An Introduction to Bluegrass by L. Mayne Smith
The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 78, No. 309, Hillbilly Issue (Jul. - Sep., 1965),pp. 245-256
L. MAYNE SMITH
AN INTRODUCTION TO BLUEGRASS [1]
THE WORD BLUEGRASS has been used since about 1950 by musicians and disc jockeys to designate a style of hillbilly music performed by bands which most commonly include bass, guitar, banjo, fiddle, and mandolin. Building on earlier string band styles, Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys played the first bluegrass music in
I945. Since that time a total of more than three hundred Southern musicians have performed regularly with about sixty commercially recorded professional and semiprofessional bluegrass bands. They call their manner of performance "bluegrass" in contradistinction to other strains of hillbilly music such as country-western, western swing, and rockabilly.
It is the purpose of this article to describe the most important musical and behavioral phenomena associated with bluegrass, concentrating first on a concise description of the music and then dealing with its stylistic derivation and physical cultural context. Bluegrass has behind it a long history of folk and hillbilly styles
of performance, and it draws from many of them. The present task, however, is to describe the contemporary style rather than to trace its historical roots. Indeed, only with detailed knowledge of separate performing traditions in folk and popular music can historical relationships between them be adequately understood. The study of musical style lies outside the perimeters of most scholarly treatments of American song. Since precise academic knowledge is lacking, a brief discussion of the stylistic influences on bluegrass will have to suffice. Similarly, the increasing significance of bluegrass in the Northern urban "folksong revival" is only peripherally treated.
Although bluegrass was built upon and has absorbed elements of other styles, it can be treated as a discrete entity. Though it may be theoretically impossible to define a musical style in logical terms, it is at least possible to specify those characteristics of a style which, taken together, distinguish it from all others. This latter task is difficult in the case of many musical styles-particularly those of nonliterate peoples-but bluegrass musicians are surrounded by music from which they are constantly distinguishing their own, and their distinctions provide important guideposts. Following the ideas of the musicians themselves, here are the defining traits of bluegrass:
1. Bluegrass is hillbilly music: it is played by professional, white, Southern musicians, primarily for a Southern audience. It is stylistically based in Southern musical traditions.
2. In contrast to many other hillbilly styles, bluegrass is not dance music and is seldom used for this purpose.
3. Bluegrass bands are made up of from four to seven male musicians who play non-electrified stringed instruments and who also sing as many as four parts.
4. The integration of these instruments and voices in performance is more formalized and jazz-like than that encountered in earlier string band styles. Instruments function in three well defined roles, and each instrument changes roles according to predictable patterns.
5. Bluegrass is the only full-fledged string band style in which the banjo has a major solo role, emphasizing melodic over rhythmic aspects. The basic bluegrass banjo style was first played by Earl Scruggs in I945 when he was one of Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys, and is named after him. Every bluegrass band includes a banjo played in "Scruggs style" or some derivative thereof.
The last three items are the most important in this list of the distinguishing characteristics of bluegrass. The instrumental and vocal composition of bluegrass bands separates the style from all but a few white gospel groups and string bands. Though the manner of ensemble integration links bluegrass with jazz-oriented hillbilly bands, it excludes almost all pre-bluegrass string bands, in which instruments seldom varied their roles. The use of Scruggs-style banjo playing serves mainly to distinguish bluegrass from the sound of the Blue Grass Boys before 1945, though it is often seen as the principal unique element of the style and is the most easily verbalized trait that distinguishes bluegrass performance from earlier string band music.
In capsule form, bluegrass is a style of concert hillbilly music performed by a highly integrated ensemble of voices and non-electrified stringed instruments, including a banjo played Scruggs-style. This skeleton description of bluegrass provides a framework for a more thorough examination of the style. Instrumentation in bluegrass bands involves various combinations of six instruments. The five-string banjo, mandolin, Spanish guitar (with steel strings), fiddle, and string bass compose the usual group. The steel guitar is denied true bluegrass status by some (who use the Blue Grass Boys as the criterion of judgment), but it has been employed more and more widely since its addition to the band of Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs in I955. This instrument, in the form used by bluegrass bands, is called the "dobro" after the brand name of an especially resonated guitar manufactured by the three Dopera brothers principally during the 1930's. [2] The Spanish guitar and banjo are the two instruments essential to the style, but at least one of the other four instruments must be added, and few bands include fewer than four musicians.
