Monroe's Leitmotif
Monroe’s Leitmotif
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ShareWilliam “Bill” Smith Monroe was born in September, 1911 in Rosine, Kentucky, the youngest of eight children. As a child, he suffered from impaired vision due to an eye that turned inward. Mocked by other youngsters—including his siblings—for this disability, Monroe grew up distant, lonely, and self-conscious, even after he had corrective surgery in his late teens. Rinzler would later say that Monroe’s vision problems would create a “leitmotif” in his life that would become evident in his music, which often addressed themes of loneliness, faithlessness and lovelessness.
When he was a young man, Monroe met Arnold Shultz, the son of a slave who was also a talented blues guitarist. Despite the fact that no recordings of Shultz’s music exist, he is often considered to be one of the best blues guitarists in history by those who heard him or who were influenced by him; besides Monroe, seminal American musicians such as Kennedy Jones, Merle Travis and Ike Everly were all first- or second-generation Shultz disciples.
Shultz gave Monroe his first paying gig; years later, Monroe would cite Shultz’s guitar playing as one of his two major musical influences. The other was his uncle, Pendleton Vandiver, a fiddle player with whom Monroe lived as a teenager after both parents died. Monroe would one day pay tribute to Vandiver with the song “Uncle Pen”, a tune still popular among bluegrass musicians including fellow mandolin picker Ricky Skaggs (who, interestingly enough, shared a stage with Monroe as a seven-year-old; Monroe would later appear in Skaggs’ “Country Boy” music video).
Bill Monroe, 1946
At 18, Monroe became another member of the urban migration, finding factory work in Chicago and eventually recording songs with brother Charlie for RCA Records. The Monroe Brothers were very successful but soon broke up due to irreconcilable differences. Each formed his own band, and Monroe’s found much more success: Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys were invited to join the prestigious Grand Ole Opry in 1938.
They soon became a favorite act among country music fans who were drawn to the hard-driving string band sound. When fiddler Chubby Wise, guitarist Lester Flatt, and banjo player Earl Scruggs joined the Blue Grass Boys, the bluegrass sound—spurred on by the revolutionary banjo picking technique of Scruggs—became solidified, drawing both fans and imitators.
However, Flatt and Scruggs left the Blue Grass Boys in 1948 and started their own group, the Foggy Mountain Boys, achieving stunning commercial success after flour company Martha White hired them to peddle their products on weekly television and radio shows. They became members of the Grand Ole Opry in 1955, much to Bill Monroe’s disdain. He didn’t see Lester and Earl’s bluegrass music as a tribute or sincere form of flattery; he believed that they were stealing his music. As such, Monroe didn’t speak to either Flatt or Scruggs for over a decade.
While Flatt and Scruggs were raking in money and sponsorships while separating themselves from the Monroe name and legacy, lest it completely define them as artists, the public desire to see Bill Monroe perform began to dry up. Instead of playing lucrative concerts, Monroe was mostly performing on the Grand Ole Opry; while this brought his music into thousands—if not millions—of homes across the South, it did not pay as much as headlining a concert.
He was anxious about performing on the new medium of television; due to his vision problems, Monroe was not always aware of which camera was on him, becoming embarrassed when he looked at the wrong one. He was barely scraping by, and a number of musicians left the Blue Grass Boys to find other work. Bill Monroe’s career was hitting rock bottom.
Next month: The Sing Out! article that changed everything.
