Word: grass
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...most vital and exciting styles in music today is something called Blue Grass Music. By a combination of misunderstandings, a lack of widespread exposure, and the uncompromising self-respect of its major proponents who have down through the years refused to be treated as commercial properties, very few people are aware (1) that the style exists, or (2) if they were, that it is still alive. This is a pity, because a healthy art form is a precious commodity in the United States today...
Describing Blue Grass Music to someone who has never heard it is all but impossible; there are a few essentials that can be pointed out. Blue Grass, although highly original, grew out of, and is a form of, American Country Music which in turn (although less so than when Blue Grass was first created) is a descendant of the traditional music brought by early settlers from England and preserved in the southern mountains. Blue Grass Music bears, both in spirit and complexity, about the same relationship to modern country music as jazz has to Tin Pan Alley pop music...
Already Bill's virtuoso mandolin style was being noticed. It wasn't long before the brothers decided to go their separate ways, Charlie and Bill starting their own groups, the Kentucky Pardners and the Blue Grass Boys, respectively. From Bill's desire to honor his home state originated the name that gradually became associated with the music played by a number of groups which resemble Bill Monroe's in instrumentation and style...
...techniques he liked, adding ideas of his own. Bill's contributions were a highly personal sense of timing and a desire to pitch both singing and music in higher keys than were prevalent at the time, giving his music a particularly intense quality. In the faster tunes of Blue Grass Music the upbeat is stressed rather than the usual 4/4 downbeat. The effect this creates is to free the music from an otherwise plodding structure, allowing amazing effects of syncopation between the instruments. Bill Monroe served as a master blender of musical styles and influences, making his music...
...first Blue Grass recording was made in 1940, the successful "Mule-skinner Blues," a tune authored by another pioneer of early country music, Jimmy Rodgers, the "Singing Brakeman." In these early days, Bill Monroe's band contained mandolin, guitar, fiddle and string bass, the last of these being the only instrument not found in traditional country music. In 1945 the Blue Grass band took the form in which it remains today, with the addition of a five-string banjo, played by Earl Scruggs in the now universal three-finger style. which bears little resemblance to the earlier "claw hammer" style...