Bluegrass Band Quotes

I was only going to shoot you if he was in one band. And only if it had a name like Uncle Toejam's Acid Crematorium or something. But bluegrass is good, and hey, music is MY life too. Maybe I'll actually like the guy (assuming he's around long enough). Just don't write and tell me you're in the process of stirring up some baby Custard-Mustards.

banjo. A plucked, fretted lute where a thin skin diaphragm is stretched over a circular metal frame amplifying the sound of the strings. The instrument is believed to have evolved from various African and African-American prototypes. Four- and 5-stringed versions of the banjo are popular, each associated with specific music genres; the 5-stringed banjo, plucked and strummed with the fingers, is associated with Appalachian, old-time and bluegrass music, while the four-stringed versions (both the “plectrum” banjo, which is an identical 22-fret banjo, just like the 5-string instrument but without the fifth string and played with a plectrum, and the tenor banjo which has fewer frets [17 or 19], a shorter neck, is tuned in fifths and is played with a plectrum) is associated with vaudeville, Dixieland jazz, ragtime and swing, as well as Irish folk and traditional music. The first Irish banjo player to record commercially was James Wheeler, in the U.S. in 1916, for the Columbia label; as part of The Flanagan Brothers duo, Mick Flanagan recorded during the 1920s and 1930s as did others in the various dance bands popular in the U.S. at the time. Neil Nolan, a Boston-based banjo player originally from Prince Edward Island, recorded with Dan Sullivan’s Shamrock Band; the collaboration with Sullivan led to him also being included in the line-up for the Caledonia and Columbia Scotch Bands, alongside Cape Breton fiddlers; these were recorded for 78s in 1928. In the 1930s The Inverness Serenaders also included a banjo player (Paul Aucoin). While the instrument was not widely used in Cape Breton, a few notable players were Packie Haley and Nellie Coakley, who were involved in the Northside Irish tradition of the 1920s and 1930s; Ed MacGillivray played banjo with Tena Campbell; and the Iona area had some banjo players, such as the “Lighthouse” MacLeans. The banjo was well known in Cape Breton’s old-time tradition, especially in the 1960s, but was not really introduced to the Cape Breton fiddle scene until the 1970s when Paul Cranford, a 6-string banjo player, arrived from Toronto. He has since replaced the banjo with fiddle. A few fiddlers have dabbled with the instrument but it has had no major presence within the tradition.

washroom was the same. Not possessed of a strong stomach, he’d opted not to find out. Cockroaches had been conducting a track-and-field meet along the footrail of the bar, the pungent odor of urine had been held to a draw by the generous application of sweet-smelling disinfectant, the old status quo had prevailed, and Lockington had spotted Rufe Devereaux sitting in a rear booth, talking to a blonde woman. There’d been something vaguely familiar about her but Lockington hadn’t been able to put his finger on it. Devereaux had observed Lockington’s entrance, waving to him, motioning him to take a seat at the bar, then holding up a be-with-you-in-a-moment finger. Club Howdy attendance had been sparse—a few scruffy-looking characters had been clustered in a dark corner of the place, there’d been a pair of elderly men at the end of the bar, but the tables had been deserted, and Lockington had discounted the threat of being crushed in a rush. A four-piece string band had been mauling “Clayton’s Ridge” when Lockington had seated himself. “Clayton’s Ridge” came under the heading of bluegrass, and Lockington had never been convinced that bluegrass came under the heading of music. Bluegrass had always reminded Lockington of a midnight cat fight in a trash heap, but he’d ordered a Martell’s and waited.

The only paid artistic work he managed to secure, as far as Elijah knew, consisted of taking photographs and designing posters for an all-female, all-cancer-survivor bluegrass band called Nocturnal Remissions.

Ralph and Mike would soon be caught up in a remarkable phenomenon that transcended prevailing regional, class, and gender boundaries. It was an intertwining cultural grapevine that united northerners and southerners who shared a common passion for rural string band music. This network proved crucial to the survival of Bill Monroe’s career and even bluegrass itself.

Flatt and Scruggs formed a band called the Foggy Mountain Boys, taking its name from “Foggy Mountain Top,” a Carter Family favorite they decided to use as their theme song.

Of course, the most common response is that Bill Monroe was “the Father of Bluegrass” and its true creator. It was his melding of a band sound around fiddle playing, his high singing, his revolutionary mandolin stylings, and his distinctive surging rhythm that set bluegrass apart from the rest of country or folk music.