THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, September 15, 1994 TAG: 9409150038
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SUE SMALLWOOD, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 211 lines
STOIC IN A straight-backed chair, Bill Monroe is holding court in his dressing room at the historic Ryman Auditorium.
A steady stream of attendants and well-wishers scurry in and out. A breathless fan reverently proffers a birthday gift for the soon to be 83-year-old. A doting aide checks to see if her white-haired boss needs anything. Country singing star Porter Wagoner stops in to wish him well.
Monroe graciously receives them with a measured, thoughtful drawl. His face is craggy but noble, with fierce blue eyes gazing out from under an ivory cowboy hat. He wears a gray pin-striped suit and star-spangled necktie. A rhinestone ``Jesus'' glitters on his lapel.
He's a touch of Southern royalty. He is the King of Bluegrass.
A skittering style of string-band music derived from the Anglo-American musical traditions of rural Appalachia, bluegrass is the homespun cornerstone of country music and a significant influence of early rock 'n' roll. Bluegrass enjoyed its heyday in the '40s, when ace mandolinist Monroe and his backing band, the Blue Grass Boys, defined and gave their name to the emerging form.
Monroe's breakneck instrumental virtuosity, high, plaintive vocal wails and heartfelt renderings of Southern-steeped sadness and salvation sounded at once innovative and antique.
``Bluegrass brings out the old tones,'' Monroe told the Baltimore Sun in 1976. ``Ancient tones.''
These days, Monroe is receiving his due as bluegrass' reigning [patriarch.] [He has been inducted into] the Country Music Hall Of Fame; his work has been dissected by countless academes; his vast back catalog has been compiled in reissues and boxed sets; and his prodigious career is the centerpiece of a new documentary film, ``High Lonesome: The Story Of Bluegrass Music,'' currently making the rounds of arty movie houses across the nation.
William Smith Monroe was born Sept. 13, 1911 on a farm near Rosine, Ky., the youngest of eight children. The family was innately musical and encouraged young Bill.
``My mother, she could play fiddle, she was a good dancer, she could sing,'' Monroe remembers in a quiet moment backstage at the Ryman. Her brother, Pendleton Vandiver, was also a fiddler and allowed Bill to accompany him on guitar at square dances. The teenage Monroe lived with Vandiver in a two-room shack after both his parents died; he eventually wrote one of his most popular songs, ``Uncle Pen,'' in tribute.
Monroe eventually settled on mandolin, a flat-backed instrument popular around the turn of the century for its diminutive, child-appropriate size. ``One of my brothers, he played the fiddle, Birch Monroe,'' Bill Monroe explains. ``And Charlie Monroe played the guitar. So I had to come up with some other instrument. I picked up the mandolin, and I'm glad that I did.''
Monroe's unusual style of playing - with an amazing speed, fiery aggression and impeccable timing - would become his hallmark.
In 1929, Monroe joined his older brothers, Birch and Charlie, in Whiting, Ind., where all three worked in oil refineries. They toiled by day but moonlighted as square dancers for a touring road company promoted by Chicago radio station, WLS's National Barn Dance.
In 1934, Bill and Charlie Monroe debuted as the singing Monroe Brothers on KFNF radio in Shenandoah, Iowa. After a string of successful radio gigs and performances across the country, the duo was signed to Victor Records. Their 1936 recording of the sacred song ``What Would You Give In Exchange'' became a quick hit, but the brothers split acrimoniously two years later. Monroe is still noticeably irritated when he describes how Charlie quit without finishing a North Carolina tour.
``I said, `That ain't the right way to do it,' '' an agitated Monroe remembers. ``I said, `If you've got three months booked up here, you're supposed to play them dates and then leave.' I says, `That ain't the way to treat people.' ''
Charlie Monroe's abrupt departure left Bill Monroe free to act on his vision of an explosive string band unlike any other. He immediately assembled a group of like-minded players.
``The first bluegrass man I heard was from the state of Alabama,'' Monroe recalls, leaning back in his chair and absently stroking a silvery mutton-chop sideburn. ``He was from Cullman, Ala., his name was Cleo Davis,'' a guitarist and singer. ``Then I hear Fiddlin' Art Wooten, he's from North Carolina. And, I believe, a man by the name of Cousin Wilbur, he played bass for me. There was just four of us in the group.''
Monroe dubbed his new band the Blue Grass Boys. ``It let people know that you're from the state of Kentucky, that's where it comes from,'' he explains. ``Kentucky's called the Bluegrass State. I was from Kentucky, so I thought that would be a good name to use.''
After months of daily practice in an abandoned shack behind a gas station in Greenville, N.C., Monroe and his Boys trekked to Nashville to audition for a popular weekly radio show called the Grand Ole Opry. Monroe still recalls the audition: ``I played some good numbers there that I thought they would like for me to do, numbers like `Mule Skinner Blues,' `Footprints In The Snow.' There were just three (auditioners) there,'' including George D. Hay, an Opry founder, ``and they voted for me to have the job.''
Nashville had never heard anything as fast and furious as Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys.
``The first night I went on the Grand Ole Opry, everybody on that stage was circled all the way around me. They just stood right there to hear me play and sing and watch our show.
``And the first time I sung the `Mule Skinner' there,'' he adds proudly, ``I got three encores for singing it.''
Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys - whose lineup was ever-changing, then and now - recorded briefly for the Bluebird label as the 1940s dawned. But they were best known for Monroe's traveling tent shows, a wildly popular road show of music and more. ``I had a baseball team that traveled with me,'' Monroe remembers fondly, the beginnings of a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. ``We'd put the show on, and then we'd have a baseball game. If it was Saturday or Sunday, it'd really draw people out.''
