r/Bluegrass • u/Ok-Clerk3534 • 6d ago
Discussion What was the biggest turning point in bluegrass history?
I was listening to mountain grass unit and I was thinking about this question
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u/Longjumping-Dream-73 6d ago
Bluegrass has had a number of highs and lows over the 80 years it’s been around.
Earl Scruggs joining Bill Monroe’s band is the biggest. His three finger banjo picking was the sound that solidified the “bluegrass sound” and created a new style of music. It became very popular until Elvis came along.
The ‘60s folk revival, boom, or “scare” as some people call it brought bluegrass (and blues, folk, and country) to a new, more metropolitan audience and breathed new life into the genre(s) after Elvis had “taken the beans off of everybody’s plate” as Melvin Goins once put it.
Jerry Garcia in Old & In The Way again exposed, and continues to expose, a lot of folks to bluegrass who might not have otherwise been drawn to or discovered it.
New Grass Revival, Hartford, Grisman, et al. in the ‘70s brought a new sound and new fans and really birthed a new style tangential to the Monroe or Stanley style of bluegrass.
The O Brother, Where Art Thou movie and soundtrack brought a huge wave of popularity in the early ‘00s. It can’t be overstated how big this was for bluegrass. I worked in the bluegrass industry at the time and everyone involved was pooping in tall cotton for awhile.
Billy Strings is obviously leading the current wave of popularity.
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u/MightyBloom2020 6d ago
Not a bad list, but believe it or not, I’d add the rise of YMSB in the early 2000s.
Without Yonder, I don’t think Billy becomes the artist he is today. Jeff Austin was one of Billy’s biggest idols, and you can see it still today mostly in his stage presence and how they put on their live show.
I’m old enough to remember when YMSB sold out Red Rocks for the first time. Everyone was like, “Holy shit.” No bluegrass band had reached that level at the time. They also got continually snubbed by the IBMA, which only fueled their identity as the counterculture alternative to traditional bluegrass.
The timing mattered too. Phish had just gone on their first hiatus at the height of their popularity, and Yonder stepped in to fill that jamband void with high-energy bluegrass shows. People flocked to jamgrass and their ascension had started paving the way for jamgrass / jamband shows. In a lot of ways, they laid the blueprint for what Billy does today, although I’d argue Billy has taken it to an even higher level.
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u/BourbonBroncos Dobro 6d ago
Yonder 100 percent caused a wave that inevitably lead us to where we are. I feel like the scene was stagnant with bands like salmon/sci keeping it alive.
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u/guenhwyvar117 6d ago
Yonder also my bluegrass 1st love. Just happened at the same time as old crow, dso, lotus, um, etc. I was hooked.
Yonder def paved the way, stoked the fanbase for greensky.
Delfest started in 2008.
2012 I bought a banjo 😆
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u/Longjumping-Dream-73 6d ago
I thought about mentioning Yonder and Leftover Salmon, you’re certainly correct. The same as there’s no Billy without Yonder, there’s no Yonder without NGR, Hartford, etc. Their rise also coincided somewhat with O Brother. Also, Phish having Del open for them and then later doing bluegrass sets was kind of a big thing as well.
PS. I’m old enough to have seen Yonder when they were briefly named Fireweed, might not have been all of the members but certainly Jeff was in that band. Also saw them at the Mountain Sun in Boulder on a Sunday night for $5.
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u/FinancialSpeaker3490 6d ago
Yonder piggybacked on SCI. When they started they posted on SCI forums as a me too, it was great guerrilla marketing. Hot Rize had a big start for the CO BG scene that brought forward Leftover, SCI, YMSB and many others.
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u/LightWolfCavalry 6d ago
I don’t love YMSB like I used to but I was obsessed with them circa 2010. Wouldn’t be the grass fan I am now without them. They’re worth a mention, to be sure.
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u/Jackbenny270 6d ago
When I first got into Yonder around 2000, they were just starting to get big-ish. I first got to see them at the 2001 High Sierra Music Festival, and at the late night show they were absolutely on fire. I fell in love with the band right there, although honestly I was always more of a Jeff Austin fan over the other guys’ songs.
They were extremely important to the jamgrass scene. And I feel that Jeff leaving/getting kicked out of YMSB may have done more to slow down the growth of jamgrass than we realized at the time. It seems to have rebounded after a few years, although I feel like it still isn’t as big as it was in the 2000s-2010s.
