
and as with most primary document collections, without any explicit
argument set forth by the editor, one prevailing theme emerges quickly.
Bluegrass music and the popularity of Monroe, the inventor of the genre,
survived after Elvis Presley and the rock and roll explosion only when in
the late 1950s and 1960s northern, or "Yankee" folk music fans, musicians,
and promoters began listening to, writing about, playing (a number of them
in Monroe's band), and generally clamoring for roots music and the
authenticity that someone like Monroe provided. And therein lay a palpable
tension for the mandolin virtuoso during the remaining three decades of
his life. Shy since childhood, relatively uneducated, and _country_, as
southerners say when we need an adjective to describe a certain type,
Monroe might have accepted the reinvention of bluegrass as its popularity
moved from the Ryman Auditorium to Greenwich Village and later to
far-flung new meccas like Telluride, Colorado, but that did not mean that
he was altogether comfortable with each and every one of the changes those
journeys wrought. Namely, he never seemed terribly thrilled to talk with
reporters and scholars about anything other than his music. And in 1994, a
year in which bad investments forced Monroe to auction away his 288-acre
farm (the new owner allowed him to remain living there until his death two
years later), Monroe knew why the _New York Times_ had come calling. They
were less interested in a story about the high lonesome sound than in the
old-fashioned character they painted as a laid-low and lonesome
octogenarian. Indeed, as the editor of this collection Tom Ewing notes
regarding the _New York Times_ piece "Bill Monroe Has Lots to Sing But
Little to Say," it was a "less-than-flattering article" (p. 226).

This book was not published for the merely casual bluegrass fan or for
someone looking to learn the basic story of Monroe and the unique American
music he forged in the last century. For the invention of bluegrass as a
genre, including a discussion of the nonsouthern influences from the
Seeger family to Jerry Garcia, Robert Cantwell's _Bluegrass Breakdown: The
Making of the Old Southern Sound_ (1984) and Neil Rosenberg's _Bluegrass:
A History_ (1985) are required reading. Two films, _High Lonesome: The
Story of Bluegrass Music_ (1991) and _Bill Monroe: The Father of
Bluegrass_ (1993), are excellent in dissecting the origins of bluegrass
and why it matters in American popular culture. Finally, Richard D.
Smith's biography _Can't You Hear Me Callin': The Life of Bill Monroe,
Father of Bluegrass_ (2000) is so comprehensive that it is hard to imagine
Ewing's anthology as being completely clear if one had not read Smith
first and had a good idea of Monroe's complexities as a musician and as a
man. Ewing, a guitarist who played in Monroe's band for ten years, knows
this. He nearly states as much in his introduction, where he writes that
"some knowledge of bluegrass and Bill's life and career is presumed here"
(p. 4). In other words, the _Bill Monroe Reader_ is not Bill Monroe and
Bluegrass 101; it is a senior seminar taught by a masterful musician who
knew Monroe well.

To get the most out of Ewing's collection, readers should first understand
the history of bluegrass and Monroe's story. He grew up poor in rural
Kentucky in the 1910s and 1920s, was orphaned at a young age, and lived
with a fiddle-playing relative called Uncle Pen. During the 1930s, he
moved North to Chicago to labor in an oil refinery. He recorded and
performed with his brother Charlie before striking out on his own and
forming a band, Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys. In 1939, he made his
way to the heart of the musical South when he joined the Grand Ole Opry.
Two of his greatest band members, Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, left him
and helped give rise to the term "bluegrass" in the 1950s as their
audiences requested old numbers from their "Blue Grass" days with Monroe.
Even Elvis's first forty-five on Sun Records included on the B side a
rockabilly version of Monroe's "Blue Moon of Kentucky." Monroe cheated on
his wife and then cheated on his mistresses, too, leading to all sorts of
battle scars while providing a wealth of material for songs. Finally,
northern college-educated elites helped his career reach new heights,
mellowing Monroe, but only to a degree, into a beloved elder statesmen in
Nashville and beyond. Once one has a handle on this basic narrative,
Ewing's _Reader_ helps to peel back another two or three layers on Monroe,
making this collection indispensable for serious fans and scholars of
bluegrass music.

