Old-Time Music & Bluegrass
Appalachia's Greatest Gift to the World... other than Dolly Parton
Did you know Edgar Meyer is my cousin?
I tell that to everyone if the topic of bluegrass comes up. I got to meet Edgar Meyer at a concert he performed at my university. After the concert, before and after which I pestered the Ford Center’s directors about being his cousin, Edgar and his son George met me in the lobby. They were tired from their stellar performance and traveling, so Edgar wasn’t very talkative. George, though, seemed pretty excited to meet another member of the Meyer progeny and to talk about our ancestry and musical interests. We follow each other on Instagram, too. But we’re like third, fourth, or fifth cousins, so the connection really isn’t all that impressive.
The first time I heard of Edgar Meyer was at my church’s camp along the Tennessee River. Sitting in a pavilion with the river behind me, I was listening to a man talk about the Nock Turtle—a nighttime cryptid turtle. Or maybe he was talking about owls and what it meant to be nocturnal. I was young, and words like that were hard for me. I don’t remember who brought it up, but someone asked me, “Did you know you were related to Edgar Meyer?” Of course I didn’t. I was probably more concerned with how the villagers in my Animal Crossing: Wild World (2005) town were doing.1
I’m from Chattanooga. I mention that a lot, too, because it really does mean a lot to me. I grew up on the Cumberland Plateau between Signal Mountain, Raccoon Mountain, Missionary Ridge, and Lookout Mountain. I was so lucky in my early years to be around those mountains that were “older than the trees,”2 and getting to shimmy through the Fat Man’s Squeeze at Rock City, jump across boulders in the creek in Cloudland Canyon, and hike around Kuwohi. I also loved going to my grandparents’ farm in Ringgold and exploring their woods, fishing at their pond, and finding turtles in the creeks.
As I was surrounded by mountains, I was also surrounded by music as a child. Almost every house in my childhood had a piano; my aunt played violin in the Chattanooga Symphony and her husband had a degree in vocal performance; my dad sang in the church choir and tried his best to play piano, guitar, violin, and mandolin; and when she hugged me, my grandmother (on the Meyer side) always sang my name to me.
When I was ten and moved to Mississippi, I lost a lot of that. I found myself in a place with no mountains and with nothing fun to do outside. While I eventually picked up the clarinet and bassoon and sang at our new (scary) church, I was separated from the more musical parts of my family. I would never hear my grandma singing again.
So, what does bluegrass mean to me? As a musician and child of Appalachia, it means my heritage. It means my roots, my family, and remembering. It means reconnecting to a piece of me that I lost when I moved to Mississippi. Come with me as I do my best to get in touch with bluegrass (i.e. to touch grass) and learn more about my heritage.
Old-Time Music
Grass is usually green.3
In Kentucky, though, it grows blue. Or that’s what they say. It still looks pretty green to me.
It’s pretty widely accepted that the first bluegrass music was played by the mandolinist Bill Monroe, banjoist Earl Scruggs, and the Blue Grass Boys in the 1940s,4 but bluegrass carries the memories of styles that came before and influenced it.
In every culture, you will find people singing. Song is one of the more powerful ways we express ourselves, pass on traditions, tell stories. When the English music teacher and folksong collector Cecil Sharp visited the Southern Appalachians in 1916, he noted:
I found myself for the first time in a community in which singing was as common and almost as universal a practice as speaking. With us [in England], of course, singing is an entertainment, something done by others for our delectation… In an ideal society every child in [their] earliest years would as a matter of course develop this inborn capacity and learn to sing the songs of [their] forefathers in in the same natural and unselfconscious way in which [they] now learn [their] mother tongue and the elementary literature of the nation to which [they belong].
And it was precisely this ideal state of things that I found existing in the mountain communities… On one occasion[,] I remember that a small boy tried to edge himself into my cabin in which a man was singing to me and, when I asked him what he wanted, he said, “I always like to go where there is sweet music.”5
While Sharp attributed the pervasiveness of singing to deficiencies in reading and writing,6 he nonetheless realized how integral music was to life in Appalachia. His focus, as his book’s title suggests, was on the prevalence of English folk tunes in Appalachia. In looking only for English songs,
[he] passed over the vast amount of fiddle music brought from Scotland and Ireland, the banjo learned from the Negro slaves, and the powerful Regular Baptist church singing, which apparently originated in the mountains and may have come from the Cherokee.7
This Appalachian style of music is often referred to as old-time music—a fairly nebulous term. Old-time music evolved with other cultural touchstones like the square dance and the husking bee (community corn husking).8 It also reacted to the times. Singers and songwriters of old-time music used the medium to speak out against injustices they witnessed. Songs like “Black Lung” and “Fountain Filled with Blood” protested the exploitation of coal miners and the environment while songs like “We’re Stolen Souls from Africa” showed support for Abolitionist and civil rights movements.
The Invention of Bluegrass
The Second Industrial Revolution of the early 20th century saw old-time music removed from its traditional contexts. During this time, the lives of Appalachians were upended by a surge in coal mining, displacing many from independent farms to coal mines. To earn more money, mountain musicians began making records and bending to the tastes of record labels. In a post-Technological Revolution landscape,
[t]raditional culture—the wholeness of mountain life—was gone. The old music had no context, little meaning or social place. Traditional songs died by the thousands; record companies and promoters controlled popular taste, and hungry musicians tried desperately to please them. Mountain people's music, like their labor, was bought and sold in the market.9
It was through this Nashville-dominated market (what Kirby equates to American colonialism) that bluegrass emerged.
