a short history of bluegrass music
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A Short History of Bluegrass MusicTRANSCRIPT
A SHORT HISTORY OF BLUEGRASS MUSIC
Immigrants from Great Britain and Ireland arrived in Appalachia in the 18th century, and brought
with them the musical traditions of their homelands. These traditions consisted primarily of
English and Scottish ballads which were essentially unaccompanied narrative and dance music,
such as Irish reels, which were accompanied by a fiddle. Many older Bluegrass songs come
directly from the British Isles. Several Appalachian Bluegrass ballads, such as Pretty Saro,
Barbara Allen, Cuckoo Bird and House Carpenter, come from England and preserve the English
ballad tradition both melodically and lyrically. Others, such as The Twa Sisters, also come from
England; however, the lyrics are about Ireland.
Some Bluegrass fiddle songs popular in Appalachia, such as "Leather Britches", and "Pretty
Polly", have Scottish roots. The dance tune Cumberland Gap may be derived from the tune that
accompanies the Scottish ballad Bonnie George Campbell. Other songs have different names in
different places; for instance in England there is an old ballad known as "A Brisk Young Sailor
Courted Me", but exactly the same song in North American Bluegrass is known as "I Wish My
Baby Was Born".
In Bluegrass, as in some forms of jazz, one or more instruments each takes its turn playing the
melody and improvising around it, while the others perform accompaniment; this is especially
typified in tunes called breakdowns. This is in contrast to old-time music, in which all instruments
play the melody together or one instrument carries the lead throughout while the others provide
accompaniment. Breakdowns are often characterized by rapid tempos and unusual instrumental
dexterity and sometimes by complex chord changes.
Bluegrass music has attracted a diverse following worldwide. Bluegrass pioneer Bill Monroe
characterized the genre 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."
Exactly when the word bluegrass itself was adopted to label this form is not certain, but is
believed to be in the late 1950s, and was derived from the name of the seminal Blue Grass Boys
band, formed in 1939 with Bill Monroe as its leader. Due to this lineage, Bill Monroe is frequently
referred to as the "father of bluegrass", although his style drew upon the country, gospel, and
blues music with which he had grown up.
Monroe's 1946 to 1948 band, which featured banjo prodigy Earl Scruggs, singer-guitarist Lester
Flatt, fiddler Chubby Wise and bassist Howard Watts (also known as "Cedric Rainwater"—
sometimes called "the original bluegrass band"—created the definitive sound and instrumental
configuration that remains a model to this day. By some arguments, while the Blue Grass Boys
were the only band playing this music, it was just their unique sound; it could not be considered a
musical style until other bands began performing in similar fashion. In 1948, the Stanley Brothers
recorded the traditional song "Molly and Tenbrooks" in the Blue Grass Boys' style, arguably the
point in time that Bluegrass emerged as a distinct musical form. As Ralph Stanley himself said
about the origins of the genre and its name:
"Oh, (Monroe) was the first. But it wasn't called bluegrass back then. It was just called old time
mountain hillbilly music. When they started doing the bluegrass festivals in 1965, everybody got
together and wanted to know what to call the show, y'know. It was decided that since Bill was the
oldest man, and was from the Bluegrass state of Kentucky and he had the Blue Grass Boys, it
would be called 'bluegrass.'
The nickname Bluegrass State was given to Kentucky because of the grazing grass there named
Poa pratensis In the 1930s, according to the historian of the American language H. L. Mencken,
the word was spelled blue-grass