Bluegrass

Please see Chapter 7 if this volume for complete biographical information on Jeff Todd Titon.

Named for Kentucky, the "Bluegrass State," bluegrass music was invented by Bill Monroe shortly after World War II. Drawing on the high and close harmonies of brother duets in early country music, but with elements of blues and swing jazz, bluegrass began as a high-powered, peak-experience, acoustic, stringed instrument-based sound associated with Monroe and his band, the Bluegrass Boys, that appealed to an audience in the upland South. Soon copied by other regional bands such as the Stanley Brothers, by the early 1950s bluegrass had become a regional style of country music that could be heard on recordings, radio programs, and in concerts.

After the rise of rock and roll in the mid-1950s, and concurrent changes in country music that moved it toward a more easy-listening mode, bluegrass fell out of favor with the music industry. It underwent a revival beginning in the late 1950s when it found a new audience among northern and western college youth who flocked to bluegrass concerts and the newly founded bluegrass festivals that showcased several bands at once. Jim & Jesse and the Virginia Boys, Mac Wiseman, The Country Gentlemen, Jimmy Martin, Joe Val and the New England Bluegrass Boys, and several other groups, along with Monroe and the Stanleys, kept their music alive among the hardcore audience of their own generation in the Appalachian South while appealing to this new audience that found in the music a representation of the older, more natural world of rural America at a time when corporate America seemed to be turning out buttoned-down urban conformists.

Bluegrass, no longer the latest version of popular music in the upland South, became a specialty music, gradually increasing its appeal to fans throughout North America and eventually, in the 1960s, to Europe and Japan. Today, subgenres such as classic bluegrass, newgrass, and bluegrass fusion testify to the strength of the music and its hold on musicians and audiences alike. Whereas only a decade ago the country music industry ignored bluegrass, today the Nashville Network and other industry image makers portray bluegrass as a roots music, and they acknowledge young bluegrass stars like Alison Krauss while at the same time established country music celebrities like Dolly Parton make roots albums that put them in bluegrass settings.

The bluegrass sound is a unique mixture of musical elements. Many were old, some were new when, in 1946, Monroe and his Bluegrass Boys recorded "Will You Be Lovin' Another Man," regarded as the moment when bluegrass coalesced into the particular sound that is its own. High vocal harmonies, with the melody ("lead") harmonized from a third above ("tenor part") in a duet, and harmonized with a tenor part and from below ("baritone") in a vocal trio, sometimes rested at cadence points on intervals of the perfect fourth or fifth, offering a sound that was quite distinct from the conventional SATB (soprano, alto, tenor, bass) choral harmony. This way of harmonizing goes back to nineteenth-century southern shape-note singing, still practiced in Sacred Harp singing throughout the United States, but it was combined with more modern barbershop-style close harmony singing.

Singers pitch the songs at the very top of their vocal range. Sometimes the tenors must sing a portion falsetto. The vocal inflections of bluegrass, the twists and turns that elaborate the melodies (so apparent in the much-admired singing of Ralph Stanley, usually considered the best singer in the genre), derive from Old Baptist (Old Regular, United, and Primitive) singing in central Appalachia. Bluegrass lyrics take up the same general subjects of commercial country music, love and love lost, contrasts between city and country life, and nostalgia for childhood, love of parents, and the old country home; but the bluegrass repertory also features folksongs and old-time gospel songs as well as instrumentals—none of which can be found in contemporary country music.

Instrumentally, bluegrass is a peak-experience,

virtuoso music, requiring great skill to execute the sometimes breakneck tempos and intricate melodies. The repertoire consists of songs, and of instrumental pieces usually based on fiddle tunes that were used for dance music. Monroe wrote a number of instrumentals derived from the sounds the old fiddle tunes, particularly the Scots Irish ones, and these have become classics of the genre. But bluegrass today is a concert and jam-session music; it is not a dance music. Although bluegrass standards can be found in musical notation, and bluegrass method books (also containing notation) are available for various instruments, musicians use the notation as a reference and guide for learning and recalling tunes. When singing and playing with others bluegrass musicians do not read notation, and the music is still transmitted orally, for there is no substitute for hearing it played.

