Richard D. Smith > Quotes

“Contrary to popular belief, the performers who emerged from the southern hills to become the pioneers of country music and bluegrass were not from an exclusively aural folk tradition. Formal musical education, albeit rudimentary, was available each summer in towns like Rosine in the form of “singing schools!”
― Richard D. Smith, Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass

“In a multifaceted, trend-setting career, he had truly become the most broadly talented and broadly influential figure in American popular music history. He had been much more than the Father of Bluegrass: He had been an uncle to country music, a first cousin to the folk revival, and a grandfather to rock ‘n’ roll.166”
― Richard D. Smith, Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass

“Arguments about the origins of bluegrass are particularly intense because—as “traditional” as bluegrass is in comparison to the rest of American popular music—it has a starting point within living memory (unlike opera or symphonic music), and its origins can arguably be credited to one man”
― Richard D. Smith, Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass

“Of all his years, 1986 was truly a landmark. His mandolin, truly a part of himself, had been saved. A half century earlier, in 1936, he had made his first recordings with the Monroe Brothers; forty years earlier had seen his historic first recordings with Flatt and Scruggs; thirty-five years ago he had begun recording for Decca; twenty years before he had started his summer bluegrass festival at Bean Blossom (and exactly ten years later he had added the autumn festival). And 1986 would see his seventy-fifth birthday. In”
― Richard D. Smith, Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass

“Meanwhile, the Flatt and Scruggs juggernaut rolled on. Under Louise Scruggs’s shrewd management, Monroe’s former sidemen had become the bluegrass darlings of the northern folk music revival.”
― Richard D. Smith, Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass

“High Lonesome: The Story ofBluegrass.”
― Richard D. Smith, Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass

“Rock & roll music is a derivative of rockabilly music; rockabilly music is Bill Monroe and the blues tied together. That’s it.”
― Richard D. Smith, Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass

“Instead, he was perfectly willing to cut them out even if it meant spiting himself—just as he had defaced his mandolin by gouging out the “Gibson” inlay, just as he had neglected to record Peter Rowan’s lead singing.”
― Richard D. Smith, Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass

“Bill’s father would have remembered the Civil War, and his great-great-grandfather actually fought in the American Revolution.”
― Richard D. Smith, Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass

“Now, what did you say your name was?” Bill asked.9 “I’m Frank Sinatra.” “And what is it that you do?” “I’m a singer.” “I believe I’ve heard of you,” said Bill, deadpan. “Well, I hope so,” Sinatra replied with considerable grace.”
― Richard D. Smith, Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass

“The bitter irony, of course, was that the same young musicians who stood in awe of Bill Monroe were about to push him, and others like him, off the stage. Rock ‘n’ roll began to take the youth audience away from country music. And that was a disaster.”
― Richard D. Smith, Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass

“Of course, the most common response is that Bill Monroe was “the Father of Bluegrass” and its true creator. It was his melding of a band sound around fiddle playing, his high singing, his revolutionary mandolin stylings, and his distinctive surging rhythm that set bluegrass apart from the rest of country or folk music.”
― Richard D. Smith, Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass

“Bill, it was said, was a direct descendant of President James Monroe; he grew up in the mountains; he rose from hardscrabble poverty in a backward, backwoods culture; bluegrass music sprang from ancient Scots-Irish culture transplanted to the Appalachians, where it blossomed as a traditional folk art.”
― Richard D. Smith, Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass

“Virginia Stauffer”
― Richard D. Smith, Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass

“never wrote a tune in my life,” he said.137 “What do you mean by that?” asked Robins, surprised. “Those tunes are all in the air,” Monroe replied. “I just happened to be the first one to pick them out.”
― Richard D. Smith, Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass

“Bill Monroe’s earliest paid music work was thanks to Shultz, who asked Bill to “second him” on guitar when he fiddled for square dances.”
― Richard D. Smith, Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass

“But topping it all was the voice of Bill Monroe: as high as a woman’s but totally masculine, as sharp as a razor but as friendly as a handshake, as crystalline as an icicle but as warm as beaming sunshine.”
― Richard D. Smith, Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass

“Flatt and Scruggs formed a band called the Foggy Mountain Boys, taking its name from “Foggy Mountain Top,” a Carter Family favorite they decided to use as their theme song.”
― Richard D. Smith, Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass

