Classic Bluegrass

[Brian Ray]

Bluegrass (to me) can be compared to the Golden Delicious apple. It's genus can be brought back to one singular tree. (in Iowa BTW) Bluegrass, by it's purist definition is music created by Bill Monroe and his Bluegrass Boys. Period, end of an ending.'

IMO, that statement--while almost certainly to be unpopular--is correct... except maybe the apple part.... Delicious irony?

[DrEugeneStrickland]

There were stylistic components heard in Bluegrass music pre 1970 that are uncommon in most music referred to as Bluegrass these days.
Duets pitched in extremely high keys sung by men also trio vocal arrangements were not as common as they are now.
Solo vocal songs pitched high like Monroe's or in a crooning baritone type approach like Flatt,Martin,Smiley,Wiseman.
Bluegrass timing accentuated the down beat on some numbers and then the off beat on others,almost never do you hear a post 1970 band push the 1st beat harder then the 2nd in a song or tune.
Lyrical content often covered emotions other then relationships between men and women.
Instrumental fiddle music was a huge part of the pre 1970's musical landscape
Here in an incomplete list of Bluegrass bands working today( baring folks like Del,Wakefield etc who are left over from the pre 1970's Bluegrass world) who IMHO are playing "Classic Bluegrass" by my definition of it;
Davis Davis
David Peterson
Karl Shiflett
Danny Paisley
I would love to hear other suggestions for this list.

[Mandolin Mick]

Hey Dr.!

I think that David Davis is an excellent example of somebody today with that "classic" Bluegrass sound! I saw him and the Warrior River Boys do "In the Pines" so close to Monroe/Martin at Bean Blossom that you couldn't tell the difference!

[Mandolin Mick]

Mel Goins' Windy Mountain has the sound, but I understand if somebody would say that Goins is one of the fathers so they wouldn't count. I just like his current band, which except for him, is all younger guys.

[JeffD]

If there's one thing I can't stand, it's intolerance. That's why I carry a solar powered Taser™ in my case

[DrEugeneStrickland]

It seems that none of the younger bands(20's-40's) are interested in capturing the flavor of the pre 1970's Classic band sounds... unless of course they get a job playing with a Larry Sparks or Melvin Goins or any of the groups I previously listed,this is very sad IMHO

[JeffD]

I kind of like the moniker "classic bluegrass". It makes a useful distinction in language that corresponds to a real distinction in music. Not everyone would agree, perhaps, at the borders, but for the most part there is little ambiguity in the phrase.

[DrEugeneStrickland]

I think most people know it when they hear it
unless you are listening to Doyle Lawson who's music wears a traditional suit but has little in common with Classic Bluegrass anymore...that said he always has a great band and is a great showman.

[JeffD]

Wish someone would tell me what blue grass actually is. ...no one has ever defined what it is in musical terms.

It gets kind of dicey. We all know what a mandolin is, but for every characteristic of a mandolin we can identify instruments that lack that feature and we would still call them mandolins. 8 strings, except or the ten string ones, double courses, except for the single course ones, tuned in fifths, except for the cross tuned ones, played with a pick, except for the finger picked ones, small, except for the larger ones, etc.

[JeffD]

There are only two kinds of music: dance music, and art music (somewhat facetiously)

body music, and mind music.

[catmandu2]

as perfectly exemplified by:

"possum up a gum stump"

and

"all the things you could be by now if schlomo's wife was your mother"

[Mandolin Mick]

Bluegrass or "it ain't Bluegrass" ...

[JeffD]

It takes some getting used to--when 99% of people have intense disdain for the music we love. But since the gulf of aesthetic preference is vast, I don't bother trying to urge people to understand. I used to be an active proselytizer of riding bicycles, environmentalism, and many alternative lifestyle issues, and became accustomed to resistance and opposition over these matters. An affinity for avant garde jazz is even harder to convey.

The relative acceptance by the general public can be a feature of the music, in a way. There are many things we may like because of their obscurity - or at least their obscurity is one of the attractive features. And I don't mean that it sounds different. I mean that we can sometimes enjoy our minority status as a fan. It can be almost fun to be misunderstood. To use our minority tastes in music and art as a personal defining characteristic.

Perhaps at those moments we seek not to be understood, but to be accepted. Or more strongly, we want a type of acceptance that doesn't require understanding. We want to belong without being compelled to comply.

I need a bourbon.

[catmandu2]

Yeah, well...it would have been nice to have a date to go to jazz concerts with...instead of all the time my jazz loving buddies...who mostly had heavy beards...

I'm watching the sun begin to set as I speak...well, write...seems to be going down a few hours early here this evening

[Mandolin Mick]

I'm proud to be an aberrational musician!!!

[Crabgrass]

Just listened to about 15 different versions of "In the Pines."

The Sublime
Bill Monroe & His Bluegrass Boys. Just couldn't be more perfect.
Stanley Brothers. Outstanding vocal harmonies.