Many bluegrass bands have added drums, electric guitars, and other instruments on at least a few disc recordings. On rare occasions the autoharp, mouth harp, Jew's harp, accordion, and electric organ have also been used. The fact that such instances are much more common in the recording studio than on the performing stage suggests that the influence of recording companies is largely behind the deviations. Many musicians express disapproval of them. The addition of these extra instruments does not affect the interrelationship of the standard instruments in the ensemble; rather, it is addition without integration.
Played in bluegrass style, the instruments of the ensemble combine with each other in three distinct roles: a lead part, produced by an instrument or voice as the central melodic interest; one or several instruments which "back" the lead, contrasting with it melodically and rhythmically but never threatening its domination; and an underlying, unvarying, and sharply accented rhythmic and harmonic base. All of the instruments function at times in all three of these roles, but each tends to emphasize one or two.
The fiddle, banjo, and dobro are primarily lead instruments which also produce counter-melodies and rhythmic figures to back other lead parts. The mandolin is equally important as a lead instrument, but when not performing that role it is crucial as a percussive-sounding rhythm part: its single notes have come to be regarded as too quiet for effective backing when not very near the microphone. Not all bands include these four lead instruments, and the relative importance of each varies from group to group and from piece to piece; the banjo has most consistent prominence. The functions of the guitar and bass, on the other hand, seldom vary; both instruments are essential elements in the rhythmic background, and serve to balance the higher-pitched tonal range of the lead instruments. The guitar also takes a backing role by playing short melodic runs between major phrases of the lead parts; in some bands, the instrument has recently been employed for lead.
The overall impression produced by a bluegrass performance is one of multiple parts in continual interaction. Except when four voices are singing lead, the fiddle and banjo in a standard band usually play complex backing patterns while the guitar, bass, and mandolin maintain the rhythm; these functions are preserved when fiddle or banjo has the lead. When the mandolin is leading, the banjo tends toward a less melodic, more rhythmic function to compensate for the lack of mandolin rhythm. Without a mandolin to accent the up-beats, the banjo usually assumes a strong rhythmic role unless the band uses a dobro or second guitar to add to the background. Conversely, bands that include a dobro tend to understress or eliminate the role of one of the other lead instruments. On slower songs this may be the banjo; on fast songs, it is likely to be the mandolin. When the dobro plays lead, other instrumentalists simplify their music, since the dobro is relatively quiet and does not stand out clearly against a complex background. Sometimes lead instruments play duets; most common are double banjos or fiddles, and fiddle-banjo duos.
Just as individual instruments are chosen for their volume and brilliance of tone, bluegrass voices are typically high-pitched and tense. Singing parts sometimes reach more than an octave above middle C, and keys for songs are generally chosen to pitch voices as high as possible. There is considerable variability in vocal timbre within performances, since singers often stress the peculiar characteristics of each mountain-accented vowel sound; final consonants are often obscured. Particularly high notes may be sung in falsetto or a head-tone. The use of vibrato is rare, and most of the highly reputed singers perform in a loud and piercing fashion, not unlike shouting. A slight flatting of held pitches, rising attacks, falling releases, and grace notes are common ornamental devices. Bluegrass singing is often syncopated, with stress and durational preference given to words that receive these accents in normal speech, through never at the expense of the tempo of the song.
The combination of voices in two, three, and four parts is a salient aspect of bluegrass music and relatively rare in country-western (though duets are now becoming fairly common in the latter). The parts are called "lead," or melody; "tenor," almost invariably sung above the lead; "third," which may be sung above the lead or tenor ("high tenor") but is usually sung below both ("baritone"); and the lowest part, "bass." Voices are added to the lead in the order named, so that two-part harmony is always a combination of lead and tenor and three-part harmony is always lead, tenor, and third. These parts are conventionalized to the extent that a good singer can usually join in with songs he has not previously heard. The tenor has some flexibility in duet singing, but in three and four parts, the voices are expected to fill in all the notes of each triad in ways that predetermine their eventual pitches; at most cadential returns to the tonic chord, the lead comes to rest on the tonic pitch with the tenor a major third above him, the baritone on the fifth below, and the bass singing the tonic pitch, lowest of all. These relative levels of pitch are generally maintained with little crossing of parts. Anticipations, passing tones, and ornamental slides often create dissonances that dispel the impression of complete and predictable homophony. The occurrence of antiphony between various single voices and the other parts in many performances of religious songs is another device that adds variety.
