Hooked on Bluegrass

Dec 17, 2016 | Welcome Column

– Peter Thompson
(Bluegrass DJ, presenter, booking agent, publicist, manager, organizational founder/board member, cheerleader, and nanny)

While I’d had some direct contact with bluegrass — listening under the covers late at night to the WWVA Jamboree, seeing Flatt & Scruggs at the Avalon Ballroom, trying to accompany a friend as he picked fiddle tunes on the guitar — my many musical obsessions during my formative years lay elsewhere. They generally grew out of the places where I was living — Michigan, New Hampshire, California — and included (in more or less chronological order) r & b, folk, blues, rock, and jazz. As it turns out, these elements, along with a few others, were part of the Monroe Melting Pot that we’ve come to know and love.

In the summer of 1975, that same friend who was playing fiddle tunes on the guitar (and also turned me on to Doc and Clarence) sent me a cassette tape. We swapped musical favorites all the time, but this one was life-changing: the Stanley Brothers King 615. It’s not even my favorite Stanley Brothers now — the Mercury Sessions hold that spot — but it still sounds great. Back then, it was a revelation.

The connection was immediate, and I’ve pondered why ever since. Maybe because Carter & Ralph’s singing was as exciting and soulful as all the blues that was my passion; their harmony, like, say, Muddy’s slide guitar, was somehow familiar and alien at the same time, and really did raise those little hairs on the back of my neck. Carter’s melodies and lyrics had the emotional truth and poetic turns that attracted me to, say, Garcia-Hunter songs, and it helped that I could sort of play along. And the drive was undeniable, just like all the best music; this was a train I wanted to hop. And did.

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