The record that started it all

[Richard Francis]

My wife's away--the house is quiet--I have a pile of things to do that I don't feel like doing--time to get some of these LPs converted to CD. And the first one I pulled up is the Record That Started It All: "The High, Lonesome Sound of Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys," a compilation done by Ralph Rinzler in the mid-60's. (Decca 4780 for those interested)

The irony of this purchase is that at the time I had never heard of Bill Monroe. My knowledge of Bluegrass began and ended with Flatt and Scruggs, whom I only knew then from their pseudo-pop stuff. I quickly realized that Monroe & Co. were doing something rawer and more elemental than anything I'd heard before. And it's still astonishing music.

[Ivan Kelsall]

The first Bluegrass i ever heard was 2 tracks from an album by the Barrier Brothers called
"Golden Bluegrass Hits". All the songs were cover versions of Flatt & Scruggs, Bill Monroe
& i think Stanley Brother's songs. The 2 tracks were "Earl's Breakdown" & "Flinthill Special". I'd never heard anything like it before & that album,plus two others that they recorded are still among my favourite records,
Saska

[Richard Francis]

It took several years before I acquired a mandolin, and in fact what impressed me most on the Bill Monroe album was the banjo playing! (remember, I was only 16 years old at the time. As Lord Peter Wimsey says, there are some things even youth cannot excuse) It wasn't until much later that I went back and rediscovered the mandolin playing--and of course that high, lonesome sound of Bill Monroe's singing.

[Dagger Gordon]

The Bluegrass Session by Vassar Clements. #

[Mikey G]

I remember listening to Mr. Monroe when I was a little boy with my grandmother many years ago. I remember asking her "who is that man singing like a woman?" I was probably eight or nine, and she promptly sent me out to the "switch bush" and told told me to get a "good one." She loved Bill Monroe all the way up to her death at 95. I really thank her for turning me on to bluegrass music. She didn't use the switch because I disrespected Bill Monroe, but because I had flooded the well house. I think the "singing like a woman" remark was the icing on the cake.

[Richard Francis]

Another striking thing about the High, Lonesome Sound recording is how many different keys the songs are in. My all-time favorite, "When the Golden Leaves Begin to Fall" is in E, not an obvious key for mandolin.

[pigpen]

Not a record, but going to the Mountain View, AR jams on the square at about five years old really blew my young mind. #I wore out my folks' NGDB Will the Circle... record after that. #(I know some might not call it bluegrass, but it's close enough for me and it's what we had at the house.) #Of course, punk/grunge had to raise its unwashed and bleached head for a few years before I returned to the light, but I came back eventually (probably concurrent with my realization that the ladies didn't like me any better when I was playing loud music that made me angry than when playing music that made me feel good...)

[Tom Mullen]

IN 1962, my sister brot home a "Hootenanny"album, and there were 10 folk cuts, and 2 Bluegrass cuts----The Dillards doing "Somebody Touched Me" and "Rueban's Train". That did it for me. I wore those 2 tracks out. Then I saw the Dillards live in 1963 at the Troubador in LA. I thot they were they ONLY band until a few years later, when I heard a Bill Monroe album and a Flatt and Scruggs album. My buddy told me that Monroe used to play in Flatt and Scruggs's band a long time ago.

Would Bluegrass music have been different if that were the case?

[JamesPV]

That High Lonesome Sound album was also the first true bluegrass record I ever bought (in about 1973), and still sounds great to me after all this time.

I had been a big fan (one of the few when it came out, I think) of the Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo album, Seatrain, and some of the other very early country rock stuff before finding this, but I could immediately tell this was on another plane (maybe even planet) entirely.

[Richard Francis]

>Would Bluegrass music have been different if that were the case?

I really don't think Bluegrass was out there waiting to be invented, like Bebop or Rock 'n Roll. I think it took one man to make it happen, and I don't think it would have happened without him.

[Ivan Kelsall]

Amen to that Rev.. I do however think that the 'influences' for Bill's music were there,but it took a genius to get 'em together,
Saska

[Christopher Howard-Williams]

Old and In The Way.
From Grateful Dead to Bluegrass in one easy evening.
It helped that Bill Monroe played at my university (in the UK) about 6 months later.