The Mother of Bluegrass Gospel

Erin Kellen's folklife research in Alabama's Piney Woods has focused on bluegrass gospel performer Margie Sullivan and the role of women in early bluegrass music. In the past, Kellen has worked at the Alabama Center for Traditional Culture (where she was director of the Sacred Harp Video Project) and the Southern Folklife Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is currently a librarian for the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. The following essay originally appeared in In the Spirit: Alabama's Sacred Music Traditions, edited by Henry Willett, published in 1995 by Black Belt Press.

Twelve-year-old Margie Brewster worked hard in the cotton fields that her family share-cropped. After her daddy sold his portion of the season's crop, he used the money he got for the cotton seeds to buy her a guitar and taught her to play. Her father's death later that year grieved Margie so deeply that her mother gave her permission to leave home to go on the road with a lady evangelist named Hazel Chain. So she left Winnsboro, Louisiana, and began traveling the Pentecostal revival circuit that stretched from east Texas through Louisiana and Mississippi to Alabama. The pair traveled by Greyhound bus and scheduled their engagements by mail.

It was dark and deserted at the crossroads where the Greyhound left them in Sunflower, Alabama, where they were supposed to conduct a revival. The loss of their luggage had delayed them for hours at the bus station in Mobile. Soon, a little boy came riding up on a bicycle and said, "You must be Sister Margie and Sister Chain."

They said, "Yes."

And he said, "Well, follow me," and guided them to the little church. Margie was tired, but she sang because, she says, "Wild horses couldn't keep me from singing back in those days!" That was the night she met a young man named Enoch, who played the fiddle and sang gospel music with his father, the Reverend Arthur Sullivan.

Three years later, in 1949, Margie and Enoch were married. That same month, the family's string band had its first radio performance on WRJW out of Picayune, Mississippi. They hadn't thought about what to call themselves, so they just told the radio announcer to say they were "The Sullivan Family."

For forty-five years Enoch and Margie Sullivan have been the core of the Sullivan Family—especially since banjo player Emmett, Enoch's brother, passed away in the spring of 1993. They called their music "Bluegrass Gospel," and they have journeyed far and wide to play it at country and urban churches, at civic events and political rallies, at prisons, and at festivals across the United States and in Europe. In 1993, they were inducted into Bill Monroe's Bluegrass Hall of Fame at his Bean Blossom Festival in Bean Blossom, Indiana. These days they travel in their own bus, emblazoned with the words "The Legendary Sullivan Family" on its sides.

On the home front, in St. Stephens, Alabama, there were five children to raise. From the beginning, the Sullivans kept a small farm, raising and putting by much of their own food. Now that the kids are all grown and gone, Enoch still likes to keep a few cows, and Margie still cans and freezes produce from the garden. They like to stay grounded in the unpretentious rural dailiness of their lives in little St. Stephens, the oldest town in the oldest county in Alabama.

Enoch and Margie have enough working years behind them that you'd think they might consider settling down into a comfortable retirement. Instead, they keep up a pace that would wear out most people half their age.

In the early days, there were few women traveling the back roads playing bluegrass music, and most of them stayed in the background. But Margie has stayed right up front with Enoch—accompanying him on guitar, singing lead and harmony in her husky alto, writing songs, and preaching the gospel. It was through gospel music that many women entered the field of bluegrass music, most frequently through family bands like the Sullivans. Margie's prominent place in the band may reflect the family's Pentecostal background; it is not out of the ordinary for women to preach or assume leadership positions in Pentecostal churches. And the Sullivans see themselves first and foremost as spreaders of the gospel—their role as bluegrass pioneers comes second.

