Bluegrass is a uniquely American music that, in spite of a recent rise in its popularity aided by the movie soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou?, is still widely misunderstood as an ancient and exclusively rural form. Even worse, the work of its finest practitioners–both past and present–is still not marketed and packaged as well as it could be.
The latest and best attempt at telling the bluegrass story is Can’t You Hear Me Callin’–Bluegrass: 80 Years of American Music, a four-CD, 109-track boxed set from Sony’s Columbia/Legacy imprint. Unfortunately, even though this now ranks as the best available multi-disc introduction to bluegrass, it’s still woefully inadequate. The roots and trunk of the bluegrass family tree are on full display, as are some of its more interesting leaves–but several integral branches are simply missing.
Unlike its distant cousins jazz and blues, whose origins are shrouded in pre-recording-era history, bluegrass didn’t evolve. Its creation was orchestrated by one man, and America heard it happen–just a few years before the dawn of rock and roll–courtesy of the Grand Ole Opry and, conveniently for the boxed set in question, Columbia Records.
Bill Monroe–a fast-fingered mandolin picker with an assertive tenor voice–had become a radio and recording star by teaming with his older sibling Charlie, a guitarist and lead singer, as one of the best-known country brother duets of the 1930s. Charlie and Bill split in 1938, each forming his own band, with Bill’s unexpectedly being better received. Naming them after his home state of Kentucky, Bill drove his Blue Grass Boys hard, and they secured a spot on the nationwide Opry radio program in 1939 with a hit in the form of a souped-up version of Jimmie Rodgers’s “Mule Skinner Blues.”
Monroe’s aloof personality and exacting professional standards kept his band’s roster in flux while its leader experimented with new ideas. But the big bang eventually came in 1946, shortly after Monroe hired banjoist Earl Scruggs and guitarist/lead singer Lester Flatt. Flatt’s smooth voice was a nice contrast to Monroe’s keen, but it was the dynamism of Scruggs’s three-finger banjo roll–combined with Monroe’s mandolin, Flatt’s sturdy guitar, Chubby Wise’s lightning fiddle, and Howard Watts’s jazzy bass–that made the rhythmic leap into a new, distinct musical style.
This Blue Grass Boys lineup quickly spawned dozens of imitators, most notably the Stanley Brothers, who copied the Monroe sound from records and radio performances. The copycats included even Flatt and Scruggs, who left Monroe to form their own unit in 1948. The new genre–described most accurately by one writer as “folk music in overdrive”–took hold among ex-Appalachians in industrial towns like Detroit, Dayton, and Cincinnati, as well as among their cousins back home on the farm.
It’s in telling the story up to this point that Can’t You Hear Me Callin’ is nearly flawless. Disc one starts off by establishing the musical context from which Monroe emerged with wild, fun tracks from string bands like Gid Tanner and His Skillet Lickers, Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers, and the Coon Creek Girls placed alongside the stoic beauty of the Carter Family, Roy Acuff, and the Bailes Brothers. It then shows what Monroe made of those influences, containing Monroe’s most essential 1940s sides, including his signature composition “Blue Moon of Kentucky.”
Disc two, with one glaring exception, manages to accurately represent the diverse first generation of bluegrass performers who put their own stamp on Monroe’s creation. The mournful intensity of Carter and Ralph Stanley, the polished virtuosity of Flatt and Scruggs, and the smooth harmonies of Jim and Jesse McReynolds are all here, as are nearly forgotten names like Molly O’Day, Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper, and Carl Story, whose band fused bluegrass with gospel. The unforgivable omission is that of Don Reno and Red Smiley, one of the most popular and innovative groups of the 1950s. Some of Don Reno’s mind-blowing banjo work as a solo artist and with other bands appears on discs three and four, but that just doesn’t cut it. (It’s like leaving the Who off of a history of British rock while including some solo from Pete Townshend to try and make up for it.)
On discs three and four, Can’t You Hear Me Callin’ loses focus and leaves the listener with a distorted picture of the post-1960s bluegrass landscape. It’s not that what’s included doesn’t belong–in fact, there is plenty of great music from icons like Jimmy Martin and the Osborne Brothers; bluegrass forays by country-rockers like the Byrds, Herb Pedersen, and Steve Earle; bluegrass/jazz/classical fusion from Sam Bush, Bela Fleck, Edgar Meyer, Mike Marshall, and Mark O’Connor; and compelling work from contemporary bluegrassers Alison Krauss, Ricky Skaggs, and Rhonda Vincent. The problem is that so many essential artists and bands of the last 40 years are missing.
There’s nothing from the most important bands of the 1960s (the Country Gentlemen), the 1970s (J. D. Crowe and the New South, Seldom Scene) and the 1980s (Hot Rize, the Nashville Bluegrass Band). Nothing from jam-band godfathers John Hartford, Old and in the Way, or New Grass Revival. Nothing from the high priest of gospel bluegrass, Doyle Lawson, whose band Quicksilver has served as the proving grounds for many of today’s top bands. And, incomprehensibly, nothing from the awe-inspiring Del McCoury Band–today’s best band and the most awarded group in the history of the genre–save one track backing Steve Earle.
One reason for such oversight may be that securing the rights to all those tracks–most of which are on smaller, independent labels–would simply have proved too difficult. But the fact that the entire set (especially the last two discs) skews heavily toward Sony/Columbia and its subsidiaries suggests that the label views Can’t You Hear Me Callin’ more as an opportunity to drive back catalog sales than to live up to the promise of its subtitle.
In spite of such major-label clumsiness, the bluegrass scene has never been stronger. It is still enjoying a steady rise in popularity, with growing ranks of young bands like King Wilkie and Open Road making vibrant music grafted from Monroe’s true vine.
–Aaron Keith Harris writes for Country Music Today and Bluegrass Unlimited.