[swampstomper]

Records are one thing, but seeing Red Allen / Frank Wakefield / Tex Logan / Don Stover and then a month or so later Del McCoury playing to a small audience of "folkies" and just peeling the paint off the wall, that was it. Goodbye longneck banjos and 12-string guitars! Hello City Limits!

[mandopluker]

...hearing my uncle play Flatt & Scruggs and then Mr. Bill ---needless to say I was hooked on the music. It took me many years to find the mandolin and ditto -----needless to say I was hooked



The record: The High Lonesome Sound of Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys

[allenhopkins]

Two cuts on a Joan Baez album with the Greenbriar Boys, Little Darling, Pal of Mine and Amelia Earhart's Last Flight.*

Then Country Pickin' and Hillside Singin' with the Osborne Brothers and Red Allen, and the first Charles River Valley Boys album, with Ethan Signer and Fritz Richmond, "Mt. Auburn Records MTA 1." #All downhill from there, I guess...

*Later: my memory's definitely going! Amelia Earhart's Last Flight was on a Vanguard "New Folk" sampler or some such; the other Greenbriar Boys cut on the Baez album was Long Black Veil. #And I shouldn't leave out the other early BG album I loved, Dian & the Greenbriar Boys with Dian James. #Folk meets bluegrass -- happened all the time in the sixties...

[Scotti Adams]

I grew up listening to and playing along with on record all the pioneers which I have the upmost respect for. But..the Lp that got me rollin was JD Crowe and the New South LP 0045...Crowe, Rice, Skaggs, Douglas and Sloan. That music sounds just as fresh today as it did back in '75.

[Treblemaker]

Aside from O&ITW I am definitely a 2nd (possibly 3rd) generation bluegrass devotee and the Album's that started it for me were Grisman's debut and Tony Rice's Manzanita.

[Rick Schmidlin]

Aero Plane and that the first sold to me by David Bromberg "Hey kid listen to this" Adrains Music Store, Honedale,PA (advanced copy)

[Mike Snyder]

I guess the Dirt Band Circle album would be what drug me away from listening to John Prine, Byrds, Willie Nelson, Jerry Jeff Walker, Allman Bros, Janis Joplin. From there it was Newgrass Revival and away we go!

[Willie Poole]

I`m an old timer, I first heard Monroe and told my dad I wanted a mandolin for my birthday and then taking a few so called lessons from Buzz Busby and buying every Mac Wiseman record I could find was where I got my start...I got away from bluegrass for a while and when my country band entered a contest and there was a bluegrass band entered and when I heard them that got me back on track....Willie

[flatthead]

Mine was a 45 RPM record of Jimmy Martin singing 20-20 Vision B/W Sunny Side Of The Mountain.....I listened to that record until the grooves got real shiny and kind of white, then the needle on the record player just kind of randomly skipped around the record....and that was *after* I put a nickel on top of the tone arm.

[mandozilla]

I don't remember the exact title of the album (this was in 1970) but it was Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys. All the "Gold Standard" tracks with Flatt, Scruggs, and Chubby Wise. I'd been playing about 2 years at that time but heard mostly live BG music. After getting that one I started buying up every 1st generation BG album I could get my hands on. I'm going to copy em all to CD one of thses days.

[mandolirius]

Not even a record but just a solo - Doyle Lawson's break on "Walk Don't Run" on a Mike Auldridge album. I heard that and I just had to play the mandolin. I knew nothing about it, even to the point of having to check the credits to find out what instrument was making that sound.

[Mike Bunting]

I think the first album I bought was Flatt and Scruggs, Live at Vanderbuilt University sometime in the early 60's, around the same time we brought in the Greenbriar Boys/Wakefield to a coffeehouse where I worked while at McGill U. Next door to the coffehouse was a joint called the Country Palace where I heard a life changing band by the name of Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys. Anna McGarrigle taught me All the Good Times Are Over. It was a powerpacked couple, three years and I haven't been the same since!

[Richard Francis]

I love this thread! Thanks for posting.