Ajay Kalra

WRITING SAMPLE

Bluegrass

Entry for

The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture

Vol. 12: Music,
edited by Bill C. Malone, Charles Reagan Wilson,
James G. Thomas Jr., and Ann J. Abadie.
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2008)

Note: The previous volumes entry on bluegrass was written by Neil V.

Rosenberg, the best recognized expert on the history of this music. The
editors of the new volume were convinced to replace it because my
essay offers an outsiders overview of, and perhaps insights into,
alternative histories of bluegrass in contexts not often discussedfrom
the studio to international scenes. (Please refer to pages 6-11 for a
treatment of these additional aspects.) While examining those
trajectories, my essay, as is apposite for a work on Southern culture,
tries not to lose sight of bluegrasss repeated reference to its Southern
and Appalachian roots.

1
 Ajay Kalra

Bluegrass

Bluegrass took shape as a distinctive style of acoustic southern string band music

between 1939 and 1945, both dates intimately associated with the career of a specific

bandleader and his ensembleBill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys. With the possible

exception of funk musics association with James Brown, no other American music

genres origins are so singularly traced to one father figure as bluegrasss are to western

Kentuckian Bill Monroe; yet, the classic ensemble sound of bluegrass was consummated

following crucial contributions from other members of his group. Similarly, while the

appellation bluegrass suggests origins in western Kentucky, many early exponents of the

style came from other southern states, most often from Appalachia and its surrounding

regions. Likewise, outsiders to both these regions and even the South have aided in the

later spread and stylistic diversifications of bluegrass, making it a much admired music in

unexpected scenes dotted across the surface of the globe. Yet no matter the distance

bluegrass has at times traveled from its roots, it has continued to check its bearings

against its southern and Appalachian origins. In recent years this trend has been best

exemplified in the resounding mainstream success of unabashedly traditional and

Southward-looking albums such as Ricky Skaggss Bluegrass Rules, Dolly Partons The

Grass is Blue and Little Sparrow, the soundtracks of O Brother! Where Art Thou? and

Songcatcher, and Patty Lovelesss Mountain Soul.

Although bluegrass in the main developed out of the Anglo-American string band

tradition, popular through much of the South, it also drew upon other musics, initially

under the overarching supervision of Bill Monroe. Vocally, the strongest proximal

2
 Ajay Kalra

influences came from the close harmony brother duos that had been popular throughout

the early decades of commercially recorded country music; before launching his larger

string ensemble, Monroe had partnered his elder brother Charlie in the harmony duo the

Monroe Brothers. Bill Monroe, however, pitched his songs higher and brought a harder

nasal edge to the sweet singing styles typical of other 1930s brother duos such as the

Blue Sky Boys and the Delmore Brothers. This high nasal vocalizing had also

characterized other traditional singers from Kentucky such as Roscoe Holcomb for whose

music folklorist John Cohen originally coined the descriptor the high lonesome sound,

but which has appositely been used to describe bluegrass later. To the close harmony of

lead and tenor, bluegrass ensembles typically add a baritone part, again usually in close

harmony, and on religious songs a bass voice.

Instrumentally, bluegrass ensembles started with the instruments typical of old-

time string band music. Fiddle and banjo had been the basis of string bands for a century.

Upright acoustic bass, the mandolin, and the steel-string flat-top guitar were being added

to string bands by the end of nineteenth century. Early bluegrass ensembles utilized these

five instruments. In contrast with old time ensembles variable instrumental constitution

and loose orchestration, however, in bluegrass the presence of all five instruments soon

became de rigueur and tight, meditated orchestration definitive of the style. Although

Earl Scruggss three-finger banjo style would become the hallmark of classic bluegrass,

many of the characteristics that define the sound of bluegrass as different from its

forebears had already coalesced around Monroes instrument, the mandolin. In 1959,

bluegrass would be famously described by Alan Lomax as folk music in overdrive. In

addition to pointing out bluegrass ensembles proclivity for playing rousing uptempo

3
 Ajay Kalra

tunes, that description partly refers to the forward propulsive drive lent to the music by

the prominent muted chopping by the mandolinist on the up beats; the fiddle, banjo, or

dobro typically take over that function during mandolin solos. Additionally, Monroe

brought a strong blues influence into his version of southern string band music making

liberal use of blue notes and blue-note-incorporating dyads in his playing; he later

acknowledged his debt to the West Kentuckian black guitarist Arnold Shultz, a sometime

collaborator of Monroes now-famous relative, Pendleton Uncle Pen Vandiver.

Especially in the instrumental sections, whether on such instrumentals as Bluegrass

Special and Bluegrass Boogie or during instrumental breaks during songs such as

Rocky Road Blues, Monroe and his band members improvised with scalar and often

stock licks and riffs strung together to fit the piece. This practice had antecedents in jazz

and Western swing and departed significantly from the more conservative melodic

variations of old time string band music. As in jazz and swing, they also alternated

between lead and accompaniment roles, often switching functions after four or two

measures.