In 1945, Monroe signed with Columbia Records and recorded for them until 1949. During that period, Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys - singer/guitarist Lester Flatt and young banjo player Earl Scruggs (who would later gain great acclaim as Flatt & Scruggs), fiddler Chubby Wise and bassist Howard Watts, a k a Cedric Rainwater - would craft what are considered the seminal recordings of bluegrass.
Experimenting with swing-blues rhythms, innovative syncopations, complex arrangements and unconventional extended soloing from each instrumentalist, Monroe and company blazed the way for future generations of forward-thinking musicians. Elvis Presley recorded a hot rockabilly rendition of Monroe's ``Blue Moon Of Kentucky'' in 1954; a few years later Norfolk's own Gene Vincent gave Monroe's ``Rocky Road Blues'' a revved-up revamp. Contemporary artists from Dwight Yoakam to Kentucky Headhunters still perform Monroe gems.
``They sold records out of it,'' Monroe says of the early rockers who put their twist on his tunes, ``so I give them credit for doing that.''
The newly renovated Ryman Auditorium is an impressive building, part tabernacle, with its arched windows and rows of carved wood pews, part commercial variety theatre, with its gigantic stage backdrop advertising Martha White baking products. Built in 1892 by riverboat captain Thomas Ryman to host religious revivals, the Ryman soon became known as a first-rate performance hall thanks to its exceptional acoustics. Over the years Enrico Caruso, John Philip Sousa, Isadora Duncan, Charlie Chaplin, W.C. Fields, Martha Graham, Gene Autry and Katharine Hepburn have graced the stage.
Bill Monroe is no stranger to the Ryman, home of the Grand Ole Opry from 1943 to 1974. It is a special place for him to play, he says, and on this night, he is especially pleased to be headlining a bill with his longtime friend and fellow bluegrass veteran Ralph Stanley.
The crowd is genuinely appreciative of a rousing set by Stanley, who must sing and pick his banjo from a chair because of a leg injury, but is obviously eager for the main attraction. Excited applause and cheers erupt every time Monroe's name is mentioned by the Ryman emcee. The audience - conservatively suited professionals, folksy folks in overalls, urban cowboy types and twentysomethings in combat boots - practically detonates when Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys take the stage.
Gone is the stiff reserve Monroe displayed in his dressing room. With astonishing dexterity, he reels off spot-on, lightning-fire picking through an exhilarating clutch of Monroe classics: His waltzing ``Blue Moon Of Kentucky,'' which he transforms into a brisk sing-along; crowd-pleasing ``Uncle Pen'' and ``Mule Skinner Blues''; ``Footprints In The Snow,'' a No. 5 hit on Billboard's 1946 ``folk'' chart; the sacred ``I'm Working On A Building.''
He expertly works his nasal tenor, only slightly tarnished by the years, stopping between songs to take requests, give thanks or issue anecdotes.
``Fifty-five years on the Grand Ole Opry and we were late only three times,'' he boasts, prodding the crowd to more uproarious applause.
Midway through his performance, Monroe informs the audience that he has a surprise guest. He scans the hall, then invites Porter Wagoner to join him onstage. Wagoner, himself a much-loved Grand Ole Opry regular perhaps best known for his duet work with the young Dolly Parton, bounds up onto the stage to sing at the side of the bluegrass legend.
Other assorted performers are invited to sing and play with Monroe, including his grandson Jimbo and the entire Ralph Stanley entourage. The crowd eats it up, clapping along with the music and offering ovation after ovation. By show's end, Monroe is visibly exhausted but moved. He doffs his hat, then moves to the front of the stage to glad hand an admiring throng of fans. He is smiling.
Bill Monroe is Kentucky's finest cultural treasure, an honor he takes quite seriously. ``(Kentuckians are) mighty proud of what bluegrass has come from that state,'' he says in his dressing room. ``They had a lot of old-time fiddle playing, stuff like that, you know, but a lot of the fiddle players, they got to where they didn't want to go out on the road and play for the people. I like it.''
He performs at least 135 days a year, records for MCA (formerly Decca, his label home since 1950) and continues regular gigs on the Grand Ole Opry and at his annual Bean Blossom Festival, a bluegrass event he founded decades ago in Bean Blossom, Ind.
Kentucky is so proud of its native son that in 1988 ``Blue Moon Of Kentucky'' replaced Stephen Foster's ``My Old Kentucky Home'' as the state's song.
Beside his obvious loyalty to his home turf, Monroe is fiercely patriotic. ``I've worked for the last four presidents,'' he says, straightening in his chair. ``They would all call Nashville, Tennessee, and ask could I be on a show with them or help them out. I never turned them down, I always played for them.
``I started out with Jimmy Carter, I played two or three days for him up there at the White House, right there on the lawn. Then I played for Ronald Reagan, then George Bush and then President Clinton. He hadn't been (at the White House) three or four days 'til he called Nashville and wanted me to come up there and play for him. I'm glad that he did.
``Bluegrass means a lot to them. Here's what they say when we talk, me and the presidents, that they're so proud of the bluegrass music because it belongs to America. The presidents always tell Bill Monroe that bluegrass belongs to America.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos by Ed Rode
Bill Monroe, father of Bluegrass
B/W photo
Bill Monroe performs Sunday at 5p.m. at Town Point Park at the
Bluegrass Festival and Bar-B-Q Burn-off.
by CNB