An examination of "string band gospel" groups like the Sullivan Family, and gospel music in general, is crucial to any investigation of the origins of bluegrass. Before anyone even called their music "bluegrass gospel, the Sullivans' performances incorporated the harmony singing, banjo syncopation, instrumental breaks between singing, and faster tempos that define the music as a separate genre. Though the southern Appalachians are stereotypically associated with bluegrass music, the phenomenon of the Sullivan Family, and other groups from the coastal plain, reminds us to recognize the significance of other regions' contributions to the style.

Now that women performers are so commonplace in bluegrass, it is time to take a closer look at the experiences of one of the pioneers. In the course of four decades, Margie Sullivan has transported the music from backwoods brush arbors to urban areas. She has felt the loneliness of being the sole woman traveling with men who "only wanted to talk about coon hunting and such," in the days when most male musicians had some familiarity with that pursuit. Today's women of bluegrass, like their male counterparts, are increasingly urban, middle-class, and non-southern. Their sensibilities are shaped by circumstances radically different from those that shaped Margie Sullivan.

Margie herself never fails to marvel at the path her life has taken. She likes to tell about the time the Sullivan Family performed seven songs at a Sunday morning service in a Catholic Church in Belgium when they traveled to Europe in 1984. An interpreter introduced each song, explaining the meaning to those who could not understand English. When they finished playing, people in the audience presented fresh flowers to Margie, as was customary. Then she, in turn, presented fresh flowers to the priest:

When I handed him the flowers, he reached over and kissed me on the cheek. And then he kissed me on the other cheek—that's a blessing of acceptance. And when he did that, the crowd was amazed. So they wanted me to say something. And I was not prepared to say anything. And for just a minute I was shocked beyond words. And then I thought, well, I'll just tell them what I really feel in my heart. And I thanked them for so graciously receiving us. And I said I hope that we have represented the Sullivan Family well here today, performed in a way that was a credit to our group and our name. And I really do hope and trust that we really represented our country, the United States, real well. But more than all of that, I hope that we have really represented the Lord Jesus Christ. And I don't know why I said that. it was spontaneous. And when I said it, they stood. They went to clapping. Some of them were crying; some of them were laughing. I never saw such an acceptance. I just stood there and cried. In a big Catholic Church as long as from here to that road almost. Oh, honey, it's beyond my fondest dreams to think that I would ever get to do anything like that. I mean, when I was singing in that cotton field, pulling that sack up and down those rows and singing with all of my heart praise to the Lord, not knowing if anybody else even heard me or not, I wasn't doing it for anybody else. But I never, you could have never made me believe I'd have the chance to do the things that I've had the chance to do.

Bibliography

Alabama Bluegrass Music Association website. Information on The Sullivan Family and their recordings. Available at http://www.alabamabluegrass.org.

Alabama Center for Traditional Culture website. Information on The Sullivan Family and their recordings. Available at http://www.arts.state.al.us/actc/compilation/sullivan.html.

Sullivan, Enoch, and Sullivan, Margie. (1999). The Sullivan Family: Fifty Years in Bluegrass Gospel Music. Many, LA: Sweet Dreams Publications.

The Sullivan Family Homepage. Available at http://www.1fx.net/popup.shtml.

Willett, Henry. (1995). In the Spirit: Alabama's Sacred Music Traditions. Montgomery, AL: Black Belt Press.