On the level of melodic structure, bluegrass does not differ radically in most respects from Anglo-American tradition. Melodies are sometimes based on gappedpentatonic (c, d, f, g, a) scales, but most are diatonic. As in other Southern musical styles, the use of neutral thirds, fifths, and sevenths (varying between the major and minor intervals) in the context of the diatonic scale is common. Most melodies seldom go far below the tonic pitch, the occasional use of 5 or 6 below being the most common exception. The fifth tone in the diatonic scale rivals the tonic for designation as the duration tone in many songs; such melodies tend toward this pitch at mid-phrase points, returning to the well defined tonic note for final and many phrasal cadences.
Harmonic accompaniment in bluegrass most commonly involves the use of the three major triads: tonic, subdominant, and dominant, without the seventh. The most common progression of chords is I, IV, I, V, I, which is identical with the basic twelve-bar blues progression (though not always in the number of beats allotted to each chord). The relative minor of the tonic is almost the only minor chord used; it may be stated or only implied by introducing the sixth tone of the scale. In melodies that are apparently close to the gapped-pentatonic scale, the triad built on the lowered seventh degree is added to the tonic and dominant to provide harmonic backing. The progressions I, III, IV; and I, VI, II, V are sometimes used as well. Passage to the dominant chord is, in fact, often accomplished by transition through the super-tonic.
The general rhythmic traits of bluegrass are neither complex nor varied. Two basic meters are used, each at several characteristic tempos. Triple meter, used more often for ballads and religious songs, is notated best as 3/4. Duple meter can be notated either as 4/4 or 2/4, depending usually on the tempo rather than on any basic change in stress patterns. The examination of 125 bluegrass pieces performed on disc recordings by ten different bands reveals the following tempo patterns:
Triple meter: tempos most often moderate, about 115 beats per minute, or fast, about I90;
Duple meter: tempos center at points around 160, 250, and 330 beats per minute.
Though tempos in the lower range of triple meter and the middle range of duple meter are the most common, the speed of bluegrass performance as a whole is greater than that of other hillbilly styles. The impression of speed is enhanced by the use of accented up-beats in duple meter, off-beat melodic phrasing, and changes in pitch to accent the rhythm. Even at tempos of 330, banjo players play mainly eighth notes, which means that they are producing about eleven notes per second. On pieces that are used as demonstrations of virtuosity by banjoists and fiddlers, the tempo may suddenly be increased (at the end) to the point where only the down-beats or even first beats of measures are played by accompanying instruments. Some bands (notably Bill Monroe's) tend to vary tempos slightly, speeding up at the beginnings of phrases to give a subtle surging effect; this device seems largely unconscious and is difficult to gauge.
Interesting rhythmic devices are also used at the endings of many bluegrass pieces. Most slow songs, especially those in 3/4 time, end with a few measures of rubato; some songs, in fact, slow to a full stop in the middle, after which the original tempo (but sometimes a new meter and tempo) is resumed. Almost all relatively fast songs in duple meter end with a seven-beat rhythmic pattern that corresponds Introduction to Bluegrass to the "shave and a haircut-two bits" melodic cliche of nationally popular music. The phrase begins on the first beat of the measure simultaneously with the singing or playing of the last note of the melody, and ends with a heavily stressed final beat on the third pulse of the succeeding measure.
The structural form of bluegrass songs is always strophic, employing one or two large melodic units (strains), each composed of two or four phrases repeated in sequence to make up an entire piece of music. Phrases are commonly combined in such units as: a, b, a, c; a, b, b, c; and a, a', a, b. In vocal pieces, one of these units is usually the setting for the stanzas, and another for a textual burden which follows each stanza. Instrumental pieces sometimes have three major units instead of the usual two, and may involve one strain of indeterminate length, performed as an improvisatory solo passage by the fiddle while the other instruments keep up a constant rhythmic background on a single chord.
Pieces are performed with voices and lead instruments taking turns at the melody part or some variation upon it. Usually there are about eight repetitions of the full two-unit sequence in each piece; most lyric songs, for example, involve four vocal passages interspersed with solo passages from three lead instruments. The vocal sections are often divided between solos for the stanzas and harmony singing for the burdens. Pieces usually last about two and one half minutes; the earlier time limitations of ten-inch 78 rpm discs probably caused the development of this pattern, which is seldom broken.