Some scholars suggest that when Monroes band made its debut at the Grand Ole

Opry in 1939, most elements of the bluegrass sound were already in place. Most,

however, agree that it was not until the addition of Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs in late

1945 and specifically of Scruggss rolling three-finger banjo playing that the classic

bluegrass sound coalesced. That legendary lineup, which also featured fiddler Chubby

Wise and bassist Cedric Rainwater, was together for just over two years but its influence

spread rapidly and many acoustic string bands updated and tightened up their sound to

compete with the rising popularity of the Blue Grass Boys. The most influential of the

4
 Ajay Kalra

bands that emerged during this period were the Stanley Brothers, Flatt and Scruggs and

the Foggy Mountain Boys, and Reno and Smiley and the Tennessee Cutups. By the early

1950s many other acts, often started by alumni of Monroes band, joined the fray Mac

Wiseman, Jim and Jesse McReynolds, the Osborne Brothers, and Jimmy Martin and the

Sunny Mountain Boys proved the most enduring. Throughout the late 1940s, for

professional bluegrass bands, the main source of living was live appearance at radio

stations such as WCYB, Bristol, and WSM, Nashville, and touring in the South and in

cities with a strong Appalachian migrant population. Record sales mostly supplemented

their incomes and a number of independent labels such as Rich-R-Tone, Starday, and

King focused on bluegrass; Rebel and County would emerge later as specialist bluegrass

labels. In the early 1950s local television shows were added to the list. Still the majority

of bluegrass musicians, then as now, retained semi-professional or amateur status.

Although it did recognize its debt to bluegrass, as evidenced in Elvis Presleys

interpretation of a number of Bill Monroe songs during his various Sun Records sessions,

early rock and roll distracted at least the younger section of the bluegrass audiences. In

response, the Blue Grass Boys as well as other traditional bluegrass bands did attempt to

slightly revamp their sound to appeal to younger tastes. Rock and rolls popularity with

youngsters also forced Nashvilles country recording industry to focus its attentions on

the mainstream adult constituency with a crossover countrypolitan sound, which made

bluegrass sound even more outmoded by comparison. The folk revival that soon spread

across urban America, however, secured bluegrasss future.

Despite the distinctiveness and popularity of the style, bluegrass as a

5
 Ajay Kalra

label did not acquire substantial currency until the second half of 1950s. Early

popularizers of that label, urban folklorists and scholars such as Mike Seeger, Alan

Lomax, and Ralph Rinzler were vital agents in folk revivalists discovery of bluegrass

and in the recasting of that music as an authentic folk music. For Smithsonian-

Folkways Records Mike Seeger produced and wrote scholarly liner notes for the albums

American Banjo Three-Finger and Scruggs Style (1957) and American Music Bluegrass

Style (1959). Lomax and Rinzler wrote important early magazine articles about the

music. Rinzler also joined New Yorks Greenbriar Boys, one of the first bluegrass groups

featuring city-bred musicians, and in the liner notes to their 1962 debut album explained

bluegrass to urban audiences. Bluegrass scholarship and readership expanded soon with

theses and dissertations, academic journal issues, and dedicated magazines such as

Bluegrass Unlimited, Muleskinner News, and later Bluegrass Now focused on the genres

new literate audiences. Instrument-specific magazines such as Flatpick Guitar and the

Banjo Newsletter and music instruction houses such as Oak Publications and Homespun

Tapes offered alternative manners of learning, contrasting with bluegrasss oral and auto-

didactic roots.

A wider appreciation for bluegrass music was set in motion with urban folk

festival and college campus appearances by bluegrass groups. Osborne Brothers took the

lead in the crossover, appearing at Antioch College, Ohio, in 1960. Soon other groups,

including Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys who were now managed by Rinzler,

started making regular appearances at festivals and campuses across the country. Many

younger southern bands made self-conscious attempts to meet their new audiences tastes

halfway, at the same time also attempting to crossover to contemporary country

6
 Ajay Kalra

audiences. Monroe, however, as the doyen of an authentic American folk tradition,

succeeded best through a conservative approach. After the first whole-day bluegrass

show in 1961, and the first multi-day festival dedicated to the genre in 1965, the

bluegrass festival appeared as the central structuring event for the expanding bluegrass

world.

A number of urban musicians, operating in local scenes organized around

hootenannies at folk clubs and coffeehouses across America and Canada, also took up

various bluegrass instruments. While initially, mainly from 1961 to 1964, these

youngsters attempted to recreate the sound and spirit of original rural roots musics, a

sponge-like eclecticism soon came to characterize this generations coming of age.

