# Music by Genre > Old-Time, Roots, Early Country, Cajun, Tex-Mex >  Pre-Monroe mandolin in American old-time

## PhilGE

Just saw *this thread* over at rec.music.country.old-time and thought it might stir up a bit more conversation about origins of/influences on bluegrass.

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## laddy jota

Well, if you are talking about the original form of music called Bluegrass, in my opinion the biggest influence was the Monroe Brothers. There was really a short leap. Many of the songs were even the same. Just add Stringbean on banjo and you have early Bluegrass. If you are talking about influences on modern Bluegrass, then I would say the Beatles and Beyonce.

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## allenhopkins

I think you have to distinguish between early mandolin players who played pre-bluegrass old-time music, and the influences on Bill Monroe himself.  To hear Monroe talk, his biggest influences were his uncle Pendleton Vandiver, who was a dance fiddler, and the African-American guitarist and fiddler Arnold Schultz.  Monroe worked with both of them as a boy, and you can hear in his music both the old-time fiddling of "Uncle Pen," and the "blue" notes he may have picked up from Schultz.  When Monroe went into "show biz" with his brother Charlie in Chicago, there were mandolin players there to whom he might have listened, many of whom played in "brother duets" like the Monroe Brothers. Most of their playing was more lilting and melodic (listen to Bill Bolick with the Blue Sky Boys), without the drive Monroe provided in his early work with Charlie, and carried on when he started his own band, the Blue Grass Boys.  Listen to some of his pre-Flatt, Scruggs and Wise recordings, and you can hear how he liked faster tempos, blues-sounding improvisations, and driving, exciting music.  One of the postings on the other thread mentions the Prairie Ramblers, who with Patsy Montana also worked out of WLS in Chicago, and their mandolinist/mandolist "Chick" Hurt may well have also influenced Monroe.  And of course the mid-'40's addition of Scruggs' "hot" banjo just reinforced and underscored Monroe's own preferences.

Undoubtedly there were old-timey mandolinists before Monroe.  I haven't listened to most of the ones listed on the other thread, but I have no trouble taking Monroe at his word, that he was seeking a synthesis of old-time music and blues, based on working with two musicians he considered his main influences.  A showman with a big, healthy ego, he also found that the "hot" string band music he played, and which got called "bluegrass," attracted audiences, gave him a unique place in the crowded post-war country pantheon, and became his jealously guarded "patented" style.  Only later did he accept that he couldn't keep others from copying it, and that this sincere form of flattery cemented his place as an influential innovator.

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DataNick, 

Jim Nollman

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## Mike Bunting

Well put.

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allenhopkins

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## Fred Keller

It's difficult to draw clear lines from predecessors to Bill, partly because Bill's testimony can be suspect.  According to Mike Compton, Bill stated more than once that he never actually saw blues acts (aside from playing with Arnold Schultz) nor took any direction from black players.  Mike--to put it mildly--has his doubts about Bill's memory (or veracity).

Early mandolin acts that Bill is known to have admired and patterned his playing after include Mac and Bob (samples at Juneberry's site) who were, I recently learned, the first to record the mandolin/guitar duet format, as well as the Prairie Ramblers and the Callahan Bros.

I also think that there's a fair amount of influence from the blues/jug band banjo-mandolin material.  There's no direct evidence but if you listen to tunes like Hokum Blues or Vicksburg Stomp you can start to see where the drive and power and even phrasing of Bill's mando style comes from.  

In that thread you linked to one of the posters said that before Bill, old time mandolin was "rudimentary" or something to that effect.  I'm not sure I agree.  There were a fair number of sophisticated musicians playing mandolin (or banjo-mandolin) but they weren't necessarily playing Southern Appalachian fiddle-tune-style oldtime.

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## Ken Berner

It would be interesting to hear some of Bill's mandolin-playing before his music was declared to be "bluegrass". OR was bluegrass born the minute he hit the stage for his first performance?

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## Fred Keller

> It would be interesting to hear some of Bill's mandolin-playing before his music was declared to be "bluegrass". OR was bluegrass born the minute he hit the stage for his first performance?


His early duet work with Charlie is readily accessible and clearly different from his "bluegrass" mandolin stuff.  That material, if you haven't heard it before, sounds a lot like the Blue Sky boys or the Delmore Brothers.  I'm sure a Monroe Brothers disc is still available for sale.

Tough to say when bluegrass was born since it was always under construction and redevelopment during Bill's career.  He went through all kinds of different banjo styles (Stringbean, to Scruggs, to Bill Keith), fiddlers galore, and even had an accordion (Sally Forrester) for a while.  When BG was born has been a matter of debate on any number of threads here at the Cafe and is ultimately unanswerable, IMHO.  

