Over the next five decades, Bill Monroe led a band through which scores of talented musicians served their apprenticeship.
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In 1939, on the strength of his adaptation of Jimmie Rodgers’ “Mule Skinner Blues,” he was inducted to the Grand Ole Opry on WSM, Nashville, as a life member. Bill decided to modernize and enlarge his musical vision with a larger string ensemble, which he eventually named the Blue Grass Boys in honor of his home state. Radio, concerts, and recordings, mostly in the Carolinas, launched the duo to prominence with songs such as “What Would You Give in Exchange for Your Soul,” “Drifting Too Far From the Shore,” and “New River Train.” The brothers quarreled and split in 1938. Charlie and Bill left their day jobs in 1934 to form the Monroe Brothers, the hottest of the mandolin-guitar duets popular in that decade. A few years later, he and brothers Charlie and Birch became exhibition square dancers for the WLS Barn Dance. Soon after, he joined older siblings in the Chicago area, where he found work in the oil industry. He left school in the fifth grade, began work as a laborer at 11, and was orphaned at 17. The family loved music, and Bill proved an apt performer on mandolin, guitar, and vocals. Suffering from crossed eyes that weren’t corrected until his teens, the young man endured teasing and vision difficulties which haunted him for life. It can fairly be said that every bluegrass band on earth draws inspiration from the musical contributions of Bill Monroe.īill Monroe was the youngest of eight children born to a western Kentucky farm family in Rosine, Ohio County, not far from Owensboro. His distinctive contribution was blending these influences with an equal measure of his own passionate soul and artistic inspiration to create and evolve what would become a genre of its own, named in honor of Monroe’s band, the Blue Grass Boys. These included fiddle and bagpipe sounds imported from the British Isles, African-American blues and holiness gospel, American Great Awakening hymnody, as well as hill country dance music and the thrilling new rhythms of hot jazz.
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Bill often spoke of wanting to bring “ancient tones” into his sparklingly innovative music. Remembered as the “Father of Bluegrass Music,” Bill Monroe is better understood as a master chef or chemist, blending earlier musical elements into an exciting new form.