Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 21, 1994 TAG: 9408190053
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: DUBLIN LENGTH: Long
As Bill Monroe, the institution.
Around him, a small group of fans, acquaintances and the curious crowded in, seeking his attention, as similar groups have done thousands of times before. In turn, he played host to the contingent with the resolve of a man enjoying the twilight of his celebrity. Clearly, he was in his element.
He paid particular attention to two children, giving them each a quarter and bending slowly to their level to offer a wide, wrinkled smile - an expression he hasn't always presented so freely. Instantly, it seemed to put everyone around him in a good mood.
A woman ran up, waving a camera, and asked to pose with him for a snapshot. He obliged, but not before removing his glasses and folding them away in his shirt pocket. Then, he posed arm-in-arm with the woman. He even kissed her on the cheek while an onlooker clicked the camera.
With that, he was told dinner was coming. He gripped his bass player's arm again and shuffled away toward a nearby building. As he walked, he concentrated, maybe with a trace of discomfort in his steps, although his stoic face never confessed to it. He stood a little less upright.
Up close, he seemed smaller than his legendary stature, more frail, more of an 82-year-old man slowed by the rigors of age and time, less than invincible.
Less than an institution.
It was two hours before he was scheduled to perform at the New River Valley Fair in Dublin, in the same grandstand area where the demolition derby was held a week earlier. Not far away, one of the derby cars still could be seen, pointed down a grassy hill, looking left behind.
Somehow, the setting seemed incompatible with a man regarded as one of the most important musical figures of the last 50 years, and yet suitable for that man, who has spent his entire professional life playing to rural America at places like the New River Valley Fair.
Either way, his appearance at the fair quite possibly could be his last performance in Western Virginia, given his age and a string of health problems that culminated earlier this year at his Tennessee farm when he fell and broke a hip.
Then again, he may keep coming back for years, given the mythic stubbornness, born from a hard country upbringing in Kentucky, that has fueled him through five decades in the music business and continues to drive him.
It is this same determination that helped him pioneer a form of American music and won him his famous moniker, the Father of Bluegrass.
Yet, on this cool August night, Monroe found himself practically alone in a small wooden building, not much nicer than a shack, when his dinner arrived. His band and road manager were waiting back on the bus or wandering the fairgrounds.
Only two young fair workers, charged with helping out backstage, remained. The food they brought from the Ruritan Club booth at the fair included country ham and barbecued chicken, rolls, corn, a fresh pot of coffee and baked potatoes that had to be sent back because they were cold. Monroe thanked the two workers anyway.
Then he invited them to join in a short, solemn blessing.
\ He had come from Nashville, where the night before he played at the Grand Ole Opry, the famed country music mecca where singers have to prove themselves before they can say they have officially arrived.
Monroe has been a regular since 1939.
That was before he was an icon, before he arrived at the musical configuration that marked his place in history, when he fronted just another string band trying to make it in Nashville.
By then, he already was a music business veteran, and had enjoyed some amount of regional fame as half of the Monroe Brothers, a guitar/mandolin duo he formed with his older brother, Charlie.
Between 1934 and 1938, before splitting up, the Monroe Brothers built a following that stretched from Iowa and Nebraska to the Carolinas. They cut some 60 songs for RCA Records, and developed a style that laid the groundwork for what would become bluegrass. A style that was aggressive and fast.
The brothers were competitive. They not only wanted to show off for the audience - they wanted to show up each other. Charlie on guitar. Bill on mandolin, which had never been much of a showy instrument.
In his hands, that changed.
"If he'd never done anything else but transform the mandolin into a lead instrument in country music, that would have been enough to secure his fame," said the late Smithsonian Institution historian Ralph Rinzler.
He did much more. Enough to rest on his laurels, to enjoy a stately retirement in his old age and reap the rewards of an accomplished career.
Instead, he was 400 miles from home, a vaguely familiar figure to some, unknown to many and a household name to only a few. A famous man living out his days in relative anonymity.
After dinner, he began a careful return to the bus, aided again by his bass player. But again, he broke free and returned to form, taking one of the fair workers he had prayed with in his arms. Together, they danced a two-step in the parking lot. They also posed for pictures, again after he took special care to remove his glasses.
He had agreed to an interview and to sit for a photo portrait, but before the session got started he wanted to change into his stage clothes. The outfit was a suit of a country gentleman, of a farmer in his Sunday best, lapels adorned with an assortment of pins.
A mandolin pin. An American flag. The word Jesus.
At this stage in his life, an interview with Bill Monroe can be a sticky proposition. In character, he can be as gracious and engaging as a grandfather ready to hold court about the old days.
He also can be moody, given to the wayward digressions of that same grandfather whose memory and patience aren't what they once were. And he can be less than confessional, which comes with being a longtime celebrity who has never particularly liked interviews.
On this day, he was cordial, if not sensationally revealing.
Before he took his position, everything had to be in order. He blew his nose, poured a cup of apple juice and took a pair of pills. Then he sat down with a certain proper formality that stiffened on cue every time the photographer's camera was pointed his way.
