on 7/6/03 5:31 PM, William Crump at crumpw@bellsouth.net wrote:
And if anybody hasn't mentioned Bill Monroe yet, you gotta get some Bill Monroe! I recommend The Essential Bill Monroe and the Monroe Brothers on RCA, 1936-1941 recordings from before Monroe added banjo to the band and established the sound of what we call bluegrass today. At this stage it's still "just" hillbilly music, and an intermediate step between the Anthology of American Folk Music era and the Nashville years covered in the Time-Life sets. "New River Train," "Orange Blossom Special," lots of church music, all of it great.
As great as that stuff is, it's his warm-up. Get the Columbia 16 GEMS disc, which is the first two post-Charlie Bluegrass Boys bands. The earlier stuff on that disc, with Stringbean on banjo, is like the last perfect gasp of old-timey string band music. Then, from cut #6 on out, it'ss Earl Scruggs just reinventing the wheel from the first breath. The improvising -- Earl, Bill, and fiddler Chubby Wise -- is breathtaking. The drive is incredible, and the fluency of everyone is just awesome, especially considering how new the style was they were developing. Plus the singing is undeniable. Of course, Monroe's Decca sruff with Jimmy Martin is often as good. sh