Fact #56985
When:
Short story:
Bill Monroe And His Bluegrass Boys record Blue Moon Of Kentucky, Toy Heart and Heavy Traffic Ahead, in Chicago, Illinois, USA, for Columbia Records. The tracks feature Earl Scruggs on banjo and Lester Flatt on guitar, and are widely considered to be the first bluegrass recordings.
Full article:
The first bluegrass recording :
feature researched and written by Johnny Black
In 1938, when his popular country string band The Monroe Brothers disbanded, mandolin player Bill Monroe decided to change direction. Monroe wanted each of the instruments in his new band to take solos as in a jazz band, and he wanted each instrument to have a clearly established role in melody or backup.
"I didn't want it to be copying somebody," Monroe said. "I thought that'd be wrong, you know, to copy somebody when I was real young and I wanted music of my own. So that was what I came up with. And there was a lot of different ideas in it, and it's got a wonderful drive to the music. It's wonderful for the five-string banjo and the fiddle, you know."
Monroe was then based in Atlanta, Georgia, but being originally from Kentucky - the Blue Grass State, he called his new band The Blue Grass Boys.
"Back in those days," he said, "it seems every trip we made was from Kentucky to Florida, driving back and forth. I always thought about Kentucky, and I wanted to write a song about the moon we could always see over it. The best way to do this was to bring a girl into the song. I wanted words to this because most of my songs were instrumentals. Kentucky Waltz had come earlier and I knew I could write both words and music, so I wrote it in the car on the way home from one of those Florida trips."
Monroe described it as a "true song" meaning that it was drawn from his own life experiences, and the title is derived from the fact that in the rare times when a full moon appears twice in the same month, the second is known as a “blue moon.”
The track is fronted by Monroe’s falsetto, and his mandolin, but it also benefits enormously from the presence of Earl Scruggs on banjo and Lester Flatt on guitar, and is widely considered to be the first bluegrass recording.
With Chicago being a melting pot for jazz, blues and country, it was hardly surprising that Monroe’s new style drew from several sources. "It’s got Baptist and Holiness and Methodist singing in it and Scotch bagpipe and the old Southern blues," Monroe explained to NPR in 1983. "It really touches your heart, and it's a good, clean music."
Bluegrass became known as a "high lonesome all-acoustic sound" so there’s a certain irony that Elvis Presley picked the song as one side of his debut single seven years later in 1954. As a result, it played a large part in establishing not just Presley’s career, but the new electric sound of rock’n’roll in general.
Monroe not only acknowledged the validity of Presley’s version, but returned to the studio in its wake to record a considerably speeded up and more vibrant version of the song.
Blue Moon Of Kentucky is now the official bluegrass song of Kentucky and, in 2003, it was accorded the honour of being added to the United States Library Of Congress National Recording Registry.
Tweet this Fact
feature researched and written by Johnny Black
In 1938, when his popular country string band The Monroe Brothers disbanded, mandolin player Bill Monroe decided to change direction. Monroe wanted each of the instruments in his new band to take solos as in a jazz band, and he wanted each instrument to have a clearly established role in melody or backup.
"I didn't want it to be copying somebody," Monroe said. "I thought that'd be wrong, you know, to copy somebody when I was real young and I wanted music of my own. So that was what I came up with. And there was a lot of different ideas in it, and it's got a wonderful drive to the music. It's wonderful for the five-string banjo and the fiddle, you know."
Monroe was then based in Atlanta, Georgia, but being originally from Kentucky - the Blue Grass State, he called his new band The Blue Grass Boys.
"Back in those days," he said, "it seems every trip we made was from Kentucky to Florida, driving back and forth. I always thought about Kentucky, and I wanted to write a song about the moon we could always see over it. The best way to do this was to bring a girl into the song. I wanted words to this because most of my songs were instrumentals. Kentucky Waltz had come earlier and I knew I could write both words and music, so I wrote it in the car on the way home from one of those Florida trips."
Monroe described it as a "true song" meaning that it was drawn from his own life experiences, and the title is derived from the fact that in the rare times when a full moon appears twice in the same month, the second is known as a “blue moon.”
The track is fronted by Monroe’s falsetto, and his mandolin, but it also benefits enormously from the presence of Earl Scruggs on banjo and Lester Flatt on guitar, and is widely considered to be the first bluegrass recording.
With Chicago being a melting pot for jazz, blues and country, it was hardly surprising that Monroe’s new style drew from several sources. "It’s got Baptist and Holiness and Methodist singing in it and Scotch bagpipe and the old Southern blues," Monroe explained to NPR in 1983. "It really touches your heart, and it's a good, clean music."
Bluegrass became known as a "high lonesome all-acoustic sound" so there’s a certain irony that Elvis Presley picked the song as one side of his debut single seven years later in 1954. As a result, it played a large part in establishing not just Presley’s career, but the new electric sound of rock’n’roll in general.
Monroe not only acknowledged the validity of Presley’s version, but returned to the studio in its wake to record a considerably speeded up and more vibrant version of the song.
Blue Moon Of Kentucky is now the official bluegrass song of Kentucky and, in 2003, it was accorded the honour of being added to the United States Library Of Congress National Recording Registry.