Youngsters who had learned to play on bluegrass instruments, on bluegrass songs, and in

a bluegrass style soon began to experiment with one or all of those variables

instrumentation, lyrical genre, and stylistic approachleading bluegrass into newer

territories which are being further explored to this day by artists such as Sam Bush, Tony

Rice, Jerry Douglas, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Mark O Connor, and Edgar Meyer.

The results of these experiments were variable and a number of labels, especially

progressive bluegrass and newgrass, were applied as descriptors. In one camp were

traditional bluegrass bands, typically from the rural South, which attempted to meet

halfway their intended urban audiences tastes by incorporating elements of commercial

styleswhether rock or countryespecially drums, electric guitar, and steel guitar.

Although, Osborne Brothers and the Dillards achieved comfortable and commercially

successful syntheses, other southern artists fared less well; Lester Flatt, for instance,

eventually parted ways with Earl Scruggs over their groups increasingly rock direction.

7
 Ajay Kalra

Scruggs, however, believed in bluegrasss new direction and continued undeterred with

his family band, the Earl Scruggs Revue. He also championed the ambitious efforts of

urban acolytes, most famously the Nitty Gritty Dirt Bands historic all-star 1971 triple

album Will the Circle Be Unbroken.

In another progressive camp were younger musicians with either urban middle- or

upper-class backgrounds or southerners with a greater empathy for contemporary tastes.

Many of them, after initially playing traditional bluegrass, found popular success with

folk rock or country rock music, albeit with a strong bluegrass undercurrent. After the

commercial heyday of country rock, many such musicians including Jerry Garcia, Chris

Hillman, Herb Pedersen, Bernie Leadon, David Grisman, Bill Keith, and Peter Rowan

returned to record albums even more strongly influenced by bluegrass.

A third forward-looking group, the one most often classified under the

progressive bluegrass label and also the one most successful through least artistic

compromise comprised those musicians who, after tentative dabbling, largely avoided the

overt elements of rockelectric amplification, drums, and loud volume. Still, having

grown up coeval with and having shared artistic sensibilities with the softer introspective

singer-songwriter, folk rock, and emerging studio-oriented soft rock genres, these artists

led bluegrass into less conspicuously divergent directions. This camp, also identified with

the moniker newgrass, focused its innovativeness along choice of lyrical material,

nuanced studio recording, and increasingly a variable instrumental palette. The Bluegrass

Alliance, Newgrass Revival, The Seldom Scene, J.D. Crowe and the New South, Tony

Rice, David Grisman, Dan Crary, Ricky Skaggs, Jerry Douglas, Bill Keith, and Peter

Rowan were at the vanguard of this phalanx. Many in this group, most prominently

8
 Ajay Kalra

David Grisman and Tony Rice, continued to forge ahead intrepidly, bringing in strong

influence from jazz and sometimes new age and world music, incurring labels including

Dawg music, jazzgrass, spacegrass, and new acoustic music.

Although early bluegrass had streamlined and updated the sound of old time

string-band music, it had continued to interpret much of the same material; new material

continued similar song structures and the same lyrical emphases on country musics

traditional themesreligion, sentimental love, home and hearth, and sometimes

rambling, cheating, and murder. By early 1960s, however, like musicians in other genres,

the younger progressive urban musicians were interpreting Bob Dylan and the Beatles.

Instrumentally also, major updates had occurred in bluegrass by the 1970s. While

addition of drums and electric instruments was criticized by traditional fans, acoustic

instrumental innovation has been welcomed throughout bluegrasss history; only staunch

traditionalists trying to resurrect the classic Blue Grass Boys sound of the 1946-1948

period have avoided later instrumental developments. Whereas Monroes bluesy

mandolin and Scruggss three-finger banjo rolls were innovations integral to the genre,

other instrumental innovations have continued to expand the musics sonic palette and

many are well accepted even within the parameters of the traditional sound.

The resonator guitar or dobro, played in a style emulating three-finger banjo rolls,

became a fairly standard element of the bluegrass sound following Josh Graves tenure

with the Foggy Mountain Boys in the 1950s, Mike Auldridges playing with the Country

Gentlemen in the 1960s, and Jerry Douglass work with a number of supergroups in the

1970s. Major new approaches to the banjo also emergedespecially the melodic style

associated with Blue Grass Boys Bill Keith and a number styles with more blues, jazz,

9
 Ajay Kalra

and chromatic approaches associated with players such as Larry McNeely, Tony

Trischka, Tony Furtado, Alison Brown, and especially Bela Fleck. On bluegrass

mandolin, Jesse McReynolds cross-picking approach and David Grismans jazz-

informed playing proved widely influential. The flat-top steel-string dreadnought acoustic

guitar also, while initially relegated to an accompaniment function with only an

occasional bass run, benefited from the innovations of Don Reno, Doc Watson, Clarence

White, Norman Blake, Dan Crary, and Tony Rice, emerging as a lead instrument with a

melodic vocabulary matching that of the fiddle and the mandolin. The popularity of the

bluegrass flatpick guitar style among younger bluegrass enthusiasts has ensured that

today, performance on guitar, whether solo or in a duo setting with a second guitar or

mandolin, is enough for the music to be deemed bluegrass.