The textual characteristics of bluegrass songs are not as distinctive as the musical style in which they are performedb, ut they deserves ome attentiona s we move away from strictly musical analysis. In subject matter, texts range widely through the kinds of emotion and situation dealt with in Anglo-American folksong-religious experience, love, and death. In religious songs, existence is generally pictured as a vale of tears; the dead have passed on to a better lot and death itself is a time of reward for earthly misery. Lyric songs usually express sorrow or anger over the loss of a lover, but many bewail the singer's nostalgia for his rural home or parents. This latter type of song derives from earlier popular and hillbilly material, but today is more common in bluegrasst han in any others tyle; religious themes are often mixed with such nostalgic ones. Similarly, the relatively few light-hearted songs usually celebrate joy in religious experience or the memory of life "back home" in the mountains.
The most common subject of ballads is violent death, in which a love relationship is usually involved: one lover kills another, or his rival, or commits suicide when rejected. The theme of impending execution or a lifetime in prison as punishment for murder is a common correlative. The texts determine the identities of songs, since a large number of different songs have nearly identical tunes. (An informal count discloses over a hundred bluegrass songs that have at least one close tune-mate; many have more than five.) Yet the literal meanings of texts have relatively little importance to many bluegrass musicians. Interest focuses most often on the music to which the text is set and on the instrumentala nd vocal approachu sed. Musiciansg enerallyc onsidert he mood suggested by the text in order to develop an appropriate musical treatment, but not often the poetic qualities of the words. It is indicative that many musicians can play and admire-dozens of songs to which they cannot sing the texts. It is also significant that, as with most hillbilly styles, bluegrass texts are categorized only according to whether they are sacred or secular, serious or comic. The scholar's distinction between traditional and non-traditional items, and between ballads and non-ballads, is generally
ignored and seldom made explicit.
About a fifth of bluegrass pieces derives from Anglo-American folk tradition and have become a part of the repertoire either through the folk background of musicians or through performances by non-bluegrass hillbilly groups. Since traditional pieces are more widely known and less bound by copyright laws than non-folk items, they tend to be repeated more than others. Though almost all bluegrass ballads derive from folk tradition, instrumental tunes and lyric songs, more common than ballads in the repertoire, are also the most common types of borrowed folk items. Among the ballads, most are of broadside origin and were first sung in the United States. Negro tradition is only slightly represented in the borrowing of specific items. Other songs are written by bluegrass musicians, who often adapt traditional tunes and words.
Some of the songs are drawn from other hillbilly styles and still others come under the heading of nineteenth century middle-class parlor songs. The relative importance of these various song sources differs from band to band. The more affluent a band is, the more likely it is to avoid recording songs that other performers have already issued. This restriction does not hold for the public performances of most bands. Taking performance patterns as a whole, bluegrass shares more stylistic traits with folk tradition than any other well defined category of hillbilly music now produced in quantity. Anglo- and Afro-American traditional styles have laid down the lines followed by bluegrass melodies, harmonic accompaniment, and phrasal organization. Bluegrass vocal style owes much to traditional ballad- and psalmsinging. Part singing derives from shape-note polyphony filtered through earlier stages of hillbilly music, and has also been influenced by Negro gospel performers. [3]Negro performance patterns are also represented in the use of blues tonality and song structure.
On the other hand, bluegrass clearly shows stylistic links with Northern popular music and jazz. The marked rhythmic stress of the up-beat, the use of improvised solos whereby single musicians dominate the total sound, and the general pattern of ensemble integration are at base African musical practices; but they have reached bluegrass through jazz, at least partially with the mediation of western swing, a hillbilly style that was flourishing in the early 1940's when bluegrass was being developed. Since I955 some bluegrass bands have been reflecting developments in country-western music, particularly of electric Spanish and steel guitar styles; exchanges in song repertoire occur as well. In the past several years, both the repertoire and the pop-based style of some "folksong" groups have been drawn upon by a few bluegrass bands.
Examined in cultural context, the commercial, popular nature of the style grows even more evident. Bluegrass was developed by professional musicians, and professional musicians are the ones who define and change the music in their paid performances. The style requires a degree of instrumental virtuosity and a type of ensemble integration seldom found among folk musicians in the United States. Though the composition of the bands derives partly from amateur and semiprofessional square dance ensembles, the basic performing tradition behind bluegrass is that of medicine shows, radio programs, and disc recordings. In these contexts, singing, performances of religious songs, showmanlike "arrangements," and very fast tempos have always been more important musical features than with rural dance bands.