Erin Kellen

Although in the rock and roll era some bluegrass musicians such as The Osborne Brothers experimented with electric instruments and a drum set, today's bluegrass bands avoid electronically amplified instruments and drums entirely. The usual bluegrass band consists of acoustic guitar, fivestring banjo, fiddle, mandolin, and string bass, although in practice the fiddle and/or mandolin sometimes are omitted. Any of the musicians may sing, but traditionally the lead vocalist is also the guitarist. Each instrument is played in both a lead (melodic) and backup (harmonic and rhythmic) style. Sung verses alternate with instrumental breaks in which the various instruments are showcased in turn while the others back up, in a setting reminiscent of jazz. Some outstanding musicians improvise lead breaks on the spot, creating melodies from a storehouse of patterns. The banjo, in particular, has a distinct bluegrass style, a rapid and elaborate three-finger (thumb and first two finger) method that encases the melody. This bluegrass banjo style, invented by Earl Scruggs and imitated by every bluegrass banjo player since, usually is considered a marker of the music, and was the most obvious new element in it. Bluegrass fiddle owes a great deal to the innovations of Western swing jazz, but combines these with techniques and a sound based in the fiddling traditions of the Upland South. Kenny Baker, who fiddled in Bill Monroe's band, is a much-admired contemporary bluegrass fiddler.

Although many regard bluegrass as a quintessentially Anglo-American music, it contains several African American elements, including polyrhythm. The Scruggs banjo style is based on 3–3–2 accent patterns that cross polyrhythmically with the duple meter of the other instruments. Monroe's music was strongly influenced by jazz and by the singing and repertoire of Jimmie Rodgers, a country music star of the late 1920s and early 1930s who featured blues songs that he had learned from black musicians in Mississippi. Monroe always credited Arnold Schultz, a black guitarist and neighbor, with helping to form his conception of rhythm and what was possible on the guitar.

Monroe exercised a great deal of control over his band's arrangements, and he fused the bluegrass style from British-American, Irish, and African American elements. Thus although Irish music lurks in the background of bluegrass, the contemporary claim that bluegrass is an extension of Celtic music will not stand up to the historical record.

Bluegrass today is a specialty genre sung and played all over the world. It has both commercial and folk sides. A few bluegrass groups always have been able to make a living from recordings and tours, but most commercial groups, even those with a string of recordings to their credit, consider bluegrass no more than a part-time job. Still, the music is presented to its fans through the usual industry outlets, including radio, television, recordings, and concerts. The International Bluegrass Musicians Association (IBMA) promotes bluegrass worldwide. At the same time, bluegrass has a core contingent of many fans who also are amateur musicians—some of whom are very good indeed—and who gather in homes and at festivals to make music for their own enjoyment. A bluegrass museum was established a few years ago in Owensboro, Kentucky. Bluegrass clubs that promote concerts, and semipublic jam sessions held in stores after hours, can be found in many towns and cities, while festivals take place in every part of North America.

Bluegrass festivals, some of which last for several days at a time during the summer months, are ritual experiences. Fans, musicians, and their families arrive in their campers a day or two early if possible and settle into festival campgrounds. Informal bluegrass singing and "picking" sessions begin almost at once in outdoor parking lots in an atmosphere of picnic food and good humor. While many listen to the acts from the main stage, many others move in and out of various jam sessions, searching for peak experiences with other musicians, some known, some new. As this music has well-understood rules and a repertoire of favorite songs and instrumental pieces, it is possible for musicians who have never met to play well together without rehearsal.

Geographically, bluegrass's strongest identity today is bound up with the central region of the southern Appalachian Mountains, and it is epitomized by the sound of Ralph Stanley, with its strong and obvious links to the Anglo-American folk music of the mountains. The late Bill Monroe, on the other hand, was from western Kentucky, outside the Appalachian region, and his music embodied the mix of Anglo- and African American strains that was more characteristic of the bluegrass region of that state. Today, bluegrass in New England and the maritime provinces of Canada is sung with New England, rather than Appalachian, accents; and West Coast bluegrass sounds comparatively smooth and relaxed, reflecting the sophisticated musical aesthetics of that region. Like blues, jazz, and country music, bluegrass has its roots in regional American folk musics; but it has transcended those roots, spread geographically, and become a commercially disseminated music available to everyone.

BLUEGRASS

The Mother of Bluegrass Gospel

Bibliography

BIBLIOGRAPHY