The materials in the _Reader_ are organized by publication date. Ewing
notes in the introduction that ordering the sixty-five pieces in this way
allows one to "clearly see the sketchy, semi-fictional quality of the
earliest writings abut Bill" (p. 3). Although this is true, and although a
mythic, Bunyanesque quality about Monroe prevails through some of the
final pieces included in the book, one cannot help but notice that the
most important thing about the early writings is not their sketchiness,
but that they were written largely for urban audiences outside of the
South. The book's fifth piece, for example, is Alan Lomax's well-known
1959 article for _Esquire_, titled "Bluegrass Background: Folk Music in
Overdrive," in which the author, one of America's great musicologists,
says that Monroe invented a "bluegrass style" characterized by fast tempo
playing. In light of what others learned later about Monroe's life,
Lomax's analysis of the origins of bluegrass was spot on: "Finally,
railroads and highways snaked into the backwoods, and mountain folk moved
out into urban, industrialized, shook-up America; they were the last among
us to experience the breakdown of traditional family patterns, and there
ensued an endless stream of sad songs" (p. 17). For proof of how these
changes played out in Monroe's life and in his music, look no further than
the three songs he recorded on 3 February 1950: "My Little Georgia Rose,"
about a daughter born out of wedlock to his mistress; and two songs with
titles that require no explanation--"I'm On My Way to the Old Home" and
"I'm Blue, I'm Lonesome." Ewing also includes Ralph Rinzler's "Bill
Monroe: 'The Daddy of Bluegrass Music,'" published in the journal _Sing
Out!_ in 1963. This document is one of the most important pieces, Ewing
says, because it was the first to argue that Monroe played the "primary
role in the development of bluegrass" (p. 26). Smith's account in _Can't
You Hear Me Callin'_ of the lengths Rinzler had to go to get this first
ever in-depth interview with Monroe is worth examining. Suffice it to say,
Monroe did not invite Rinzler, a native of New Jersey and a graduate of
Swarthmore, down to Nashville for sweet tea. But ultimately, Monroe was
nobody's fool, either. Rinzler eventually became his manager, booking him
and the Blue Grass Boys at northern colleges and helping to open up a
whole new fan base for Monroe than he had known previously on the dusty
southern tent circuit. Since Ewing's editorial comments come at the end of
each piece instead of at the beginning where they really belong, this
reviewer enjoyed guessing at the origins of each document while reading
it. The game provided several surprises, including the realization that
the most well-written and thorough biography of Monroe in this collection
appeared originally in a 1986 _People_ magazine profile.

Some of the greatest gems, and there are many in this book, are the
thoughts and recollections of people who actually picked with Monroe. It
is in these stories where we see the clearest image of the man: a
curmudgeonly but lovable teacher who lived and breathed to play his
mandolin and to help other musicians who wanted to learn bluegrass. From
the professionals, we get a priceless 1981 interview with Cleo Davis, the
original Blue Grass boy, who played guitar during the fabled first
appearance on the Grand Ole Opry in 1939. His description of Roy Acuff,
Uncle Dave Macon, and other regulars at the Opry as "standing in the wings
watching ... when they pulled the curtain on us" is unforgettable. When he
described the roar of the crowd and said, "there was absolutely nobody
living who had ever played with the speed that we had," the image of
Monroe as someone who inadvertently helped invent rock and roll comes into
focus. The rockabilly sound and the stage presence of Elvis and Buddy
Holly (two young southerners who grew up listening to Monroe on the Opry)
may very well have been born at that precise moment in 1939 when Monroe
stepped into the light at Nashville's old War Memorial Auditorium and
brandished his mandolin like a weapon (p. 137). Monroe also loved to jam
with amateurs, his fans. In one of the collection's greatest pieces, an
American studying in London recalls seeing Monroe play Wembley Stadium in
1975. After the show, the student grabbed his guitar from his car and made
his way back to Monroe's dressing room. When he arrived, another fan, an
Englishman, played Irish folk ballads on a mandolin and after each song,
Monroe said, gently, "That's very good. Play me another." Finally, the man
ran out of songs and Monroe looked at the American. "That's just like the
guitar my brother had," he said. They played a few songs and then the Blue
Grass Boys trickled in, so that the student soon found himself jamming
with his heroes. "But the main thing was," he recalled years later, "Bill
was playing, and singing, for himself. He didn't care about not being on
stage ... He was doing his thing, playing his music" (pp. 262-263). One
year later, at a festival back in the states, Monroe spotted the student
and invited him on stage to play with the band. The book contains numerous
stories like this whereby readers see first hand, or are reminded, why
Monroe's fans adored him.

