The Change That I See in Bluegrass Over The Past 20 Years.

[ralph johansson]

This is instructive about Bluegrass. Most of the recordings come out of Nashville. Many of the big stars live there or go there to record. The producers are determined to make money. Money is made by creating a new sound. A new sound is usually created by mixing existing styles. The producers are probably far more the driving force for change than the musicians. Not much money is made by sticking to the same old sounds already recorded by someone else. The original music may be great, but sticking to it exclusively is why Bluegrass musicians can expect to earn tens of dollars.

The evolving Country music sound has been a huge money maker for years. Bill Monroe was recorded in the early '50s in Nashville with a Country style sound insisted on by a couple of producers. The Country rhythm is now predominant in a lot of Bluegrass. Jazz and Swing ideas are the latest additions, brought in mostly by players who have some formal music education, and strongly encouraged by record producers who would like to make money. The recordings we listen to have a huge influence on the sound we identify with. Always have.

I think the biggest change is the acceptance and influence of the formally educated musicians. Bluegrass has a reputation for many of the old timers excluding trained musicians. If you read music, they didn't want you playing with them. That old view is disappearing rapidly and, some would say, the feel of the old music is disappearing along with it.

To use Dickey's analysis, Bluegrass music is alive and well. It's in Nashville, and it's called Bluegrass. It rarely sounds like Bluegrass, just as Country music rarely sounds like Southern Rock. Thankfully, there are old timers still around in various places, as well as a (very) few young folks, who have a passion to keep the original sounds alive, without the desire to make a living doing it.

BG was not the brainchild of a producer, it was created by touring musicians. The contributions of the producers were mainly choice of material, and minor additions in instrumentation, such as drums and session musicians. There was a snare drum on many F&S recordings, but never on live ones.

The infamous Monroe electric sessions took place in March and April of 1951. There was one or two electric guitars, a barely audible drummer, electric organ on two gospel numbers, but no steel guitar. Between the two there was one session with Bluegrass instrumentation. One of several motives for this was the plans to issue an album of songs associated with Jimmie Rodgers. An album in those days consisted of four 78 rpm singles (which later became 2 EP´s and, still later, a 10" LP.). And 8 songs were recorded, 3 of them at the BG session mentioned above. Apparently the remaining 5 numbers called for a different setup.

Those sessions were a disaster, mainly because Monroe had no feel for the material. E.g., Peach Picking Time stayed in the can for 13 years, some of the numbers were never issued by Decca/MCA. Miraculously, the company didn't drop him; seems he was kept on for sentimental or symbolic reasons. Still, on a number of of occasions the producers "suggested" songs that weren't suited for Monroe's voice or for BG treatment, like Four Walls, and A Fallen Star. I don't believe Monroe ever performed Danny Boy on stage, but it had beautiful guitar work by Bennie Williams.

The odd, and sad, thing, is that Decca never really understood Monroe's potential on the "folk" market in the 60's. They didn't know how to market Bluegrass Ramble, and, with possibly his best band after the Columbia years, they cut only one duet with Monroe+Peter Rowan.

I believe you're overlooking the significance of the smaller labels, like County, CMH (H for Heritage!), Rounder, Sugar Hill, Rebel, and Gusto. The Osborne Brothers possibly had the most commercially appealing sound of the older acts, yet they were dropped in 1975 (as was Lester Flatt from RCA). They went to CMH, and according to a friend of mine, who knew Bobby O, sold better on that label.

[ralph johansson]

The big change that I see is that basically anything now can be called bluegrass if the players include a banjo and a mandolin. The traditional bluegrass style of rhythm is no longer required.

The big change is in the use of the word. as illustrated by the thread on "modern bluegrass" or a recent item in Bluegrass Today about Swedish singer Sofia Talvik.What's the connection? Drive, energy, bluesfeeling. groove?

[JeffD]

I like the description "old Kentucky blues" from the Grand Ole Opry Song, on the album May the Circle be Unbroken.

There'll be guitars and fiddles, Earl Scruggs and his banjo too
Bill Monroe singin' out them old Kentucky blues
Ernest Tubb's number "Two Wrongs Won't Make a Right"
At the Grand Ole Opry ev'ry Saturday night

[Tom Haywood]

The big change is in the use of the word. as illustrated by the thread on "modern bluegrass" or a recent item in Bluegrass Today about Swedish singer Sofia Talvik.What's the connection? Drive, energy, bluesfeeling. groove?

The word "Bluegrass" was used and is still used generally as the name of a genre. Obviously, the genre has changed over time, and it will continue to change. With a lot of the current music, the only connection I can hear to the genre is the sound generated by using banjos and mandolins. Drive and energy don't equate with the traditional bluegrass rhythms. I think, like rock and roll, that a genre is fundamentally defined by it's rhythms.

[ralph johansson]

The big change that I see is that basically anything now can be called bluegrass if the players include a banjo and a mandolin. The traditional bluegrass style of rhythm is no longer required.

To me it seems that the Bluegrass label is used to a lot of music out of pure ignorance or laziness. E.g., check the comments to YT a video of the Polish group Powergrass doing Blue Night. No fiddle, no banjo, in fact nothing to connect it with the BG tradition. It's competently played (although the singing is marred by mannerisms that all but obscure the lyrics -- I hear them only because I've heard the song before), but something else altogether.

The BG label was inroduced in the 50's (no one knows who invented it) to sum up certain stylistic traits common to a number of groups. Today it is used arbitrarily for just about any kind of American string band music, check for instance the recent thread requesting examples of "modern Bluegrass" and "BG-adjacent" bands.

There's a video of one of the Punch Brothers declaring "we're not a Bluegrass band". There are many things theyr'e not: a choro band, a New Orleans jazz ensamble, etc. but the one thing they really aren't is a BG band, and that has to be pointed out. The BG label indeed is as obsolete as most of the music is. And when one label doesn't fit, people, especially critics, combine several ones. E.g., the music of the DGQ "combngnes" BG (without three finger banjo), jazz, klezmer (without Byzantine and dominant Phrygian modes, etc.) and manouche (without "la pompe"). I believe it was Darol Anger who coined the expression "new acoustic" as a way of saying; don't label us, we don't, or music does not.

[ralph johansson]

Roy Acuff had a lot of accordion on his records for a while. It sounds good to me.

And what does this have to do with Bluegrass?

[JeffD]

Yes...and kitchens!

OMG yes. The proximity of the fridge. And the coffee pot too often enough.

[FLATROCK HILL]

The BG label was inroduced in the 50's (no one knows who invented it) to sum up certain stylistic traits common to a number of groups.

Yeah, maybe know one knows who came up with the label, but I think there's a pretty strong clue where it came from in your previous post:

The Bluegrass Boys were formed in 1939 (or possibly 1938) ; they joined the Opry that same year, and made their first record for Victor in 1940.

[tmsweeney]

The Matt Flinner (who can play really good bluegrass on both mandolin and banjo) Trio did a couple of albums called "Music De'Jour" in which each member of the trio had to write one new song per day to be played that night on a certain tour they were promoting. They took the best of it and made a few albums, the quote on the first one was "We're not sure what to call this music, our Bluegrass friends think we are playing jazz and our Jazz friends think we are playing bluegrass." or something like that.
I will agree even to this day Bluegrass can have "cornball or simple bucolic" associations, in a way that is part of the charm or appeal, but anyone who plays or attempts to play it knows its more complex than that, and isn't just one road but many roads to a common destination.