The Good
David Davis. VERY nice copy of BM's version. But of course, unless you add in something extry, the palm has to go to the original.
Peter Rowan and the Tony Rice Unit. Two mandos, very nice, what can I say.
Lori Lee-Ray. Nice instrumentals but the whole thing felt a bit flat to me.

Country-fried Folk
Louvin Brothers. Another great "sort of traditional" version, but drums and electric kinda ruined it for me.
Marty Stuart and the Fab Superlatives. Good Country Rock version.
Windy Mountain. Maybe it's the stand-up bass, but sounded a little "country" to me.
Joan Baez. If I was lookin' for folk I might have liked this...

The Interesting
Atkinson Family. The strong female lead vocal and lackluster vocal harmonies in the chorus exempt this one from any claim to tradition I guess, but the girl has a voice on her, and the song gave me chills, twice. Plus I'm a sucker for slide guitar.
Leadbelly. Great. Just not bluegrass.

The Ridiculous
Dolly Parton. I love her but thought she phoned this one in.
Pernell Roberts. The "Oklahoma" version. Good for a giggle.
Jerry Reed. The Jazzy version. Oy vey.
Nirvana. I like(d) Nirvana but feel they should be heavily fined for this song.

In addition to it's other perfections, Monroe's rendition was the only one that got my foot tapping. All of the other "traditional" versions of the song sounded "draggy" to me.

I'm sure a lot of my observations are wrong, but this was interesting for me.

[sgarrity]

This just never gets old to some of you, does it?

Time to work on gettin' Blue Grass Breakdown up to Monroe's speed!

[LastMohican]

This just never gets old to some of you, does it?

Time to work on gettin' Blue Grass Breakdown up to Monroe's speed!

I've jumped into a lot of stuff here but this one seems like a classic "non-issue".

There are superb traditional acts doing Monroe and Stanely et al almost as good as Monroe and Stanley did. Audie Blaylock immediately comes to mind. Was listening to his version of "You'll Find Her Name Written There" today and it damn near killed me it was so good. The tradition is safe. The tradition is preserved. Let's all get some sleep.

And then there all the other bands (some who can a rip off a "traditional" set as good as anybody) that use some form of BG instrumentation and we spend hours arguing about what label to apply to their music. Really?

My other passion is American performance cars and this is just another version of the eternal "GM/Ford/Mopar" argument that has rages now, unabated, for 3 generations.

Somebody wake me up when we get to religion or politics!

By the way: GM!

[Dave Greenspoon]

Ahh, the essential question of canon and boundaries is always a fascinating coversation for me. That's one of the reasons I geek out on ancient writings like Enoch, Jubilees, and other such stuff. In this context, I offer the following to muddy even further any sense of consensus. The issues seem to boil down to 1) Terminology (genre, subgenre, etc), and 2) Instruments.

Hillbilly: My childhood was misspent in Jacksonville, FL one of the most redneck parts of the country imaginable. Back home where sh*t-kicker country was standard, and even the boys in Skynyrd could pick, that "high-lonesome" bluegrass was often referred to as "hillbilly" music. Yet, when I think of Hillbilly music, I think of Hank Snow on the Opry. Now, listen to old Hank Snow on The Wreck of the Old 97. 6 String, fiddle, Pedal steel, and an electric bass. The first version you'll find on youtube sounds pretty downright bluegrass to me!

Progressive Bluegrass: Who'se going to argue that John Hartford's Aero-plain didn't cause of whole bunch of folks to shift gears even just a little bit? Clearly it opened up Sam Bush's ears. And at the same time, no one dares to suggest it wasn't bluegrass. But wait, there's Randy Scruggs on...ELECTRIC BASS, just like Hank Snow's band had! And Vassar...on cello!...how many years before Crooked Still?

And just the other night, I was in the room as my wife was channel surfing, and ran across The Fiddleheads on America's Got Talent. Fiddle, 6 string, mando, and electric bass (yet again, dammit!!! ). They take non-b.g. songs and give 'em the bluegrass treatment. Does that make 'em bluegrass? (And let's not even discuss the entire Pickin' On catalog!)

At the end of the day, the identity of the Pure Faith of Bluegrass can be informed by the reality of Second Temple Judaism[s]: boundaries will be pushed, purity will be challenged, the genre will continue to evolve, and bluegrass will be whatever bluegrassers (however THAT is defined!) say it is.

Having muddied the waters even more (I hope), and perhaps confounding a few convenient theories with some inconvenient observations, I think it's time to pull out some Old and In the Way...we miss you Jerry!

BTW: MOPAR or no car!

[catmandu2]

Haha!

