Classic Bluegrass

[ralph johansson]

I am not asking for the names of bands that exemplify bluegrass, I would like a definition of the style.

Not a definition, really, but to almost quote Duke Ellington: If it sounds like Bluegrass, it is Bluegrass.

[catmandu2]

Do we need labels at all?

There are only two kinds of music: dance music, and art music (somewhat facetiously)

Nice post ralph, thanks

[John McGann]

Do we need labels at all?

We may not, but the Muggles seem to.

"How do you tell those fiddle tunes apart?"


"by the titles!"

Bless their hearts.

[bobby bill]

Do we need labels at all?

No.

A music label does not provide much more information than knowing the name of a stranger to whom you are being introduced. There is some utility in knowing the name of the stranger, but it doesn't tell you much about him.

[Steve Ostrander]

The answer is simple: If Bill would have liked it, then it's Bluegrass. Everything else is no part of nothin'!

[Crabgrass]

An affinity for avant garde jazz is even harder to convey.

Hey, I thought we were talking about music here....

Seriously, I do think there's value in defining the genre in its purest form. Otherwise, you might be in danger of losing it.

[Scott Tichenor]

[Schlegel]

No.

A music label does not provide much more information than knowing the name of a stranger to whom you are being introduced. There is some utility in knowing the name of the stranger, but it doesn't tell you much about him.

I'm going to have to disagree. We do need labels, because there are more musicians working than one person can possibly be familiar with. Are they too restrictive, or misapplied? Sure, sometimes. But I need some sorting tool to help find music I like. What I think is a mistake is to take a label and apply it as a rule. It's just shorthand. Music isn't a binary solution.

[catmandu2]

A "bluegrass taser" in hot pink oy veh? (in my grandmother's heavy Yiddish accent)

[farmerjones]

Bluegrass (to me) can be compared to the Golden Delicious apple. It's genus can be brought back to one singular tree. (in Iowa BTW) Bluegrass, by it's purist definition is music created by Bill Monroe and his Bluegrass Boys. Period, end of an ending.
Stanley Bros. even claimed similar as "mountain (style) music." as to seperate themselves. What brings me to my point:

While we sit around the festival fires and spit into the embers, and argue/diss_cuss about who played it first, yada yada. The actual professional pickers and players of said music actually try to seperate themself's from the crowd. You can't make real money sounding exactly like somebody else. Not only that, it's dang tuff to even corner them into a discussion about this kind of stuff. It doesn't do them pros any good making one friend over here, and creating a hundred enemies over there. I really try to follow their example, by picking/playing three to four times more than i visit, around the campfire.
Jussayin'

[John McGann]

Lithium! I'm due for an upgrade!!

[farmerjones]

Can that taser pierce through the bellows of an accordian, that's all i wanna know?

[catmandu2]

Integrated LED light - illuminate dark environments

Now THAT is a handy feature...I wonder if this comes also with a hallucinogenic option?

[mculliton123]

I think it needs a metronome that cannot be set below 300 BPM.

[mrmando]

My definition of bluegras is a simple kind of music that tells a story and is played with the instruments backing up the singers, not the other way around, what one would expect to hear if he came upon a cabin in the mountains after dinner and there were people playing music on the porch just killing time and entertaining them selves until time to go to bed, no TV`s, No computers...In other words play it like it was invented....

But that's old-time music. That's where bluegrass came from, but that's not what it is, or ever was.

In bluegrass, a mandolin or a guitar can be just as loud as a banjo or a fiddle -- or even louder. To accomplish that, a band needs to have at least one microphone and understand how to use it. Bluegrass is a technology-dependent form of music developed in concert stages and recording studios. It was created not on front porches in the hills, but in the big cities by farm boys who had moved there in search of work. The '46 Blue Grass Boys sang about wanting to go back to the old place, but in order to develop the right kind of nostalgia they had to leave the old place first.

[mandolino maximus]

If that Taser has an "auto," we have a definition.

If not, we'll just end up producing a lot of convuslive drooling around the campfire. And that would rob banjo players of their niche.

[allenhopkins]

...Exactly how these numbers qualify as a "non-standard form of bluegrass" is not at all clear to me.Then you're using the word "bluegrass" so liberally as to render it completely meaningless. There wasn´t the slightest attempt to broaden, develop, or enhance the existing tradition today known as bluegrass, or integrate the electric guitar, organ, or piano
in that genre...Bascially one of the founding fathers of a genre was placed in an entirely different, in fact alien, context, much closer to, say, the country music of Red Foley or Little Jimmie Dickens. Do you consider their music to be non-standard bluegrass as well? And what about Ricky Skaggs who had a much longer and much more successful country music period - do you consider that music to be "non-standard Bluegrass" too?...There is good reason to use the term Bluegrass very restrictively today. Many musicians resist the label because of its connotations of purism and parochialism, and we should respect them. Typical in that respect are Punch Brothers and The Infamous Stringdusters. And, of course, when people aplly the term to gorups like the DGQ, The Flecktones, or Strength in Numbers, it gets downright ridiculous. Do we need labels at all?