Finally, a few materials seem strangely absent from this collection.
Robert Shelton's work in the _New York Times_, including a 1959 article
that predated Lomax's _Esquire_ piece, whereby Shelton called Monroe a
"high priest" of bluegrass, might at least merit mention in a footnote.
The same could be said for a 1961 article, the first to praise a young
folkie named Bob Dylan, where Shelton also mentioned Rinzler's band, the
Greenbriar Boys, and a "virtuoso" number they performed called "Rawhide,"
which Shelton may or may not have known at the time was written by Monroe
and actually called "Raw Hide." The article closes with a mention of
another Rinzler band number, "We Need a Whole Lot More of Jesus and a Lot
Less Rock 'n' Roll," which, although not written by Monroe, certainly
sounds like something he might have said.[1] Another piece that might be
considered for partial inclusion in an updated volume of the _Reader_ is
John W. Rumble's superb companion booklet for MCA's box set, "The Music of
Bill Monroe from 1936 to 1994" (1994). The short reflections there on
Monroe by Dylan, Garcia, Phil Everly, Carl Perkins, Doug Dillard, and
others are fascinating. But let me be clear: Ewing's work here is
excellent, and as he says early on, with a project such as this, picking
and choosing is never easy. What he has offered--the ability to _read_
Bill Monroe--is a special gift. Although Monroe's actual voice is heard
easily today on records and in films, to read about him saying such things
as, "One thing that he learnt me" (p. 48), or "I would sing kindly the way
I felt" (p. 77), or "Anybody don't know better's pitiful" (p. 224) is to
recognize not just that Monroe's mannerisms became folk's lyrical cool,
but that in these lovely, humble ways of speaking we can also hear, some
of us, the voices of our own southern grandparents who helped teach us to
love this music in the first place. To quote Dylan, who, of course, came
from Minnesota and did not have southern grandparents, but who had a
radio, a record store, and folkie magazines: "The stuff that I grew up on
never grows old. I was just fortunate enough to get it and understand it
at that early age, and it still rings true for me. I'd still rather listen
to Bill and Charlie Monroe than any current record. That's what America's
all about to me."[2]

Notes

[1]. Robert Shelton, "Bluegrass Style," _New York Times_, 30 August 1959,
sec. X, p. 17, and Robert Shelton, "Bob Dylan: A Distinctive Folk-Song
Stylist," _New York Times_, 29 September 1961, p. 31.

[2]. John W. Rumble, _The Music of Bill Monroe from 1936 to 1994_
(Nashville: Country Music Foundation, 1994), 20.



        Copyright (c) 2007 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits
        the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit,
        educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the
        author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and
        H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For other uses
        contact the Reviews editorial staff: hbooks@mail.h-net.msu.edu.

Humanities & Social
Sciences Online

Copyright © 1995-2006 - Contact Us
RSS | Validate: XHTML | CSS