Posted by Steven Rowe on May 01, 19101 at 10:41:59:
In Reply to: History & Availability posted by Chuck D. on May 01, 19101 at 08:30:23:
: I would like to throw this out to anyone who can factually back up their claim. I feel that every type of music has a heritage of sorts. Cajin from the south with a french background, R & B, and so on. Yet I have not really heard the origins of "Bluegrass". I know what we hear as the "Sruggs" style is more a variation of the original form of bluegrass. I hear bluegrass that appears to have celtic undertones. This makes me question what influences BG music has enbraced to how we know it today. We associate bluegrass with the Appalachian region but what is the connection? How did the term bluegrass come to be?
Yow, that's alot of questions, might I suggest a trip to the library to see if they have Neil V. Rosenberg's Bluegrass: A History. Or you could order a copy. That book should tell you alot about Bluegrass history.
But to give you simplier answers:
Bluegrass as a music style grew out of country and what we know call "old time music" which is country music of the 1920s-1930s. Bluegrass as a musical genre was set in about 1948 with Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys - with Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs. So Earl was right there at the beginning of what we know call bluegrass, and is indeed a founding father of bluegrass.
Certainly the southern appalchians had lots of musicians who became bluegrass performers, and frankly the area still does. Many of the settlers in the SA were of Scotch-Irish decent. (my pardons to those who are living in Scotland, as the term Scotch is used differently in the USA), so yes, there would be some celtic influence. On the otherhand, bluegrass is a living music (even though deeply rooted in strong tradtion) and is by no means not influenced by music around it. Thus in the middle-late 50s, you had honkytonk influence, the early 60s, the folk influence, the late 60s-Early 70s, the rock influence, and more recently more celtic influence.
sr