416 PART 4 | SINCE WORLD WAR II
middle C—an intensifi cation of the blended sound of the 1930s brother duos
described in chapter 14.
Monroe and his musicians brought an uncommon blend of old and new to
country music. Audiences found the music fresh and exciting, even if the songs
looked backward in time. Asked in 1977 to defi ne his style, dubbed bluegrass in
the latter 1950s, Monroe called it “the old southern sound that was heard years
ago, many, many years ago in the backwoods, at country dances.” Elsewhere he
recalled that in writing a fi ddle tune called “Land of Lincoln” he made the piece
“go the way I thought Abraham Lincoln might have heard it—a tune like he might
have heard when he was a boy from some old-time fi ddler.” Rather than empha-
size his own innovations, Monroe’s comments invoke the mysterious, mythic
simplicity that folk traditions can preserve.
Like the records of the Carter Family a generation earlier, bluegrass was a mod-
ern representation of Appalachian folk music, reconstituted for a new audience.
Its vocal style was impersonal and stylized in the manner of Anglo-American
folk singing, and the high range favored by many singers can be traced back
to folk practices from black fi eld hollers to shape-note hymnody. The piercing
vocal timbre is a direct legacy from Bill Monroe: the “high lonesome sound”
that for many listeners has given the music’s deadpan delivery an impas-
sioned edge.
In a standard bluegrass approach that may seem paradoxical, Monroe’s “It’s
Mighty Dark to Travel” (LG 17.1) is about loneliness but is up-tempo and in major
mode. The vocal chorus, sung fi ve times, embodies the Blue Grass Boys’ signa-
ture sound: Lester Flatt’s lead vocal and Monroe’s high tenor harmony, sung
without vibrato, with a rather nasal timbre, and with perfect intonation. Behind
them, the band pours out a steady stream of picked or bowed sixteenth notes.
That stream never runs dry, whether during the verses, which Flatt sings alone,
or the mandolin’s opening statement of the eight-bar chorus melody, or the solos
played by the banjo, mandolin, and fi ddle. There are contrasts: between verses
and choruses, vocal and instrumental statements, and sections that feature dif-
ferent solo instruments. But the ensemble sound and the driving rhythm pro-
vide a compelling continuity.K Bill Monroe (1911–
1996), a key fi gure in the
founding of bluegrass
music, performs in the
1970s with the Blue Grass
Boys, consisting of his own
mandolin, plus fi ddle,
banjo, guitar, and double
bass.LG 17.1172028_17_412-439_r3_sd.indd 416 23/01/13 10:58 AM