Artist: Bill Monroe
Not Fade Away - Reissue Review from Issue #70 July-August 2007
Bill Monroe – My Last Days On Earth: 1981-1994
This four-CD box concludes Bear Family’s encyclopedic six-box exploration of Monroe’s career. The focus here, Monroe’s last thirteen years on MCA, starts in 1981 when, diagnosed with colon cancer, he wrote and recorded the somber, decidedly un-Monroe instrumental peroration “My Last Days On Earth”, strings and voices added with Monroe’s approval. The disease proved life-changing. [...]
Not Fade Away - Reissue Review from Issue #56 March-April 2005
Bill Monroe & His Blue Grass Boys Featuring Jimmy Martin – The King And The Father
By the time Jimmy Martin joined Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys in the early 1950s (as a youngster of 22), Monroe had already assembled the basic elements of the genre, although bluegrass didn’t yet have a name. Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs had been and gone, and Monroe was miffed that other acts, like the [...]
Not Fade Away - Reissue Review from Issue #54 Nov-Dec 2004
Bill Monroe & The Blue Grass Boys – Live At Mechanics Hall
More than a couple of live recordings of Bill Monroe are available, and probably more are on the way. For now, though, this 1963 disc — recorded by a young David Grisman in Worcester, Massachusetts — is the one to have. In terms both of his band’s music and his outlook, Monroe was on the [...]
Not Fade Away - Reissue Review from Issue #44 March-April 2003
Bill Monroe – Blue Moon Of Kentucky: 1936-1949
He was Uncle Pen incarnate, a snowy-haired, almost Biblical figure championing the purity of the music he created, seemingly poised to smite anyone who dared sully it. Six years after his death, that has become Bill Monroe’s image beyond the bluegrass world. It’s understandable, since in those later years, he abandoned his public introversion to [...]
Not Fade Away - Reissue Review from Issue #41 Sept-Oct 2002
Bill Monroe – RCA Country Legends
Does the world really need another Bill Monroe compilation? His reputation as the father of bluegrass is as widespread as ever, and most folks have already formed an opinion about his music. Music historians have waxed eloquent about the primitive harmonies Monroe was making with his brother Charlie in the mid-’30s. This collection came later [...]
Miked - Live Reviews from Issue #6 Nov-Dec 1996
Bill Monroe: 1911-1996 – Ryman Auditorium (Nashville, TN)
Peter Rowan tells a story about touring Europe as one of Bill Monroe’s Bluegrass Boys. As they were going through customs, an agent stopped Monroe and, looking at his passport, asked his name. “Bill Monroe,” he said. Then the agent inquired about his occupation. “Father of bluegrass” was Monroe’s soft reply. Indeed, Bill Monroe was [...]
Not Fade Away - Reissue Review from Issue #6 Nov-Dec 1996
Bill Monroe – True Life Blues: The Songs of Bill Monroe
The point of the thing, the liner notes say, is to draw attention to Bill Monroe as a songwriter/composer and not simply as the father of bluegrass and a superb instrumentalist. Somehow that seems an odd premise to require proof; but then, you have to wonder how many young country DJs even knew who Bill [...]
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