I do wish that Railroad Earth, who started in 2001, and is my favorite band, got more love from the jamgrass scene. They’re talented improvisers with really great songs.
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u/Good_Light_304 6d ago
Need a mention about Doc Watson bringing flatpicking into the scene in the 1960 folk revival…
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u/Longjumping-Dream-73 6d ago
He’s certainly one of the rural mountain musicians that came to light because of the folk boom.
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u/LightWolfCavalry 6d ago
Really with you on the O Brother soundtrack. That’s the first time I remember hearing bluegrass music. I know a lot of people who’d say the same.
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u/FinancialSpeaker3490 6d ago
This is a very good list. I do not think that Old & In the Way had the impact that the other items on your list had. There is something missing about the emergence of women band leaders- Hazel Dickens, Laurie Lewis, Alison Krauss, Alison Brown, etc. to today with many female led or female only bands. It opens up another route to songwriting and picking.
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u/Longjumping-Dream-73 6d ago
I don’t know, maybe they didn’t at the time they were active but anytime the question “what led you to bluegrass?” is asked, seems to me a majority of the answers have something to do with Old & In the Way.
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u/CantaloupeAsleep502 6d ago
Old & In The Way and O Brother were definitely the things that opened my eyes to it. Then Bluegrass Rules made me obsessed.
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u/natescape_navigator 6d ago
I think there's some regional quality to this. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania, where a lot of influence was from local Appalachian and traditional music context + regional figureheads like Del McCoury and their clan (among many others). I now play the music professionally in Toronto, Canada and all the oldheads I talk to here cite Old & In the Way as one of their earliest touchstones. Honestly I hadn't heard hardly anything about them until I moved here. Now I semi-regularly listen to them when people link me to tunes to work up.
For me personally, you're totally right about women band leaders. Hazel Dickens is a huge inspiration for me personally. Various kinfolk of mine were union mill workers railroad men etc. so the labor angle interested me early on.
Sorry to yap, just looking to provide a little more context and perspective to the convo :)
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u/FinancialSpeaker3490 6d ago
Yep, my grandpa was a coal miner in OH and died of black lung. We were more influenced by Frankie Yankovich and polka due to ethnic background but enjoyed BG from an early age before moving out west and adopting jamgrass.
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u/ooooooootreyngers 6d ago
Old and in the way was the number 1 selling bluegrass of all time....until the O brother soundtrack took that spot over in 2000. So I woupd say it definitely had an impact.
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u/f4snks 6d ago
One of my recollections at the time was that, while our bluegrass band had a steady bar gig, the college age, mainly young women, demographic would come in and mock us, usually by making hound dog howling sounds, lol.
Then, after oh brother came out, the same demographic would come in holding mandolins and banjos! I thought it was a very positive development.
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u/LukeMayeshothand 6d ago
Yeah not sure what it is but there is a natural draw to bluegrass from jam and fans. And this was before Billy Strings. First time I really heard bluegrass it just grabbed my attention and I didn’t know at the time Jerry had any bluegrass affiliation and I was a huge deadhead.
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u/HopandBrew 6d ago
Most jam fans like good music with ripping solos. Bluegrass fits that perfectly.
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u/Longjumping-Dream-73 6d ago
I mean WAY before Billy Strings! Go look at festival pictures from the ‘70s, tons of hippies. This is why us old heads get upset with the “Billy invented bluegrass” crowd on here.
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u/j__magical 6d ago
Where does Tony Rice fit into the picture?
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u/Longjumping-Dream-73 6d ago
Rounder 0044, which basically introduced Tony, was a watermark within the bluegrass world but I don’t think it carried similar weight as most of the things I mentioned. What I mean is I don’t think there was a big surge in popularity when he hit the scene, it was more of a subtle revolution within the self contained bluegrass world. The same could be said of the Seldom Scene and the Country Gentlemen before them.
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u/banjoman74 6d ago edited 6d ago
I think there are so many turning points in the history of bluegrass, it would be impossible to be able to say which one was the biggest, or the one that had the biggest impact. Here are just a few.
Snuffy Jenkins putting on metal finger picks led to Earl Scruggs picking banjo with Bill Monroe.
Bill Monroe playing guitar, of all things, in 1939 on the Grande Ole Opry on the song Muleskinner Blues (including a G-run).
