Andy Bing’s Bluegrass Blog – Week 10 Blog posts for weeks seven and nine mentioned in passing the Anthology of American Folk Music, which was issued on six LPs on Folkways in 1952. This week’s post is devoted to the … Read More
The week seven blog post discussed the 1965 documentary “Bluegrass Roots,” which focused on the old time and folk roots of bluegrass. A lot of us, this writer included, first heard bluegrass during the “folk revival” of the late 1950s … Read More
The Stanley Brothers And The Beginnings of a Genre The mid-1940s edition of Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys, featuring banjoist Earl Scruggs and guitarist Lester Flatt, is generally thought of as the “original” bluegrass band. It was “original” … Read More
Andy Bing’s Bluegrass Blog, Week 7 This week’s subject is a 1965 documentary film by David Hoffman with Jonathan Gordon called “Bluegrass Roots.” (Thanks to Bill Walsh for calling this film to my attention.) The film is available on YouTube … Read More
Bing’s Bluegrass Blog – Week 6 When Earl Scruggs joined Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys in late 1945, he popularized a relatively obscure style of five string banjo playing that had been known primarily in the southeastern United States through … Read More
Bill Monroe’s great mid-1940s band set the standard for bluegrass bands in more ways than one, but perhaps the most basic was the band’s instrumental lineup. The five bluegrass instruments were the fiddle, mandolin, guitar, banjo, and bass fiddle. Bill … Read More
This week, a little more about Bill Monroe and one part of the background of bluegrass. In shaping his music, Bill incorporated several strands of the music he heard as a boy and a young man. The strand I will … Read More
Last week’s post argued that Bill Monroe is rightfully called the “Father of Bluegrass,” although there were other country string bands active during the early 1940s, and other musicians, especially banjoist Earl Scruggs, played an important part in the creation … Read More
Bill Monroe Bill Monroe is known as the “Father of Bluegrass.” To my knowledge, bluegrass is the only musical genre whose existence is largely attributed to one person. Jelly Roll Morton claimed to have invented jazz, and W. C. Handy … Read More
This column is the first of a series about bluegrass music. My goal here is to talk a bit about the history of the music and some of the people who helped make bluegrass what it is today. One can … Read More