At the same time, bluegrass is closely related to folk tradition on an extra-musical level. Unlike many performers of art, urban-popular, and country-western music, bluegrass musicians very seldom employ written music notation and have not developed a technical jargon to describe the sounds they produce. They learn their music aurally, whether from radio broadcasts, disc recordings, or personal contact. Though commercial discs permit bands to imitate past performances closely, both conscious and unconscious improvisation account for a considerable amount of variation, even between supposedly identical renditions of pieces. Thus, if transmission is not always oral (from mouth to ear), bluegrass nevertheless shares with folk tradition the elements of aural communication and relatively informal modes of repetition and change. [4]
Furthermore, bluegrass musicians are in constant contact with folk tradition. Over ninety per cent of the professional musicians are Southerners and about eighty per cent are Appalachian-bred; most of them carry numerous traditional items. Not only are many professional bluegrass performances carried to rural audiences by records, radio, and personal appearances, but amateur bands are found in many communities where folk tradition is still an important part of musical culture.
A general treatment of the cultural context of any musical phenomenon is ultimately concerned with the individual musicians whose experiences and attitudes determine and thus explain the nature of their products. While it would be impossible to discuss each prominent bluegrass musician, a brief history of the four most renowned bands can give considerable insight into the bluegrass style and lead the way to broader cultural considerations.
The dominating figure in bluegrass is Bill Monroe, who was born in Rosine, Kentucky, in 1911. His mother and her brother, a fiddler named Pen Vandever, were both accomplished musicians who taught Monroe much of his early music; he was also influenced by a Negro fiddler and guitar player named Arnold Shultz; and he learned shape-note polyphony at local singing-school gatherings. By 1925 Monroe was traveling around the countryside with his uncle accompanying him on the guitar at country dances, but about this time he began to concentrate on the mandolin as his major instrument. [5]
In the 1930's Monroe played mandolin professionally with his guitar-playing older brother, Charlie, and the duo became well known throughout the South. In many ways the pair was similar in style and repertoire to the equally well known Blue Sky Boys (Bill and Earl Bolick). Nevertheless, special characteristics of Bill Monroe's music stood out already in this period: his technical virtuosity on the mandolin, the unusual speed and drive of his rhythm, and the high, tense vocal quality he achieved singing tenor over his brother's lead. The influence of Monroe Brothers recordings on bluegrass repertoire and style has been strong. In 1938 the brothers stopped performing together and Bill formed his own band, the Blue Grass Boys. This group has been gradually changing in composition and sound ever since, but the I945 band was the first to include all the key traits of bluegrass style; since I945, Monroe has only augmented, rather than relinquished or greatly modified, the essential performance patterns of his band, though the personnel has changed scores of times.
The new and crucial element in the I945 band was the banjo playing of Earl Scruggs, of Shelby, North Carolina, who came to the Blue Grass Boys with little professional experience. While with Monroe, Scruggs refined a style that modified earlier three-fingered (thumb, index, middle) banjo-picking methods to attain greater speed, clarity, and melodic flexibility. [6]
Other instrumental innovations were the flowing, often bluesy and sometimes swiftly moving melodic lines of the fiddle player, Chubby Wise, and the strong, clear bass runs of the guitarist, Lester Flatt, of Sparta, Tennessee. As with Scruggs's banjo playing, the instrumental approaches of these two musicians coupled with the increasingly choppy and jazz-like mandolin of Monroe to become basic to the developing style.
Flatt, a musician with some professional background, often sang the solo lead with the Blue Grass Boys. As time went on, however, Monroe came to pitch his voice higher and sing most of the solos himself. The salient feature of the vocal sound of the early band was the high harmony singing, with Monroe on the tenor above Flatt. In I948 Flatt and Scruggs left Monroe to form their own band, the Foggy Mountain Boys, which has become the most popular and financially successful of all bluegrass groups. Their music was based on Monroe's, but the mandolin soon took a less important solo role until, in 1962, it was dropped entirely in favor of a second guitar. [7]
In 1955, the Foggy Mountain Boys added a dobro guitar played by Buck Graves. The instrument had been common in the hillbilly music of the I930's and, in its electrified (pedal steel) form, in the later country-western music. It now became a part of bluegrass style, emphasizing a more relaxed, less "hot" approach which was further reflected in the increasing smoothness and lower pitch of Flatt's singing and the greater importance of slow and moderately paced tunes in the Foggy Mountain Boys' repertoire. Even with these changes, it is clear that the music of Flatt and Scruggs derives directly from the Blue Grass Boys, conforms to what most bluegrass musicians accept as the essentials of the style, and must therefore be considered a part of bluegrass. Many of the younger bluegrass musicians, in fact, are now more influenced by Flatt and Scruggs than by Bill Monroe.