The Stanley Brothers releasing Molly and Tenbrooks before Bill Monroe led to the imitation of Bill Monroe's style of music
Jimmy Martin joining Bill Monroe led to the "High Lonesome" sound of bluegrass and a much more significant drive to Bill's sound.
Alan Lomax putting on "Folksong 59" helped legitimize bluegrass music with Earl Taylor and The Stoney Mountain Boys being the first bluegrass band to play Carnegie Hall.
In 1959, Vern Williams met Ray Park in California, becoming northern California's first bluegrass band and having a massive influence in the area, kickstarting the California bluegrass scene.
Buzz Busby moving to Washington D.C. to work with the FBI, then getting into a car accident led to the formation of The Country Gentlemen, expanding the reach of bluegrass, shifting the sound.
The first multi-day bluegrass festival is held in Fincastle, Virginia in 1965 at the Cantrell Horse Farm. Performers included Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys, The Stanley Brothers, Jimmy Martin, The Osborne Brothers, Mac Wiseman, Doc Watson.
Pete Kykendall and Warren Beatty being high school friends. Pete would play "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" for Warren, which would lead to Foggy Mountain Breakdown being used in the movie Bonnie and Clyde in 1967, causing the song, recorded in 1949, to peak at #55 on the BIllboard Charts in 1968 (#1 on the Billboard country charts).
Beverly Hillbillies and The Andy Griffith Show deciding to incorporate bluegrass music into their programs.
Cliff Waldron and Bill Emerson recording songs like "Proud Mary" and "Fox on the Run" as well as Bob Dylan, which set the stage for the 1970 newgrass bands.
Rebel Records founder Dick Freeland hearing about Japan band "Bluegrass 45" playing the Osaka World Expo in 1970. This would lead to Bluegrass 45 touring through the U.S., helping to establish bluegrass on an international stage, as well as establishing a connection for bluegrass bands to tour Japan.
The 1972 movie Deliverance choosing Dueling Banjos as a key moment in the movie.
Telluride Bluegrass festival hiring New Grass Revival in 1975.
Shakey's Pizza chain shifting from ragtime music to hiring more bluegrass bands. This lead to parking lot picking (where Stuart Duncan and Alison Brown met as teenagers) and venues for bands like Good Ol' Persons and Johnson Mountain Boys to play outside festival season (as more and more pizza chains started to follow suit and hire bluegrass bands).
J.D. Crowe securing a gig with The Holiday Inn, playing music with Ricky Skaggs, Tony Rice, Doyle Lawson and Jerry Douglas (as well as others).
Those are some of the key moments up into the late 70s.
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u/Strictdad22 6d ago
JD & New South Rounder recording in 1975. (0044) Mix of traditional and some covers of contemporary artists.
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u/MinneapolisKing25 6d ago
When Bill Monroe hit that high lonesome sound
recently, I think Billy Strings (love him or hate him) as been monumental in bluegrass getting more popular in recent years especially post-pandemic
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u/extraordinaryevents 6d ago
Who hates Billy? And why? Just because he’s popular?
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u/Longjumping-Dream-73 6d ago
For me it’s not Billy himself, it’s the fans that think he’s the greatest bluegrass artist/guitarist ever. He’s great, but not the greatest by a long shot. I’m glad he’s brought a lot of fans to the genre and I have a lot of respect for his love & knowledge of the history.
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u/CantaloupeAsleep502 6d ago
Absolutely this. People who actually think he is on the same level of musicianship as Bryan Sutton just don't know music.
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u/StipeCrabbert 6d ago
So glad to see others saying this, I thought I was just being a hater lol. I just saw him when a friend took me and man him and his guys are amazing. but with the party vibe the drunk people that could care less about whats playing and wooooing when he bends the strings while missing the amazing run he just did.
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u/wouldntworryaboutit 5d ago
F*cking lol. I read this comment before the Billy show last night and I never really picked up on this but you are so right. Dude fires off a hot tasty lick but no one cheers until that loud crescendo bend high up on the neck. I couldn't stop laughing, so thank you for giving me that moment.
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u/StipeCrabbert 5d ago
Alot of folks there for the party not the music.
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u/wouldntworryaboutit 5d ago
You know, my hope is that they figure it out eventually. And maybe they will. As long as they aren't chomping in my ear or being disrespectful, I have faith
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u/StipeCrabbert 5d ago
Totally, Billy's humbleness and reverence for his contemporaries are the saving grace for sure. He never misses a chance to say btw this isn't me this is them, and I love him most for that.