On top of that, it's clear that Bill's own mando style changed over time depending on who was in his band, his age, and his emotional situation at the time.  As far as I know, the only mandolin work Bill recorded before bluegrass was with The Monroe Brothers in the 30's.

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## Fretbear

WSM's ferocious pre-bluegrass mandolin playing recorded with his brother Charlie was unprecedented in country music or any music for that matter, with the possible exception of Dave Apollon. It is nonsense that he never listened to or heard blues; he recorded Mississippi blues singer Jimmy Rodgers' tunes and the New Orleans ragtime feel is plainly evident in his 1946 recordings with Flatt, Scruggs, Watts & Wise.

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## earthsave

All of those pre-1946 recordings are readily available.  In my mind and opinion, when Earl joined the band the bluegrass style was baselined on tape.  Bill, Lester, Chubby, Earl, and Howard.

Don Reno, if he had not enlisted in the service, may have made the sound.  I do not think he was recorded prior to Earl.  Both Don and Earl played with the Morris Brothers prior to joining Bill.

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## Mike Bunting

> 1938 recordings with flatt, scruggs, rainwater & wise.


1945.

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## swampstomper

> His early duet work with Charlie is readily accessible and clearly different from his "bluegrass" mandolin stuff.  That material, if you haven't heard it before, sounds a lot like the Blue Sky boys or the Delmore Brothers.  I'm sure a Monroe Brothers disc is still available for sale.


Well, yes the material is all available on CD, but as I hear it, it's a radical departure from the other mandolinists (and guitarists!) of the time -- Kyle & Harty, Blue Sky Boys etc. Listen to "Feast Here Tonight", "Watermelon on the Vine", or "My Saviour's Train" among many others and tell me if you could possibly mistake it for pre-Monroe Brothers. Sure Mon's style changed a lot over the years, but from the beginning he was more agressive and experimental. Charlie Monroe is sometimes overlooked, but his powerful backup and signature runs propelled that duet like no other. According to contemporary accounts the effect was electric, the Monroes were wildly popular in their touring area (especially the Carolinas).

The discussion about "what and when is BG" is not the point of this thread so let's leave that one out here!

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## allenhopkins

Concur with the above.  The "brother duet" mandolinists (other than Monroe) tended to play lilting lines that framed the harmony vocals.  Monroe, in his duet with his brother, played faster tunes, sounding much more aggressive, at least to my ears.  I don't hear as many "blue notes" in the Monroe Brothers music as I do in Bill's own band, but of course you had *two* "big healthy egos," so whatever Bill and Charlie did had to included consensus if not compromise.  In the Blue Grass Boys, you played it Bill's way.

I wonder about Chick Hurt's influence, though.  The Prairie Ramblers were a pretty hot band.  Guess I should find some recordings and see if I can hear a connection.

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## Jon Hall

Paul Buskirk was a mandolin virtuso pre-dating bluegrass. It's probably Paul playing on the Callhan Bro. recordings. Paul was a mando mentor to Red Rector. 

Paul died in 2002 but began playing mandolin with The Buskirk Family Band in about 1929 -30. When he was a kid he played with Uncle Dave Macon on occasion

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## earthsave

> 1945.


1946

Who typed in 1938?  Couldnt find your quote?

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## Fred Keller

I believe it was Fretbear's post, since edited to correct the typo.

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## laddy jota

Somebody dubbed the music of Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys as "Bluegrass Music" in around 1946, I think. But I think the the BG Boys were a bluegrass band the first time they recorded. That was before '46. Some new bands specialize is something called Clawgrass, in which the pre-Scruggs b@*%o style, reminiscent of Stringbean is used. To me, that style works well with bluegrass. Nobody mentioned that Maybelle Carter's guitar style via Charlie Monroe stuck with bluegrass music til this very day, with enhancements of course. The bluegrass fiddling is generally considered to have been influenced by the Irish immigrant fiddlers via American old-time string bands (which were not called "old-time" at the time).The bass player is often overlooked in early bluegrass. The Monroe Brothers and other brother acts did not use bass players. There was a definite swing influence in the BG Boys bass lines. That part of the sound has been lost over the years. Too bad. The swinging bass and hot licks of course went electrified and became Rock 'n Roll (with African American influences also). Rock 'n Roll became Rock which became Heavy Metal and Lite Rock. The latter became Pop. Pop influenced Bluegrass. That gave us Popgrass, which many people still refer to as "Bluegrass". I think it is because Popgrass sounds too much like an alternative fuel source. Too bad nobody plays fusion anymore.

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## earthsave

I think Ralph Rinzler got the credit for popularizing the term Bluegrass music, when he did an article in Sing OUT! on Monroe in 1963 "The DADDY of Bluegrass music.  