Ralph and Carter Stanley began playing together professionally over Norton, Virginia, radio in 1946. By 1948 the Stanley Brothers and the Clinch Mountain Boys (the band being named after the brothers' home region in Virginia) were approximating the sound of the Blue Grass Boys. Though Ralph had learned from Scruggs's banjo playing while the brothers were living in Nashville, Tennessee, and Carter was to play guitar for Monroe briefly in I95I, they were less bound by the personal influence of Monroe than Flatt and Scruggs, and thus may be said to have made bluegrass a proper style rather than a "sound" played by a single band and its direct offshoot. The harmony singing of the Clinch Mountain Boys came to place new emphasis on trios, and has been much emulated by other musicians.[8] The group has close stylistic links with pre-bluegrass string band music, and a high proportion of traditional songs in its repertoire. Since about I960 the band has often performed with a second lead guitar instead of a mandolin.
Soon after Flatt and Scruggs left the Blue Grass Boys, a young South Carolina banjoist, Don Reno, joined the band. Monroe has usually encouraged his musicians to imitate the styles and even the most successful recorded solos of their predecessors, and thus Reno played much as Scruggs had done. In 1951, however, Reno left Monroe and joined with Red Smiley, a guitarist and lead singer from Asheville, North Carolina, forming a band which now rivals the Blue Grass Boys and the Flatt and Scruggs group in reputation. Reno's banjo style began to incorporate rhythmic and harmonic ideas from western swing electric guitar and electric steel guitar, and the band has emphasized unusually polychordal instrumentals led by Reno and fiddler Mac Magaha. The group is called the Tennessee Cutups, and earns its name by presenting some of the most elaborate comedy routines among bluegrass acts. Since performances have also included an electric-guitar player who sings in country-western style and Reno's virtuoso exhibitions as a lead guitarist, the Tennessee Cutups are one of the most diversified bluegrass bands in business.
No account of influential bluegrass musicians can fail to mention several other individuals who have introduced innovations that appear to be permanent additions to the style, such as Jesse McReynolds, whose mandolin playing with a single straight pick vaguely approximates Scruggs-style banjo; Sonny Osborne, whose banjo playing has increasingly used elements of pedal-steel guitar from country-western music and whose singing with his brother Bobby similarly reflects the smoothness and flowing quality of country-western style; and William (Brad) Keith, a Boston-bred banjoist whose sojourn with the Monroe band (1963) marked the new importance of the North to bluegrass and introduced a banjo style in which nearly every note had a melodic as well as rhythmic and harmonic relationship to the others.
This short discussion of the most influential bluegrass musicians indicates both the varying emphases placed on different aspects of the style and the decisive role of Bill Monroe in the development of bluegrass. Nearly all of the musicians named above, as well as Jimmy Martin, Mac Wiseman, and members of other important bands such as the Country Gentlemen, the Lonesome Pine Fiddlers, and the Kentucky Colonels-all of these have worked with Bill Monroe for varying periods of time. Monroe himself consciously acknowledges this tutorial function, as do most of his alumni.
Just as the interrelationships of bands and musicians indicate much about bluegrass style, so also do the economic, social, and physical conditions under which the music is performed. Though bluegrass has established its viability through about twenty years of existence, financial reward for bluegrass musicians is not generally substantial. The major bands cited above are the only Southern bluegrass groups whose members can even hope to live exclusively on their earnings as musicians. The great majority of bluegrass musicians hold non-musical jobs of all kinds, mainly bluecollar, and look up to the fortunate few who can live by their music-making.
One of the main sources of income is the commercial recording industry. But hillbilly records in general account for only five to fifteen per cent of total national record sales, and bluegrass recordings, though in many cases they sell steadily and lose popularity slowly, comprise only a small proportion of the hillbilly segment of the market. A July, 1964, compendium of the active sales lists of all but the most peripheral recording companies in the hillbilly field includes about 350 separate performing groups, but only about 30 bluegrass bands. Between January, I945, and September, 1964, only twelve bluegrass recordings placed on the weekly listings of the "top ten" hillbilly hits.
Though the South is far above the nation as a whole in sales of bluegrass records, only a small percentage of the people in any locality can be expected to pay to see or hear bluegrass. Most of the best known bands are therefore situated near large urban centers in the South. No single city, however, can fully support a band that makes only personal appearances, and most of the important bands therefore have heavy schedules of radio and television shows. These are often taped for distribution in many areas, and generally are presented early in the morning when the rural population is a significant proportion of the listening audience. Occasional or weekly appearances on large evening shows similar to the Grand Ole Opry (broadcast from WSM, Nashville, Tennessee) can be important sources of income and publicity.
