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Clan Munro USA
Genealogy Pages
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 1911 - 1996 (84 years)
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| Name |
William Smith Monroe [1] |
| Born |
13 Sep 1911 |
Rosine, Ohio Co., Kentucky, USA  |
- William was born on the family farm.
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| Gender |
Male |
| Died |
9 Sep 1996 |
Springfield, Kentucky |
| Person ID |
I30458 |
Munro |
| Last Modified |
1 May 2013 |
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| Notes |
- Ref: Clan Munro files - Stroud, Anna Margaret - newspaper clipping from
unknown newspaper of unknown date
[Note: A handwritten note on the clipping says "9-9-96 died".]
'Father of bluegrass,' Bill Monroe, dies at 84
His traditional sounds inspired fans, musicians for more than 60 years.
by Joe Edwards The Associated Press
Nashville, Tenn. -- Bill Monroe, who combined fast-picking mandolin, banjo and guitar with a "high lonesome" singing style to create the distinctly American sound known as bluegrass, died Monday. He was 84.
The "father of bluegrass" died at a hospice in Springfield, just north of country music's capital, after suffering a stroke earlier this year.
Monroe's best-known song was "Blue Moon of Kentucky,: which he wrote in 1946 and which Elvis Presley recorded in 1954 on his way to stardom. Other records included "Kentucky Waltz," "Mule Skinner Blues," "Pike County Breakdown" and "A Letter From My Darling."
As a singer, a songwriter and an instrumentalist, Monroe was a headliner around the world and was honored at the White House. He sold more than 50 million records and remained active well into his 80s, despite bouts with cancer, pneumonia and heart trouble.
"I love to play music and hear it," he said in 1989. "I love to put the sounds and notes in there that I want to hear. I want to do the best I can for my friends and fans sitting out there in the audience."
Bluegrass music relies heavily on banjos, mandolins, acoustic guitars and fiddles, with lightning-fast picking and yodeling vocal style. It gets its name from Monroe's band, the Blue Grass Boys, and the grass of his native Kentucky.
Monroe could play most of the string instruments but was best known as a mandolinist. While performing, he nearly always wore a coat and tie, with a white cowboy hat crowning his silver hair.
Monroe influenced bluegrass legends such as Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, as well as newer stars such as Ricky Skaggs and Alison Krauss.
"There's probably nobody really on the face of the Earth that ever influenced more music than Bill Monroe," Skaggs said. "In all of history, he's the biggest single influence in country music. And he didn't just influence country music, he influenced music in general." Scruggs, who started his career in Monroe's band, recalled those days as "a wonderful time."
"It was a band that really fit together," he said. "We seemed to work off each other's energy. It was a new sound for that day and time, and it's one that he's kept ever since."
Monroe hired Flatt and Scruggs in the 1940s--Flatt on guitar, Scruggs on banjo--and they became two of the most acclaimed musicians in bluegrass history. Monroe, a proud man, was said to have refused to speak to the pair for more than 20 years after they left him in the late '40s.
Monroe was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1970. He played on the Grand Ole Opry from 1939 throughout his career. He won the National Medal of the Arts in 1995.
Monroe was born near Rosine, Ky., the youngest of eight children. He learned to play after he was orphaned at 11 and taken in by his uncle Pendleton Vandiver, a talented fiddler. In tribute, Monroe wrote one of his biggest hits, "Uncle Pen," and founded the annual bluegrass gathering known as the Hall of Fame and Uncle Pen Day Festival.
He performed for several years with his brothers Birch and Charlie. He and Charlie had an early hit in 1936 with "What Would You Give (In Exchange for Your Soul)." After the two split in 1938, Charlie went on to form his own successful band, the Kentucky Pardners.
Monroe lived on a 288-acre spread in Goodlettsville, Tenn., just north of Nashville, when he wasn't on one of his almost incessant tours.
"Bluegrass has brought more people together and made more friends than any music in the world," Monroe said in 1978. "You meet people at festivals and renew acquaintances year after year."
Monroe's son, James, checked on him last week before heading for the annual bluegrass festival Monroe started at his Indiana campground, Bean Blossom. The son learned of his father's death Monday after he arrived home.
"He looked pretty good, but evidently his heart gave out," he said.