According to The Bluegrass Reader, the term started getting used in the 50's to describe bands that sounded like Monroe.

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## Mike Bunting

> 1946
> Who typed in 1938? Couldnt find your quote?
> _





> Last edited by Fretbear; 11-24-2008 at 10:30 AM.


It was edited this morning. You sure it was '46, not '45? Aren't I getting picky these days?   :Wink:

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## allenhopkins

> Somebody dubbed the music of Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys as "Bluegrass Music" in around 1946, I think. But I think the the BG Boys were a bluegrass band the first time they recorded.


Monroe used the term "Blue Grass" (always two words) in the title of many of his compositions.  I think the earliest recording was _Blue Grass Special_ in February 1945, with the pre-Flatt & Scruggs lineup of Chubby Wise, Dave "Stringbean" Akeman, and Wilene "Sally Ann" Forrester on accordion.  He titled early LP recordings _Knee Deep In Blue Grass_ (1957), _Mr. Blue Grass_ (1960), and _Blue Grass Ramble_ (1961).  The use of these titles, whether picked by him or by Decca Records, show that Monroe's music was being marketed as "blue grass" or "bluegrass."

Alan Lomax's 1959 _Esquire_ article, _Bluegrass Underground: Folk Music With Overdrive_ is generally credited with being the first widespread use of the term "bluegrass" to describe the music of Monroe and his "imitators," such as Flatt & Scruggs, Stanley Brothers, Reno & Smiley, Osborne Brothers, Lonesome Pine Fiddlers, etc. etc.  (Monroe saw them as imitators, though others saw them as developing in parallel with the sound established by Monroe's mid-'40's version of the Blue Grass Boys.)

In any case, by the mid to late 1950's, Monroe's style of country music had been labeled "bluegrass," and Monroe gradually came to accept his role as the founder of a new kind of music that many musicians played -- rather than a beleaguered innovator plagiarized by imitators.  I've often wondered what we'd be playing if Monroe had given his band a name other than "Blue Grass Boys."  What if he'd called them the "Kentucky Hot Shots"?  Would we be playing "hotshot music"?

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## PhilGE

So, any more information about pre-Monroe mandolin music that would've influenced Monroe? Let's try and stick to that topic.

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## earthsave

Yep, 1946.  Septemberish.

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## mando-tech

...don't believe that the term 'bluegrass' was used to describe a genre of music until the 1960s !

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## allenhopkins

> ...don't believe that the term 'bluegrass' was used to describe a genre of music until the 1960s !


See my Post #19 above -- and, you know this is a ten-year-old thread, right?

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## Mandoplumb

I know this is a 10 year old thread and I did read post 19 but I believe each of those mentioned was specific to the band " blue Grass Boys" and not to a bluegrass genre. I used to go with my dad to play music in the 60's, he was playing a lot of Monroe and Reno as well as old mountain songs all with a roll on banjo. I never heard it called bluegrass music until years later. It was hillbilly music.

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## allenhopkins

Whether we might consider Ezra "Ted" Hawkins as an "influence" on Bill Monroe is problematical, since he appears to have played around the time that Monroe was already performing (early 1930's).  However, his work at the Skillet Lickers' last session in 1934 was surely aggressive and, while clearly old-timey rather than "pre-bluegrass," not unlike Monroe's mandolin of the same period:

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## David Lewis

It seems to me that theres a jump when two things happen: bill develops the chop, and Scruggs joins the blue grass boys a. This is not to disparage nor diminish Lester flatt, bill Keith or the rest of them, but those at least to me are the major defining features. 

If we could work out where that chop came from (and were  guitarists doing that yet?) we might be able to find out who the influences were.

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Jess L.

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## Jess L.

> ... If we could work out *where that chop came from* (and *were guitarists doing that yet?)* we might be able to find out who the influences were.


Good point. 

I don't know the answer, but wasn't there a *Dixieland-jazz banjo* equivalent of the chop chord in the *1920s* or so?  

FWIW, I found the following mandolin-related quote at (of all the unlikely places) TheSession,  :Disbelief:  in a discussion about mandolin chop chords: 

_"Fifth interval tuning was what made the tenor banjo so useful in dixieland jazz - its harsh chords could easily cut through a front row of trumpets saxes and clarinets. 

"The mandolin's chords have the same characteristics."_
Of course, that's not exactly a bluegrass website  :Whistling:  being quoted there, so who knows... that's just what turned up in 20 seconds of Googling. Other writers at that site then proceeded to get into interesting technicalities of exactly which type of banjo was used - "plectrum banjo" vs the shorter scale "tenor banjo" - but I'd say that whichever it was, it could have been an influential factor in Bill Monroe's decisions as to how to play that mandolin. 