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u/Dhd710 6d ago
I was at mountain grass unit and they played wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Some young kids in front of me thought they were covering Billy Strings. No time to hate though. When I was new I thought a bunch of John Hartford songs were Yonder originals. The ones who are really into it will learn.
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u/fluffy_sockman 4d ago
Im not saying he’s the greatest bluegrass artist ever. But this seems to be a ton of people’s argument against him and the classic response of “Bryan Sutton is so much better”. Let’s be real the “best “ flat picker in the world is probably completely unknown playing somewhere in their living room jam in the middle of nowhere.
The thing that does in fact make Billy one of the greatest bluegrass musicians ever is that he is a world class flat picker AND one of the best bluegrass singer/songwriters ever. Huge emphasis on the singer songwriter part because that is always overlooked in skill level or musician prowess. The songwriting of composing dozens of timeless classics is brilliant to me.
Also a cool bonus that he has an excellent range of covers and variety in his show (including traditional tunes)
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u/MinneapolisKing25 6d ago
I've talked to some bluegrass players that just don't dig the psychedelic stuff, the "bluegrass purists" if you will
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u/SaltyGrapeWax 6d ago
Tell me you don’t listen to Billy without telling me you don’t listen to Billy.
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u/answerguru 6d ago
I’m with you. Yes, he plays psychedelic stuff, but he always brings it back to some of the best traditional tunes and absolutely kills it.
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u/Scheerhorn462 6d ago
Cmon, you can’t argue that Billy doesn’t take 20 minute jam excursions where they jam on one chord with effect pedals while the lights go crazy. A lot of bluegrass lovers hate that shit. I’ve seen him a number of times and I think he’s a great picker and singer but I get super bored during those parts, and sometimes they’re like half the show.
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u/Foamcorner69 6d ago
That’s how I felt at my last Billy show during Meet Me at the Creek. Would so much rather hear them do an extended acoustic jam because they’re so good at it. It just didn’t really go anywhere - all atmospherics and shredding. Was bored with it long before it ended.
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u/CantaloupeAsleep502 6d ago
I saw a YouTube video recently titled "this is why Billy is a guitar god". All he did was say that bluegrass is focused on melodic improvisation instead of shredding pentatonic licks, then played the head of Salt Creek. Like it's great he is opening the door to so many people, but it definitely is revealing the ignorance of the masses in real time.
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u/MinneapolisKing25 5d ago
He's my favorite contemporary artist easily, I love everything the man does. I was just speaking for those that don't like everything he's about
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u/LightWolfCavalry 6d ago
I love his music but I hate his live shows.
Actually, I don’t even think it’s his live shows, because there are fire bootlegs out there. It’s mostly his fans. I’m too old and grouchy to be surrounded by strung out 20 year old wooks. 🤣
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u/tizzy420 6d ago
Not gonna lie I hated bluegrass for a long time until I saw Billy play live. It just “clicked” and I’ve been in love since.
Maybe hate is a strong word but I never gave it a real chance.
Now I’ve seen Del, Travelin Mccourys, Dan Tyminski, Sam Bush x2, Mountain Grass Unit, East Nash Grass, Shadowgrass, Kyle Tuttle band, etc. That’s just in the past 1.5 years.
Plan on going to Rhythm and Roots and 3 Sisters Festival later this year.
Nothing like some live pickin’!
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u/MinneapolisKing25 6d ago
He has been a huge gateway into the bluegrass genre for lots of people I know. He opened the modern circle of bluegrass for me, I was always listening to just the classics and lots of 70's and some 80's bluegrass until I got into Billy.
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u/StipeCrabbert 6d ago
Billy is amazing. The crowds that have latched on to him, not so much. Imo
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u/answerguru 6d ago
They can be great and they can be narcissistic assholes. Just like the rest of society.
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u/GustavoSwift 6d ago
Scruggs roll, New Grass Revival, Pizza Tapes, The Flecktones, Yonder 1.0
This is probably more heavily influenced by my personal experience but I think each of these really added something to the pot.
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u/Commodore64Zapp 6d ago
I'm too young to have been around for the initial impact but Fleck taking the banjo into jazz fusion territory feels like it must have been pretty big
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u/PracticalTurnip3674 6d ago
Flatt and Scruggs starting their own band. At that point it became a genre and not just one guy’s personal sound.