Survivors include his son and one grandson. A daughter, Melissa, died in 1990.
[Photo caption] Bill Monroe "In all of history, he's the biggest single influence in country music." --Ricky Skaggs, country singer
Ref: Clan Munro files - Stroud, Anna Margaret - newspaper clipping from
unknown newspaper of unknown date
Everyone was welcome on Bill Monroe's turf
'Father of Bluegrass' shared rural roots with players of all styles.
by Bill Graham Staff Writer
The bluegrass music Bill Monroe created is like a wild raft ride down a turbulent river in a backwoods mountain canyon--rugged, but rich with beauty.
Monroe took bluegrass music to the "high lonesome" places of the heart, and millions followed.
That's why Kansis City's bluegrass community, and the world's hip musical cats, mourns his death Monday in a Nashville suburb. He would have been 85 Friday.
Monroe was a wonderful mandolin player with a bluesy style, a soulful tenor singer and a prolific songwriter. But it was his mule-stubborn and hickory-tough love of his rural roots that helped bluegrass music survive when the entire country music genre was transformed by the rock 'm' roll tidal wave of the 1950's.
When everyone else went to electric instruments and city-smooth vocals, Monroe stuck with acoustic instruments and backroad harmonies. His Blue Grass Boys band never switched from the blend of fiddle, banjo, mandolin, acoustic guitar and acoustic bass. They were "unplugged" with an attitude decades before MTV.
Yet Monroe was the modernistic Garth Brooks-style star of the 1940s when he unleashed a band that included Lester Flatt on guitar and Earl Scruggs playing precise, rapid-fire banjo. Audiences had never heard anything like it. Monroe and company had assimilated country, folk, blues and jazz into a bouncy and improvisational new form of music that some say influenced the creation of rock 'n' roll.
Monroe always had loyal fans and a permanent place on the Grand Ole Opry.
But most of us from the baby boom generation discovered the "Father of Bluegrass" on the musical backroads.
We were drawn to the powerful emotion, energy and drive of bluegrass, like Scruggs' irrepressible freefall banjo playing on "Foggy Mountain Breakdown." The music's wide melodic scope and straightforward lyrical poetry has an old-time quality that reminds you of hills, hollers and good times down on the kinfolks' farm.
Bands like the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, the Eagles and the Grateful Dead brought bluegrass into the pop-rock arena. People who played acoustic instruments started following the bluegrass river to its musical source, and who they found at the wellspring was Monroe.
He hired the first definitive bluegrass band. Then over five more decades, Monroe employed hundreds of the best musicians that ever tuned up a fiddle or plucked a banjo. Those pickers and singers formed their own bands that made bluegrass music a beloved industry. He toured the world as its uncompromising founder.
Monroe played the White House a few times, sold more than 50 million records and was still recording and performing on-stage until a recent stroke.
Yet the man who started a style of music played worldwide was always accessible in a folksy way.
When he played at Worlds of Fun in Kansas City in the early 1980s, people sauntered up to the stage between sets to shake hands and say hello. It's the bluegrass way. Monroe was already white-haired with age and road wear. But his long, graceful fingers warmed up in the second set and nailed mandolin solos like a master. He sang with power and emotion, too.
Throughout the last decades of his career, there were times in a concert where his voice would hit notes fully and his mandolin playing would jump to a superb level. It made you realize that in his prime, he was awesome.
Monroe survived lean show-business ups and downs to watch his music branch into bluegrass festivals, record labels, magazines and World Wide Web sites. He had professional and personal clashes, which time healed and respect forgave.
In 1994 Monroe headlined Kansas City's Spirit Festival along with James Brown--the Father of Bluegrass paired with the Godfather of Soul.
He was frail but insisted before the show that he meet the fans. Monroe was driven past the crowd on a golf cart. With dignity he waved, shook hands and signed autographs.
Monroe loved the musical community that bluegrass created.
The feeling was mutual. He can never be replaced. We will miss him.
[Photo caption] Bill Monroe clowns with his mandolin in a June 1994 performance with fellow bluegrass great Earl Scruggs.
Compiled and edited by Allen Alger, Genealogist, Clan Munro Association, USA
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| Sources |
- [S856] Munro Eagle, Spring 2013. (Reliability: 3).
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