Well, you could look at this more from the political angle...if you want to. On one hand, the OP is the equivalent of the declaration, "I like vanilla ice cream!--the only real ice cream...who's with me?!!" But OTOH, it's the necessary process of nomenclature by which means we can communicate about things. Humans identify with things they can comprehend--which is initiated by naming and labeling. It's interesting the compartmentlaization we undergo on a daily basis, yet can't seem to separate ourselves from our mind's constructions on both matters of profundity but also levels of banality. Do we imbue music with such power? And if so, is this warranted? Certainly, identification with "things" produces strong attachments--and such emotionally evocative things as music elicit powerful defenses. But in some respects, this is the best discussion to have--especially since the "answer" is nebulous. Questions without concrete answers tend to generate the most thought, IME.

I think at this point it's going to boil down to Dr Gene's POV that "there is no more" (okay, practically no more); Willie's "it's gong fast and soon will be no more"; and a more "liberal" perspective that trad BG is a recognized, respected, valued idiom practiced by many, and continues to thrive.

I can get a gig here in my town--where there are numerous BG bands--playing music as close to Monroe and Scruggs as I can (been playing FMB as a standard for many years--people love it.) and get paid doing it. I'm not getting paid improvisng on my horns--there are few venues paying up front for much of this music. Improvised jazz music is probably rarer then BG, but I'm not worrying about it "dying out." It was always an outsider music. Likewise, BG likely won't take over the world, but it will be played. Living in a college town, I've observed that there are increasing numbers of young people with knowledge of BG--some even trad bluegrass. Times change, people change. Yes, they wear sandals...but some play and sing Bill Monroe. If the future is a bunch of bluegrass hippies airing it out on some jazz standards, a little space-NOLA-funk, and then some OT and trad BG...is this so bleak? Would you prefer "paparazzi, paparazzi.." all day and night? In a Western wolrd such as we inhabit, traditional forms and representations reveal "obsolescence" at a torrid pace; no doubt we have concern for our sacred music. But BG enjoys some degree of popularity at large--because although the social milieu which produced it is marginalized in both spiirt and mind, its cultural artefact remains intact and relevant.

Like any fervant devotion, Nostalgia requires tremendous loyalty to its method to preserve the myths relevant to its survival.

It's a different game than playing music--this sitting around spitting by the fire.

[catmandu2]

On a related note, anyone hear any of this "electronic Cumbia" music? Recommended.

[Mandolin Mick]

Let me put my OP a different way ...

As a former rocker, I played professionally for many years most notably in a Beatles tribute band that played around the country. I'll make a comparison.

Most rockers accept the musical period in the the rock genre known as Classic Rock. This is the innovative period of the Beatles, Stones, Hendrix, Zeppelin, Moody Blues, Doors, etc. Even metalheads, grunge & indie people call the period from the mid '60's thru the mid '70's Classic Rock.

It's not a matter of it being "Classic" because I like it best. It's the period that people look to as the "golden age", if you will, of the musical genre.

I believe the same thing applies to Bluegrass and am calling on people to do the same thing with this genre if for no other reason than clarity.

[Fretbear]

R & R (or "Rock", if you must) is way too much of a mongrel to try to draw those kind of parallels to bluegrass, and Robert Johnson pretty much invented it by himself back in the thirties anyways....
Jagger and Richards just stole Willie Dixon's songs and put their names on them...

[John McGann]

R & R (or "Rock", if you must) is way too much of a mongrel to try to draw those kind of parallels to bluegrass, and Robert Johnson pretty much invented it by himself back in the thirties anyways....
Jagger and Richards just stole Willie Dixon's songs and put their names on them...

You are thinking of Led Zeppelin, who stole from Willie and lots of others...I don't recall Jagger/Richards not crediting the original authors (all their publishing money would go to Marshall Chess anyway!)...but I may be wrong....

...but you are totally right about the uselessness of labels in general. "Rock and roll"- is that Buddy Holly, or Slayer? There are 500 subgenres of rock music, and there are plenty of subgenres of "Blue Grass music" in common practice now too. When you get right down to it, the true definition of Blue Grass music is the music of Bill Monroe. Everything that came from that, including Flatt and Scruggs, Stanley Brothers etc. is it's own music IMHO. The actual players and singers in these bands all create something unique, something that is of it's own time, and the core of the music cannot be duplicated by other people. I can enjoy the Bluegrass Album Band, but it is not the same music, even when they are playing the same songs.

Music is music, thank your lucky stars for it, have fun with it, and don't worry about labeling it. This isn't Hades, after all (although some act like it's Purgatory ) There will always be keepers of the flame, and like the originator of The Blue Grass Music, Mr. Bill Monroe, there will always be visionaries and innovators.

[JeffD]

A retronym is a phrase that re-describes something because time has gone by and the original word encompasses more. "StarTrek Original Series" used to be just "Star Trek". An "accoustic guitar" used to be just a "guitar". "Analog clock" used to be a "clock". A "face to face meeting" used be called a "meeting". "Snail mail" used to be "mail".

So now what we refer to as "classic bluegrass" is what used to be called "bluegrass".

You would think the old things would keep their name and the new things would get the new name. But it seems its the more powerful ideas, like "bluegrass", that get expanded on till the original needs a retronym. Other names just go away. No retronym for "buggy whip".