As to when *guitars* got in on the action, I have no idea but wasn't Django Reinhardt using something similar in the 1930s? I know almost zero about jazz history though... I would presume/guess that, for the larger louder jazz ensembles with all those noisy horns etc, guitars wouldn't have stood a chance of being heard without some sort of electric pickup, if that helps to date the adoption of guitars over banjos...  :Confused:  

Are there any jazz experts reading this thread who can provide a timeline to help answer the other poster's question about when *guitars* started doing the equivalent of *chop chords?*  :Smile:  


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(I suppose it's likely that this has already been discussed and answered sometime/somewhere else in the history of the internet,  :Wink:  but I am not aware of where those answers are. Enlightenment welcome.)  :Smile:

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David Lewis

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## David Lewis

> Good point. 
> 
> I don't know the answer, but wasn't there a *Dixieland-jazz banjo* equivalent of the chop chord in the *1920s* or so?  
> 
> FWIW, I found the following mandolin-related quote at (of all the unlikely places) TheSession,  in a discussion about mandolin chop chords: 
> 
> _"Fifth interval tuning was what made the tenor banjo so useful in dixieland jazz - its harsh chords could easily cut through a front row of trumpets saxes and clarinets. 
> 
> "The mandolin's chords have the same characteristics."_
> ...



Django used the 'pomp', which might be where Bill got it from, actually. But you're right about the banjo. It might have been a tenor banjo technique too...

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Jess L.

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## Charles E.

I doubt very much that Bill got the "chop" from listening to Django! Bill did it his own way.
If you go back and listen to the Monroe Brothers (on the Bluebird label) you can hear the beginnings of the chop. Bill and Charley were playing fast and furious with bill playing a lot of lead. But you can hear the "chop" in short spurts.

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David Lewis

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## David Lewis

> I doubt very much that Bill got the "chop" from listening to Django! Bill did it his own way.
> If you go back and listen to the Monroe Brothers (on the Bluebird label) you can hear the beginnings of the chop. Bill and Charley were playing fast and furious with bill playing a lot of lead. But you can hear the "chop" in short spurts.


I did say 'might'.. I don't know. And the chop develops over years. It may be that Bill liked snare drums.... And playing fast would lead to a chop - as you say - jangle jangle strumming would mess up a duo pretty bad. So it's possible that it's ALL Bill, no fill from anywhere else... 

It's a fascinating conundrum.

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## allenhopkins

> ...Bill did it his own way.  If you go back and listen to the Monroe Brothers (on the Bluebird label) you can hear the beginnings of the chop. Bill and Charley were playing fast and furious with bill playing a lot of lead. But you can hear the "chop" in short spurts.


Just listened to five or six up-tempo Monroe Brothers cuts on YouTube, and have to say I don't hear anything that sounds like an off-beat mandolin "chop."  I hear a continuous mandolin figure behind the vocals, not following the melody, but providing a stream of notes that pushes the tune along.  There are a few little "choppy" accents at the end of lines, but nothing like the metronomic "chop" with which we're familiar.

Here's _Katy Hill,_ recorded by Monroe with the Blue Grass Boys in 1940 (pre-Flatt, Scruggs _et.al._), a really up-tempo Tommy Magness fiddle show-off.  I detect no "chop" at all, and the mandolin's either not being played, or mixed so far back it hardly contributes:



And here's _Goodbye Old Pal,_ recorded in 1945, again pre-Flatt & Scruggs, Dave "Stringbean" Akeman on banjo, Chubby Wise on fiddle, "Tex" Willis on guitar.  I hear what may be the beginnings of a "chop," mixed pretty far back, so this could be when Monroe was developing that approach.  What I mainly hear is an "up-and-down" rhythmic strum, not the heavy downstroke on the offbeat.



My theory, for what it's worth (2¢?) is that as Monroe added stronger and stronger lead instruments to the Blue Grass Boys, especially Scruggs' banjo -- and as he found himself with a "revolving door" band in the '50's, with musicians coming and going, often to start their own bands -- he became more concerned with controlling the tempo in performance.  His quoted compliments about sidemen (when he offered them) often said that So-and-So had "good _time,"_ by which he meant ability to keep the rhythm and follow Monroe's lead.  The times I saw the Blue Grass Boys in performance with lesser-known band members, I could sense Monroe bearing down hard on the "chop" to keep the band together.

This is just a personal perspective, but it might be instructive (or not) to listen to a few dozen Blue Grass Boys recordings from the '40's, and determine at what point Monroe's "chop" became more prominent.  I'm not volunteering, though.

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Charles E., 

Jess L.

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