By the end of the 1970s, bluegrass had traveled far from its southern traditional

music roots and not unexpectedly a neo-traditionalist response was afoot. The two decade

period starting in 1979 is often described by scholars as one of a hardnosed return to the

southern roots of bluegrass. Skaggs and Rice, the Johnson Mountain Boys, bluegrass

gospel specialists Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver, and supergroups the Bluegrass Album

Band, the Dreadful Snakes, and the Nashville Bluegrass Band spearheaded this revival.

Since then a steadfast contingent of traditional bluegrass musicians and fans has

continued to counterbalance any tendencies of mavericks to drift too far from bluegrasss

southern shores. This same period continuing into the present, nevertheless, has also seen

some of the genres often southern-born stalwarts make the most successful inroads into

other non-traditional idioms and markets through their individual syntheses of bluegrass

and other influences.

10
 Ajay Kalra

In the 1960s and 1970s, young, urban-raised rock musicians had been most

instrumental in exposing rock audiences to bluegrass. In the popular music mainstream,

their amalgams, by the dawn of the 1980s, had been completely displaced by more

urbane sounds of studio rock, disco, and new wave music; bluegrass influenced rock

musicians such as Chris Hillman, Herb Pedersen, Peter Rowan, and the Eagles Bernie

Leadon then returned to purer bluegrass sounds on albums released on independent labels

that had emerged in the 1970s and were dedicated to acoustic Americana such as

Rounder, Sugar Hill, and Flying Fish. In mainstream country music market, however,

following the extended reign of country pop, the time was now ripe for a neo-

traditionalist reply. The studio emphasis of 1970s progressive bluegrass had raised a

cadre of versatile musicians who in the 1980s brought the sounds of bluegrass to a still

newer audience. Ricky Skaggs, Keith Whitley, Marty Stuart, Vince Gill, and the Desert

Rose Band became mainstream country stars but continued to feature bluegrass

instrumentation. Instrumental prodigies such as Mark O Connor, Jerry Douglas, Bela

Fleck, and Edgar Meyer, on the other hand, emerged as major session musicians in

Nashville and provided bluegrass embellishments on recordings by such artists as Nanci

Griffith, Kathy Mattea, Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell, Steve Earle, Michelle

Shocked, and Mark Knopfler.

In the 1990s and the new millenium, bluegrasss appeal has continued to spread.

Women stars also have adapted bluegrass to their voices. Alison Krauss and the Dixie

Chicks blended bluegrass with pop and country elements to achieve multiplatinum

success with diverse audiences, easily surpassing the sales of the genres previous top-

selling albums by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and Old & in the Way. With the rise of the

11
 Ajay Kalra

alternative music movement and traveling festivals such as Lollapalooza and H.O.R.D.E.,

the jam band scene long localized in California now spread and included bluegrass-based

bands such as Leftover Salmon and String Cheese Incident. Nickel Creek continues to

find success with both the above constituencies. Alternative country pioneer Steve Earle

collaborated on acoustic projects with Norman Blake, Peter Rowan, and the Del

McCoury Band. Although based in pre-bluegrass, sub-Appalachian Mississippi, the 2000

Hollywood movie O Brother! Where Art Thou? featured a soundtrack with many

bluegrass stalwarts, including Appalachian-born southerners Ralph Stanley, Norman

Blake, and Emmylou Harris, and led to an unparalleled success story for the genre. The

soundtrack resulted in the popular music world acknowledging Stanleys stature as a

living legend and spawned a spate of multi-artist tours and album projects. It also proved

a shot in the arm for country music artists such as Ricky Skaggs and Dolly Parton who

were attempting to return to their acoustic roots and encouraged others such as Patty

Loveless to follow suit.

Despite various diverging, progressive and commercial, currents, bluegrass even

in the commercial market has continued to witness traditionalist revivalist trends which

have reminded the audiences of the musics regional southern and Appalachian roots. In

the 1980s, it was the Johnson Mountain Boys and the Bluegrass Album Band that led the

return-to-roots movement. In the last decade, genre stalwarts Del McCoury, Ricky

Skaggs, and a rejuvenated Ralph Stanley have brought back the traditional sounds to the

musics now expanded fan base.

Ajay Kalra
University of Texas at Austin

12
 Ajay Kalra

Thomas Goldsmith, ed., The Bluegrass Reader (2004); Paul Kingsbury, ed., The

Encyclopedia of Country Music: The Ultimate Guide to the Music (1998); Neil

Rosenberg, Bluegrass: A History (1985).

13