Though personal appearances are usually less lucrative than time spent in recording or radio-television performance, they are necessary as a further source of publicity and income. Some bands, usually the least successful, play regularly in bars and road houses. County fairs and programs sponsored by various local organizations are further occasions for bluegrass shows. Bands' agents arrange for performances at school auditoriums, outdoor bandstands, and race tracks throughout the South and lower Midwest. In recent years bluegrass bands have performed for audiences in large Northern cities and universities as well. Such appearances, which often necessitate constant traveling by car or private bus, augment income from records and radio and help to provide the rather meagre pay of most bluegrass musicians.
Wherever bluegrass bands perform, one factor, the microphone, is nearly always present. In the outdoor bandstand, the auditorium, and the recording studio, most of the audience must hear each instrument and voice through the microphone or not at all. An important part of any bluegrass musician's skill is his ability to maintain the proper relationship, spatially and thus aurally, with the rest of the band and the microphone. A bluegrass band carefully gears its movements and its music to the microphone, and its techniques of integrating voices and instruments as a unified ensemble depend on the use of that device, for without the microphone to give it prominence, the lead part cannot stand out.
Of all the various scenes of bluegrass performances, the most fitting and common seem to be the outdoor park bandstands. These showplaces share some traits with the settings of religious revival meetings and early traveling medicine shows. They are large tracts of land which provide parking areas, roofed stages, and sometimes large, barnlike structures to hold audiences on rainy days. Shows are usually given on Sunday afternoons and evenings during the late spring, summer, and early fall. Families pay approximately one dollar per person to come and spend the day, eating picnic meals or buying food at stands between shows. The performances usually involve several bands and singers representing different branches of hillbilly music and different degrees of polish. To head the bill there is often a well known performer from Nashville, the center for hillbilly music.
When a bluegrass band goes on stage, the leader introduces each musician, and the music quickly begins. Usually, songs follow one another with little talk between them, except when pre-set comedy routines are allowed to interrupt. The band's business is clearly to play music. The first songs performed are often the ones the band has recently recorded. Then follows a selection of the most popular of the group's older songs; some bands, like Monroe's, proceed entirely from this point by answering shouted and written requests from the audience. After they leave the stage, band members often sell record albums and song folios or souvenir programs which contain photographs and song texts. They sign autographs and pose for pictures with those who ask these favors. After the crowd has thinned out following the afternoon show, musicians-local and visiting, good and bad, bluegrass and rockabilly-form groups to experiment with new ideas, show off, renew old musical pleasures, and compare instruments (which have an important prestige;function) until the next show goes on stage.
Within the almost ritually consistent framework of such scenes of bluegrass performance, elements of varying cultural derivation can be observed. Flood-lit stages, public address systems, special costuming, and sales pitches are all a part of the pattern. But with bluegrass performances there is less conscious showmanship than in other kinds of hillbilly acts, and dress is usually more subdued. Though the status positions are held by the performing musicians, particularly band leaders, there are few overt manifestations of this fact. The participants, be they general audience, special aficionados of bluegrass, or professional musicians members of essentially the same, rural-and-blue-collar, Southern-based social group.
This is much less true of country-western music, to which the glamour of Hollywood and million-dollar incomes has become attached. Similarly in contrast with country-western performances, few women participate. The value of the music itself, rather than the personalities of the performers, is primarily affirmed. Applause greets the start of a well known song, as well as its conclusion; and the audience claps at the beginnings of instrumental solos and harmony passages rather than at the ends, indicating its anticipation of the renewal of old pleasures, rather than a considered appreciation for a unique solo just completed. An informal atmosphere predominates, in which the shouts of playing children and joking youths, raucous applause, and casual conversation during performance are usual. Thus is maintained the aura of a gathering of peers ("friends and neighbors") for the sharing of musical and social pleasures common to all and based in a long cultural past.
From both musical and extra-musical evidence, bluegrass is a nexus of many different cultural factors. Since about the turn of this century, four wars and the often traumatic processes of industrialization and urbanization have swiftly displaced millions of Southerners both geographically and culturally, and there has been increasing economic and political pressure upon the South to conform to Northern urban ways of living. Bluegrass is both a symptom of and a reaction against this pressure. Like Southern culture as a whole, hillbilly music has moved away from its traditional origins and increasingly incorporated elements of national popular music.
