Bill Monroe: The Life and Music of the Blue Grass Man by Tom Ewing

Author:Tom Ewing [Ewing, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, General, Music, Genres & Styles, Country & Bluegrass, History & Criticism
ISBN: 9780252041891
Google: Q9C2tQEACAAJ
Amazon: 0252041895
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 2018-09-07T00:00:00+00:00

HUTCHENS: One morning, Bill came out to the bus where I was staying and said, “Danny is coming down this morning. I was supposed to meet him at eleven o'clock to transfer his paperwork from Louisville to the [musicians’] union down here. I've got another meeting.” Bill handed me some money and said, “Give this to Danny. Tell him I think he will be a good, strong guitar man and we'll have a good duet, but he will have to shave his moustache, and he will have to cut his hair. There has never been a Blue Grass Boy with a moustache. If he wants the job, that's just the way it will have to be.” Then Bill left. (laughter) I don't mind telling you that I didn't know how I was going to say it. I had only known Dan for a week or so.

JONES: That was quite a predicament that Bill put you in. When I got there, you just said, “Dan, Bill said for you to cut your hair and shave your moustache.” (laughter)…I said…“Well, I'll do it…. I want the job and I won't let that stand between me and the job.”

Later that day, after Jones shaved off his moustache at a nearby motel, Bill returned. Jones recalled him saying, “My Uncle Pen, you know, he had a moustache, and I love a moustache, but I think you'll look better on the Opry with me if you shave that moustache.” The haircut, however, wouldn't happen for awhile.35

James put on his first festival that weekend (July 2–4) in Cosby (near Gatlinburg), Tennessee, the first multiday bluegrass festival in that state. Bill and the band were there, as well as Lester Flatt and the Nashville Grass, including Josh Graves and his Dobro. Bill had refused to accept the Dobro as a bluegrass instrument, as much for his dislike of its sound (“A Dobro, to me, sounds like a tin bucket,” he once told Rinzler) as for its role in popularizing Flatt and Scruggs's music. Now that he had “buried the hatchet” with both Flatt and Scruggs, it appears he wanted to make amends by inviting Graves to play an entire set with him. During the set, it appears Bill rediscovered an old favorite, “Evening Prayer Blues” (originally a harmonica solo DeFord Bailey recorded in 1927). Hutchens said later, “I remember Bill told the audience to imagine a colored meeting house and they would be praying, and, every now and then, saying ‘Praise the Lord.’” Dave Samuelson, future record producer, was there: “Bill and Josh traded licks on it for five or six minutes—or maybe longer. I had never before seen two musicians so naturally in synch with each other—two master bluesmen on a totally harmonious wavelength. After forty years, I still remember the magic.”36

As summer began to wane, Bill and the band spent seven days (August 2–8) at the Ohio National Blue Grass Festival in Ottawa, Ohio, and Jones still needed a haircut. On the seventh day, Bill

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