If you put what I said in context, I was making the point that the people who played "classic bluegrass," and whom the bluegrass "purists" hold up as exemplifying the One True Sound, were a bit more eclectic than perhaps their disciples mention. They strayed from "strict construction" at times, experimenting with different sounds, sometimes at the behest of record companies looking for greater commercial success. Monroe's recording a few Jimmie Rodgers numbers with an electric guitarist, doesn't mean that he abandoned his basic band structure and musical sound. But over his recording career, he included instruments from vibraphone (Christmas Time's A-Coming), to organ on some gospel numbers, to near-orchestral backup on some Master of Bluegrass cuts. He recorded duets with Barbara Mandrell, Waylon Jennings, the Gatlin Brothers et. al., also.

I don't have a definition for "bluegrass," much less "non-standard bluegrass," though I'd say the latter is probably any departure from the IBGMA-approved lineup and instrumentation, or the presentation of largely non-"country" material. Just attended a show by the excellent band Nothin' Fancy yesterday, and they were, I guess, pretty "classic bluegrass" in instrumentation, singing and instrumental styles, yet in their show they did songs from Creedence Clearwater, Bob Seger, Bruce Springsteen, Bill Withers, Tom T. Hall, and a variety of other "non-bluegrass" sources. I guess, from the band's history, that they have the Bluegrass Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, yet they performed material and put on a stage show that wouldn't have suited the Blue Grass Boys very well.

Maybe we ought to recognize that "bluegrass" is becoming a broader label, like "country," "jazz," or "blues," and adopt the "classic bluegrass" sub-genre designation for the most "trad" part of that spectrum. I don't think that Grady Martin or Wilene "Sally Ann" Forrester -- or DeFord Bailey, also once part of Monroe's show -- "proves" that "anything goes, and you can still call it 'bluegrass.'" I do think that departures from the "classic form" like this indicate that major bluegrass artists can test the limits of the genre -- or, rather, not recognize that it has such narrow limits.

[Denny Gies]

I would rather play "classic bluegrass" than eat, but have to admit i love Sam Bush and David Grisman. So what does that make me?

[mrmando]

I would rather play "classic bluegrass" than eat, but have to admit i love Sam Bush and David Grisman. So what does that make me?

Hungry.

[farmerjones]

I would rather play "classic bluegrass" than eat, but have to admit i love Sam Bush and David Grisman. So what does that make me?

Just like jazz, to faithfully pay homage to the original, you must know where it comes from, to know where you're going. It's all good.

The flipside being the little dude in the xtrnormal cartoon:
"i've got deep tradeeshawnal roots teuw. I go back to the first Neeckel Creek Album."

i'll bet IBMA officially lists a dobro.

Slippery slope.
Dogs & Cats living together.
TOTAL MAYHEM! ! ! ! !

[Mike Bunting]

This story may be relevant. A few years ago, I was chatting with Frank Wakefield and Bobby Osborne at the mandocamp when Frank mentioned that he thought that Merle Travis derived his style from Mississippi John Hurt. I thought this was interesting and asked if they listened to much of this sort of music. Bobby responded that they were always listening to all sorts of music, looking for something that they could add to their own music to make it a little different so it would stand out from the rest. It looks to me like change or evolution in the music has been going on since the beginning and is indeed inherent in the music. Music is just the ocean and a particular style is just a wave (to paraphrase Jimmy Dale Gilmore). That being said, I don't think that it is a crime or even narrow minded to prefer to ride one particular wave.

[mandolino maximus]

Seriously, the general concept of classical bluegrass works for me / seems logical as in baroque, classical and romantic styles of "classical music." Huge differences too between Bach, Bach's son P.D.Q., Handel, Vivaldi and Telemann within each era. They refer to general periods of development over time - eras. Pretty sure Beethoven didn't care whether he was old Classical or new Romantic when he used an altered concept of the Baroque fugue. Also pretty sure there were endless discussions over all that too. In the end, it may be more important to describe the music than the style.

Less seriously, David Grisman ain't no part of Sam Bush. (Not that I won't be thrilled to see each of them.)

[mrmando]

Seriously, the general concept of classical bluegrass works for me / seems logical as in baroque, classical and romantic styles of "classical music." Huge differences too between Bach, Bach's son P.D.Q.,...

Um... Should I tell him?

[Mike Bunting]

Um... Should I tell him?

[catmandu2]

Um... Should I tell him?

Well if this thread wasn't worthy of being archived in the annals of classic bluegrass discourse, it is NOW!