Can't
You Hear Me Callin': The Life of Bill Monroe, Father of Bluegrass
by Richard D. Smith
The legendary mandolinist and bandleader Bill Monroe wove his personal
vision through more than 60 tireless years of recording and performing,
inventing almost single-handedly the music that is now known--in a nod
to his first band, the Blue Grass Boys--as bluegrass. In his thoughtful
biography Can't You Hear Me Callin', Richard D. Smith argues that "no single
artist has had as broad an impact on American music." As evidence, he highlights
dozens of country and rock & roll musicians, both white and black,
who were inspired by Monroe's powerful mandolin playing on the Grand Ole
Opry's weekly broadcasts. (Chuck Berry's "Maybelline," for example, is
an almost note-for-note copy of Monroe's instrumental "Ida Red.") Until
now, however, Monroe's hesitation to reveal personal details has kept his
personality as mysterious as one of the foggy mountaintops he sang about
in his signature high lonesome tenor.
Bluegrass audiences required a rural, Southern authenticity from the
"Father of Bluegrass," and Monroe was slow to deny their exaggerations.
Smith, however, dismisses many of the backwoodsy stories that grew up around
the Monroe myth, instead emphasizing truer biographical elements: loneliness,
fear of abandonment, compulsiveness with women. Perhaps the book's main
scholarly step forward is the depth of interviews and research the author
conducted with the women in Monroe's life. Indeed, Smith remarks that "without
exception," none of Monroe's platonic or romantic women friends had been
interviewed before. These women reveal a second Bill Monroe, relaxed and
gentle in private despite his imperious manner onstage.
Much of the book relies on the archives of the late Ralph Rinzler, a
Smithsonian folklorist whose plans to write a Monroe biography were thwarted
by his untimely death. Taking up where Rinzler left off, Smith employs
solid scholarship and thorough fieldwork, yet he remains clearly in awe
of his subject, ranking him as a "true giant of American music" on the
level of Duke Ellington, Louis
Armstrong, Hank Williams, and Charles
Ives. Can't You Hear Me Callin' is the first published attempt at a comprehensive,
critical biography of Bill Monroe. Surely, it won't be the last--a testament
to the enigmatic genius whose every note extended one of our most emotive
and demanding musical genres. --Edward Skoog - Amazon.com
Paperback: 352 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.08 x
8.95 x 5.91
Publisher: DaCapo Press; (October 2, )
ISBN: 0306810549
Can't
You Hear Me Callin' : The Life of Bill Monroe, Father of Bluegrass
by Richard D. Smith
The
Bill Monroe Reader (Music in American Life)
by Tom Ewing (Editor)
(Hardcover)
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by Brad Davis
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