In my opinion, I think that Bill Monroe would have been more concentrated on the developent of bluegrass music, not the maintenance of it to as close to his style as humanly possible. Therefore, if he looked years into the future and saw most of the bluegrass bands out there still playing his cover tunes and things that he himself played, but better I might add, he probably would have frowned upon it. Now, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that one of the significant torchbearers that I see is Chris Thile and Nickel Creek. I am of the opinion that Nickel Creek is not to be considered strictly bluegrass, but it is also obvious that their roots are in bluegrass, and the music that they play branches off of bluegrass. Therefore, if Bill Monroe were to see that bands of young people, like Nickel Creek, who are attracting many other young people to the bluegrass genre that would never been exposed to it if we relied on Del McCoury and Ricky Skaggs to try and show them bluegrass, I think Big Mon would have a smile on his face.
God made me a mandolin player, and when I play, I feel his pleasure.
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