Brother duets and mandolins

[cooper4205]

i know that Bill Monroe's mandolin playing in a bluegrass context helped to greatly popularize the mandolin and revolutionize the mandolin, but what impact did the brother duets- like Monroe pre-bluegrass or Bill Bollick- (or similar duos) of the thirties have on mandolin playing? could you say that the seed for the mandolins popularity in acoustic country music, i.e. bluegrass, oldtime, was planted with these acts or with Big Mon in his bluegrass days?


for the most part, were the mandolin players in the brother duets playing mandolin like it had been for years prior or did most of them have to work up or modify a their style of play to adapt to the type of music they performed? i'm doing a paper on brother duets and i was wanting to touch on the instruments that they play (esp. the mando) and how they really evolved the ways these instruments were used in commercial acoustic music.

[Scotti Adams]

I always thought Ira Louvin was very pleasing to the ear...besides Mun...he had it going on.

[ricardo]

Ira's "touch" on the mandolin was indeed his own! -NOT #Monroe -although he appreciated Monroe - and they were good friends. Charlie told #me that their record producer Ken Nelson @ CAPITOL records "suggested" to Ira that the mandolin did not "fit" in their later secular recordings ; Ira said ..OK! - after that Ira "backed-off"... "...and his drinking TRIPPLED.' (per conversation with Charlie Louvin). RIP Ira Louvin. #Thanks for the great music. #http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/mandosmiley.gif #http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/coffee.gif

[John Flynn]

You might get some good quotes from Curtis and Dennis Buckhannon of the Buckhannon Brothers. That is a really special duet situation where the two together are much more than the sum of the parts.

[MandoSquirrel]

As were the great brother duets of history; Blue Sky Boys, Louvins, Lilly Brothers, Monroe Brothers,etc.

[Christopher Howard-Williams]

And of course Jim and Jesse.
Would Ronnie and Robbie McCoury count in here? Their collaboration (with Dad) is pretty fantastic.

[swampstomper]

I think the original question is the influence of the early duet mando players on BG. It's a good question. If you listen to the very early Bill Monroe (with Charlie) it is clear he's listened to the contemporary duets like Karl & Harty and the Blue Sky Boys. But even at the beginning he takes a more agressive approach (not yet all downstrokes!! mostly very fast picking and "hot" licks) that are already way beyond his contemporaries. I think it's fair to say that once they hit the airwaves in the Carolinas, and especially once Bill started on WSM in 1939, it was all over -- all the young mandolinists wanted to sound like Monroe, not Bill Bollick. For example, Pee Wee Lambert. So, to the original question I would say that duet mandolinists have had very little effect on bluegrass. Ira Louvin as a singer, definitely!! but as a mandolinist, not. (I don't mean he wasn't a good, stylistically unique mandolinist, just that no one imitated him).

The exceptions to this are Bobby Osborne and Jesse McReynolds. In Jesse's case he is quoted in the Statman book as saying he consciously tried to sound different from Monroe, and he's nothing like the duet mandolinists. In Osborne's case I am not so sure. He has such a melodic approach that perhaps he was indeed influenced by them. He certainly has no Monroe at all in his playing, and is known to have disliked how Monroe played fiddle tunes on the pentatonic scale.

[allenhopkins]

An interesting question. IMHO, Bill Bolick tended to use his mandolin like another singing voice, rather than playing improvisational breaks. Very lyrical, lots of tremelo, not aggressive, similar to the singing style of the Blue Sky Boys. Monroe's playing with Charlie, while it followed the sung melody, was more improvisational and aggressive. The Monroes really shown on up-tempo songs, which some of the other brother duets did not play as much.

Of course, not all brother duets used mandolin as the "other" instrument (besides guitar); you also had tenor banjo (Allen Brothers), tenor guitar (Delmore Brothers), Hawaiian guitar (Dixon Brothers), etc.

A really good example of a more progressive mandolin style in a brother-duet context, besides the Monroes, is the early "Sacred Songs of the Virginia Trio" recordings by the McReynolds brothers with Larry Roll. Jesse's cross-picked mandolin against the simple guitar chording is particularly effective, even more so than in the later Jim & Jesse full band context.

One of the characteristics of mandolin use in brother duets, is that it quite often was the only melody instrument (though the Blue Sky Boys often worked with a fiddler). Later recordings of brother duets such as the Louvins usually had a larger instrumental ensemble, but for the "pure" sound, earlier albums with just two voices and two instruments really showcase the mandolin and its different styles.