“The most striking hallmarks of so-called traditional bluegrass were fully defined during the Jimmy Martin years, long after Flatt and Scruggs had left the Blue Grass Boys. If Bill Monroe started bluegrass, Earl Scruggs certainly made it as popular as it is today. But it is crucial to recognize that Monroe was the prime creative organizer and artistic guiding force behind bluegrass.”
― Richard D. Smith, Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass

“Decca’s ineptitude was compounded by Monroe’s lax approach to recording during this stage of his career. This otherwise singleminded artist was indecisive and at a creative low point.”
― Richard D. Smith, Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass

“Driving on 1-65 near Nashville, Bill proposed to her.102 Hazel started laughing. She knew he couldn’t be a husband. It wasn’t just that he was promiscuous: She knew that now, with his resurgent fame, he was married to the world.”
― Richard D. Smith, Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass

“Ralph and Mike would soon be caught up in a remarkable phenomenon that transcended prevailing regional, class, and gender boundaries. It was an intertwining cultural grapevine that united northerners and southerners who shared a common passion for rural string band music. This network proved crucial to the survival of Bill Monroe’s career and even bluegrass itself.”
― Richard D. Smith, Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass

“Having a wife and a girlfriend was not enough for Bill. The enjoyment and ego gratification of having other women, likely fueled by a persistent narcissism and a consuming need for contact and reassurance, gave rise to multiple affairs.”
― Richard D. Smith, Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass

“Unlike the stereotyped carousing, hotel room-smashing, self-destructive pop star, Monroe did not smoke, drink, or use drugs. But he did love women. Many of them.”
― Richard D. Smith, Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass

“Things that a musician played in the first half of a solo generally set up things played during the second half. First, the melody was clearly stated. (Here was made manifest the loyalty to melody instilled in Bill by Uncle Pen and in Earl by his mother.) Then—during what would be, if sung, long notes held at the ends of lyrics—a scale was improvised leading up to the beginning of the next melody passage. Soloists might throw in a final improvisational flourish, but they invariably ended squarely on the root note of the tonic chord. All the great bluegrass soloists—Monroe, Shumate, Forrester, Wise, Scruggs, Reno, and those who followed them—figured out this approach as the most pleasing way to structure”
― Richard D. Smith, Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass

“Rinzler was struck by the fact that for all its onstage spontaneity, Monroe’s music wasn’t intuitive. He had consciously created it and could relate exactly where he had gotten each sound, like a painter who knows exactly what colors he has used from his palette.35 Rinzler began to see that this enigmatic man did little that he had not very deliberately decided upon.”
― Richard D. Smith, Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass

“Meanwhile, David Grisman, a Ralph Rinzler protege and Monroe devotee from New Jersey, was living in California and developing his own newgrassy sound, a blend of bluegrass, swing, and Jewish klezmer that he called “dawg music” (after the canine nickname bestowed on him by friend Jerry Garcia).”
― Richard D. Smith, Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass

“Gaylord immediately rehabilitated the log house, which had been allowed to become seriously dilapidated.103 The company had no plans for the property; it just wanted to make Bill comfortable. It was a Nashville-style gesture that would be unknown in New York or Hollywood.”
― Richard D. Smith, Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass

“Numerous Monroe protégés formed their own groups performing in his style. The most famous were Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, respectively the guitarist-lead vocalist and the banjo picker who were core members of the classic Blue Grass Boys lineup of the late 1940s. They left to form the tremendously successful partnership of Flatt and Scruggs & the Foggy Mountain Boys, gaining crossover fame in the 1960s by contributing music to the soundtracks of the Beverly Hillbillies television show and the movie Bonnie and Clyde.”
― Richard D. Smith, Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass

“Performing at the Sea of Galilee, a huge full moon shining behind him, he launched into “Blue Moon of Kentucky” and the crowd came to its feet. He encored seven times that night. Bill had been pleasantly surprised that Jewish Americans like Gene Lowinger, Steve Arkin, and David Grisman had become his devotees; now he was happy, indeed profoundly moved, that Israelis loved and understood his music.”
― Richard D. Smith, Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life Of Bill Monroe, Father Of Bluegrass