Bill Monroe Album Guide Video

Classic Rock and Roots

William Smith Monroe was an American mandolinist, singer, and songwriter who created the bluegrass music genre. Because of this, he is often called the "Father of Bluegrass  The genre takes its name from his band, the Blue Grass Boys, who named their group for the bluegrass of Monroe's home state of Kentucky. He described the genre as "Scottish bagpipes and ole-time fiddlin'. It's Methodist and Holiness and Baptist. It's blues and jazz, and it has a high lonesome sound.

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00:00Bill Monroe is among the most important figures in the history of country music,

00:06and it was Monroe who almost single-handedly invented bluegrass music.

00:11He is known as the father of bluegrass, and the music bears the nickname of his home state,

00:18Kentucky, the Bluegrass State. Monroe was born in Rosene, Kentucky, in 1913.

00:24Bill Monroe was one of the finest mandolin players in country music,

00:28and it was his mastery of this instrument that has made the mandolin a mandatory part of every bluegrass band.

00:38Monroe's love of the blues and gospel music, and his high-pitched singing,

00:43became signature elements of the bluegrass genre, and would later become a requirement of that genre.

00:50Bill Monroe and his longtime backing band, the Bluegrass Boys,

00:55recorded songs that are now bluegrass and country music standards.

01:01Tunes such as New Mule Skinner Blues, Heavy Traffic Ahead, Uncle Penn, In the Pines,

01:10Working on a Building, and I Saw the Light.

01:14Monroe wrote, and was the first to record, the classic song, Blue Moon of Kentucky,

01:19a song which would later become one of Elvis Presley's first hits with Sun Records during the emergence of rock and roll.

01:28In recognition of his influence on early rockers, Monroe was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997.

01:37Monroe died in Springfield, Kentucky in 1996.

01:41Monroe's best recordings include the albums Knee Deep in Bluegrass, from 1958,

01:50Bean Blossom, from 1973,

01:53The Essential Bill Monroe and His Bluegrass Boys, 1945-1949, from 1992,

02:00and The Music of Bill Monroe, from 1936-1994, from 1994.

02:08Monroe's best recordings of the album from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014.

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