As Paul Ackerman has noted, More and more, the so-called traditional country singer has become a victim of the rockabilly-the archetype of which is [Elvis] Presley.... Instead of the sour sounding fiddles and guitars, there are lush violin arrangements.... Pop-styled vocal choruses are also commoni n recordsb y present-dayc ountrya rtists. [10]
Since 1945 there has been a steady reduction of non-electrified hillbilly string music available over the air and on disc recordings. Of this diminishing amount of tradition-oriented music, bluegrass has come to comprise a dominant proportion. Fewer than half of the non-electrified professional hillbilly groups recording regularly today are non-bluegrass; and this minority is divided among a number of styles and individual approaches that, unlike bluegrass, are clearly receding in commercial importance.
Thus bluegrass has acted as a decisive agent for the preservation in commercially viable form of musical performance values that have hardly survived in the rest of hillbilly music. The jazz-like rhythmic elements and ensemble integration of bluegrass function as a vehicle for the continued use of small non-electrified string groups, relatively simple harmonies, traditional vocal styles and repertoire. Bluegrass thus represents a reaction against the movement of hillbilly music-and perhaps of Southern culture-away from the traditions of rural Appalachia; and the appeal of bluegrass, its means of livelihood, must partially derive from this negative role.
In any case, the musicians are fully aware that their music is less akin to the music of national mass culture than other hillbilly styles, and, of course, that it is less popular and financially successful. Yet they take pride in being bluegrass musicians, and have adopted a set of esthetic standards distinctly their own. They rejoice in the increasing popularity of their style, not only because it enhances their opportunities for making money, but also because they identify closely with the kind of music they play. Whether or not the musicians are conscious of being engaged in rebellion, preservation, or adaptation in performing bluegrass, they clearly feel a need to uphold and affirm their special performance standards. Such attitudes have been implicitly expressed by Bill Monroe:
A lot of the people down on the Grand Ole Opry kid me about bluegrass. They tell it to me . . . like I really started something .. ., when I started bluegrass, that can't be stopped. I'm really proud of the bluegrass music, and I'm glad to see people play it. You always play it the best way you can. Play it good and clean and play good melodies with it, and keep perfect time. It takes really good timing with bluegrass music, and it takes some good high voices to really deliver it right. [11]
NOTES
1. This article is partially drawn from an unpublished master's thesis, "Bluegrass Music and Musicians: an Introductory Study of a Musical Style in its Cultural Context" (Indiana University, I964), in which many of the points found here are elaborated. Portions of the article have appeared as "Bluegrass as a Musical Style," Autoharp: Organ of the Campus Folksong Club of the University of Illinois III, 3 (February 8, 1963), n.p. I owe considerable thanks to Alan P. Merriam and Neil V. Rosenberg for advice and encouragement.
2. John Duffey, "The Dobro," The Country Gentlemen Song Book (n.d.), 2.
3. Gilbert Chase, America's Music from the Pilgrims to the Present (New York, I955), 22-40, 183-206. Charles Seeger, "Contrapuntal Style in the Three-Voice Shape-Note Hymns," Musical Quarterly XXVI, 4 (October, 1940), 483-93.
4. See Charles Seeger, "Oral Tradition in Music," Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore Mythology and Legend, Volume II (New York, I950) 825-829; especially 826, 828.
5. Ralph Rinzler, "Bill Monroe-'The Daddy of Blue Grass Music'," Sing Out! XIII, (February- March 1963), 5-8.
6. The question of how much of "Scruggs style" is actually Scruggs is thorny. American Banjo "Scruggs" Style, ed., Ralph Rinzler, Folkways Record FA 2314, presents much relevant data.
7. Flatt and Scruggs added a mandolin again for a brief period in the summer of 1964.
8. Neil V. Rosenberg suggested to me the points that the Stanley Brothers made bluegrass a full-fledged style and created new interest in trio singing; he also provided information about Ralph Stanley's relation to Earl Scruggs.
9. Billboard (November 2, I963), Section Two, go9; The Billboard Enclyclopedia of Music, Eighth Annual Edition: 1946-1947, Volume One, 548-550; The I965 Country Music Who's Who, ed., Thurston Moore (Denver, Colorado, I964), Part Three, 1-22.
10. Paul Ackerman, "What Has Happened to Popular Music," High Fidelity VIII, 6 (June, 1958), 108. ii. Transcribed from a tape of a live performance at Worchester, Massachusetts, November 1, I963.