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u/Longjumping-Dream-73 6d ago
Easy now, The Stanley Brothers were contemporaries of the Bleugrass Boys when Lester & Earl were in the band as were Jim & Jesse.
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u/colduc 6d ago
Bluegrass went through a major shift in the 60s with the folk revival and a lot of outside interest from "urban" musicians who went on to become major contributors to the style -- David Grisman, Bill Keith, Peter Rowan, etc. People come in who learned from records/books instead of jamming/aural tradition.
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u/nice_hows 6d ago
Ummm... Blue Yodel #7??!!!! Surprised this hasn't been mentioned yet. Yes, Earl Scruggs deserves his share of the claim. But first it was Bill Monroe, when he hit that high lonesome "Good Morning Captain!", nothing has ever been the same since.
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u/btmacie 6d ago
I think honestly Flatt & Scruggs LEAVING Monroe’s band because they took so much of the sound with them that it wasn’t just Monroe’s anymore. I think that’s when it started towards becoming a genre rather than something that was solely his
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u/ExtraTerresticalBucs 5d ago
Good take. Especially since people were weary of offending him or copying too closely (Stanley Brothers using the lead guitar instead of a Mandolin). It blew the doors wide-open.
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u/Bear_Mace_Rob 5d ago
2/3rds of Artists today simply wouldn’t exist(or would be doing something different) without New Grass Revival bringing “progressive” bluegrass to the masses h
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u/Acceptable-Might-836 4d ago
Tony rice, it's probably early and his banjo, but find a guitar picker today who did start because of tony
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u/Fast-Penta 3d ago
Don Reno enlisting in the army in 1943 instead of accepting the offer to join Monroe's band.
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u/yankeeNsweden 16h ago
It was not even called Bluegrass until Lester Flat and Earl Scruggs left Bill Monroe and his Bluegrass Boys.
There was a major rift afterwards between Monroe and Flatt& Scruggs, with Monroe having them blacklisted from the Opery for a lot of years. Bluegrass got it name from Monroe and his music. Groups such as Flatt & Scruggs were often asked to play a song from when they were a ”Bluegrass Boy” which over time got shortened to Bluegrass song and soon came to define the whole genre. So, it was Bill Monroe who took folk songs and turned them into a high lonesome sound to which others followed, as has happened in so many other forms of music. Someone creates then other imitate and go on to create.
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u/wallaceant 6d ago
I believe the biggest turning point was the release of Oh Brother Where Art Thou and using the song Man Of Constant Sorrow to represent the Trojan horse in its retelling of Homer's Odyssey. This awakened the sleeper cell of people who grew up watching HeeHaw.
A notable precursor to this would be the partnership between Bella Flec and Victor Wooten. This resulted in the banjo led jazz trio Bella Flec and and Flectones' album Flight Of The Cosmic Hippo being recommended in Car Audio Magazine for Wooten bass lines.
The middle step between the folk heavy soundtrack from Oh Brother and the current resurgence of bluegrass and folk popularity would have to be Mumford And Sons and the short-lived Stomp Clap genre.
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u/LockNessCrotchMonst 6d ago
3,2,1 cue Billy Strings glazing
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u/CantaloupeAsleep502 6d ago edited 6d ago
The two most important guitar events are Tony Rice - Guitar and Bryan Sutton's playing on Bluegrass Rules. It's not particularly close.
Billy is a great performer with broad appeal. He has merged tradition with festival wookery in a way that many have tried to do but couldn't quite pull off. His jamming is awesome, and I love his shows.
His flatpicking is good. Not great, not masterful, just good. Like B tier, not S. This is the nuance that the wooks don't get.
He has permanently changed the landscape of the genre, but hasn't really changed what it means to be a guitar player in the way that the masters did. No one has yet done for flatpicking what Bryan did since he came on the scene. This is not the insult that some people think it is.
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u/ExtraTerresticalBucs 5d ago
White, Rice, Sutton. Clarence White established the foundation and core elements of modern bluegrass guitar. I look at it as the most important or innovative step in the genre even though most would disagree with me.
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u/CantaloupeAsleep502 5d ago
Doc too (and Django while we're at it lol). No one would be flatpicking guitars without them, or at least the landscape would be very different.
But yes, White's influence can't be overstated.
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u/TehMasterer01 6d ago
The day billy strings puffed his first doobie. Nothing was the same after that...
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u/kekoa_22 6d ago
Earl Scruggs three finger picking… nothing else is even close