He said he forgot to shave. It bothered him.
"Do I look all right?" he asked, testing his chin with his fingers.
He talked about his arrival, when he gave away quarters to the two children who greeted him. It was something he started doing about five years ago. "So they have some money of their own to spend," he explained.
"Course, when I was a little blue boy growing up, 10 or 15 cents is all I got."
In reality, he probably didn't even get that.
Born in 1911 and raised on a farm in Kentucky, he was the youngest of eight children. His mother died when he was 10. He quit school and started working when he was 11 and his father died when he was 16.
He picked up the mandolin only because his older siblings hogged the guitars and fiddles. And he excelled at it only because he had something to prove.
He talked of farming, of a song he once wrote, "Wheel Hoss."
"You know what a wheel horse is?"
He explained it was the horse harnessed nearest to the front wheels of a cart, or closest to the blades of a plow. A far-away look crossed his face. He recalled his days of plowing behind a horse team. "There's nothing like a good horse," he said.
He pointed proudly to his age. On Sept. 13, he will turn 83. On the last Saturday in October, he will celebrate 55 years on the Opry. And in that time, he pointed out proudly, he has arrived late or missed an appearance there only three times.
Once because his bus broke down in North Carolina. Once because a hard rain washed out an old bridge leading off his farm outside Nashville. And the third time he didn't remember. "That's a fine record right there."
He also spoke with pride about the annual bluegrass festival he has been host of for 28 years in Bean Blossom, Ind. He wouldn't predict how much longer he can keep the festival going. In the past 10 years, he has battled colon cancer and undergone heart bypass surgery.
"I don't want to stop," he said.
He was interrupted by his bass player, who told him that one of his old band members was outside and wanted to sit in with them during the show for a song. "If he can still know how to do it, he can," Monroe answered. There was a playful, competitive orneriness to his reply.
"Tell him to get his banjo tuned."
He reached for his mandolin and picked up the conversation where he left off. He said some people think he should quit. He pointed outside the bus, where a crowd was beginning to gather as show time approached. "I just don't see how I can," he said.
In recent years, Monroe has grown more appreciative of his fans, more approachable, than in decades past when he seemed more aloof or maybe just too busy for them. During his heyday, he was famous for his remarkable stamina. His traveling tent show was the stuff of legend.
Part vaudeville, part variety show, it included multiple acts, comedy, gospel, and traveled in seven trucks, often logging 3,000 miles a week before the age of interstates. A different town every night. It was always a community event.
He even fielded a baseball team to challenge the best each new town had to offer. He usually played pitcher, although he was really a better hitter. And he set up boxing matches, often getting in the ring himself. On occasion, he also demonstrated his country-boy strength by lifting his four bandmates on a wooden beam balanced across his shoulders.
"Here's something," he said. He has performed for the last four presidents. He said President Clinton had not been in office even a week before he was invited to play for him. Clearly, these were proud milestones. But asked why Ford, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy, Eisenhower, Truman and Roosevelt never extended the same offer, he only shrugged.
"I can't figure to save my life."
Now he interrupted himself, using his mandolin to work through part of an instrumental song he wrote backstage at the Opry the night before. He said he still writes a lot of instrumentals. "I can write them in a minute or a half a minute," he said.
As he worked through the song, he demonstrated the breakneck speed at which he plays - more piloting, really, than playing. It was around this style that he developed the sound that became bluegrass.
That happened in the 1940s, when he assembled a band that included a fiddle, bass, guitar and banjo around his mandolin. What was important was their interplay, that competitive spirit he carried with him from the Monroe Brothers.
The other important element was his use of the banjo. Before Monroe hit on his formula, the banjo was used more as a stage prop, for humorous effect. That changed in 1945, when he hired Earl Scruggs, who took a musician's approach and transformed it into a serious lead instrument.
Monroe called his band the Blue Grass Boys, in honor of his home state. The name stuck. In fact, he still calls his band the Blue Grass Boys. And the form of music they created became known as bluegrass, in honor of Monroe.
Almost 50 years later, he doesn't play down that honor, or fake humility. He said he sees himself as the important musical figure that he is, and clearly he is comfortable with the many labels that come with the part. Pioneer, legend, institution.
"That's fine," he said, partly distracted by the mandolin tune he continued to play.
The Father of Bluegrass.
"That's a good title right there."
He interrupted himself again and looked to his bass player.
"Do I have time to shave?"
By the time he left the bus to make his way to the stage, the crowd had grown larger. He was mobbed for autographs and handshakes, hugs and kisses. He was clean-shaven and once again back in his element.
In character like this, when he arrived on stage with a slow, distinguished bow, under the colored lights, in front of a grandstand full of people, in his country gentleman suit and straw hat, he seemed larger than life, younger, much more the part of an institution. Almost invincible.
And when he played his new song, the song he wrote the night before, he couldn't hide his pride. He had something fresh to lay on the audience, something he was proud of, and he played his heart out.
The name of the song, too, seemed to underscore the moment.
"I'd Love To Be Over Yonder."
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PROFILE
Memo: ***CORRECTION***