By the 1930s, Bill Monroe and his brother Charlie were already well-known in the South for their virtuosic performances of the mandolin and guitar (respectively). In 1938, Bill sought to create a style of his own and formed his band the Blue Grass Boys. After bluegrass had been more-or-less codified as a style in the 1960s, Monroe spoke retrospectively on his goals for the Blue Grass Boys:
To start with, I wanted to have a music different from anybody else; I wanted to originate something. I wanted to put all of the ideas that I could come up with, that I could hear of different sounds and, of course, I’ve added the old Negro blues to blue grass. And we have some of the Scotch music in it—the bagpipes—and we also have some hymn singing—you’ll notice that down through the melodies and through blue grass . . . It’s good to listen to and it’s good for your lead instruments like the fiddle to play the music, to play “Mule Skinner,” ‘cause it’s got the blues in it and it just makes it perfect like that.10
This makes it fairly obvious that in making his own kind of music, Monroe was signaling a connection to old-time traditions while pushing the envelope by incorporating blues practices. Monroe’s commercial success hinged on this evolution of tradition. Noted by Neil V. Rosenberg, Monroe’s “Bluegrass music has been a classic example of the effects commercialism and tradition have upon each other. Both musicians and audience are caught between the conservatism which gives the style unity and the innovation which makes it exciting.”11
With the 1945 addition of banjoist Earl Scruggs and guitarist Lester Flatt, the Blue Grass Boys had truly invented a new style of music. Among the many significant innovations made by the Blue Grass Boys was Scruggs’s transformation of the banjo from a strumming rhythm instrument to a quick-plucking melodic instrument. In addition to the introduction of virtuosic instrumentalism, Flatt and Scruggs solidified what would become standard bluegrass instrumentation: a fiddle, a banjo, a mandolin, a guitar, and a bass (and maybe Dobro). In a convention taken from jazz (and a break from old-time tradition), instrumentalists were given the opportunity to perform solos and demonstrate their skills.12
During the Woody Guthrie- and Bob Dylan-led folksong revivalist movements (1940s to mid-1960s), bluegrass was accepted into the folk music pantheon. Rosenberg marks three reasons behind bluegrass’ folk canonization: bluegrass didn’t rely on electric instruments (as did Rock ‘n’ Roll and contemporary Country-Western music); bluegrass music was largely based on traditional music and records tended to include traditional songs; and the use of instrumental styles was seen as both conventional and innovative—especially as seen in Scruggs’s banjo playing.13 Through folk revivalism, bluegrass saw continued evolution and commercial success after Monroe.14
Exclusion
Being a product of commercialism and the tastes of Music City, however, made bluegrass rather exclusionary. More often than not, bluegrass musicians are white men, and the style’s roots in Black music have historically been overlooked. In 1965, L. Mayne Smith even partially defined bluegrass as hillbilly music that “is played by professional, white, Southern musicians, primarily for a Southern audience.”15
While bluegrass could (and should) have been a celebration of its stylistic influences, it was instead gatekept by the musicians who had been inspired by those styles.16 This gatekeeping was done primarily by recording companies and Nashville, who segregated types of music into separate series for white and Black people:
White rural music included fiddle bands, banjo tunes . . . black series were dominated by country blues, gospel, preachers . . . A black band playing something other than blues did not fit into either stereotype . . . Thus, today, we are left with only a pathetic handful of recordings representing this [old-time] tradition in its flowering.17
If song is how we pass down stories and express ourselves, these old-timey Black stories and expressions were silenced by Nashville. While not being officially barred from participating in the evolution of bluegrass, Black people were excluded from a genre they had helped create.
Bluegrass would not exist without the influences of old-time music, the blues, the African-American banjo, the Scottish and Irish jig, and Sacred Harp music. While commercialization, the process of white-washing, and the removal from traditional contexts served to gentrify bluegrass’ ancestry, their remnants are still there. You can still hear the influence that Arnold Schultz’ thumbing guitar technique had on Bill Monroe and Earl Scruggs. Monroe recognized this too, saying of Schultz:
The first time I think I ever seen Arnold Schultz . . . this square dance was at Rosine, Kentucky, and Arnold and two more colored fellows come up there and played for the dance. They had a guitar, banjo, and fiddle. Arnold played the guitar but he could play the fiddle . . . People loved Arnold so well all through Kentucky there; if he was playing a guitar they’d go gang up around him till he would get tired and then maybe he’d go catch a train . . . I admired him that much that I never forgot a lot of the things he would say. There’s things in my music, you know, that comes from Arnold Schultz—runs that I use a lot in my music.18
There have also been gradual steps toward greater representation in bluegrass and reflections on its origins in old-time music, particularly as seen in the work of Dom Flemons.19 As a founding member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Flemons has been instrumental in reclaiming the Black string band tradition and challenging the racial boundaries that have kept Black musicians on the margins of old-time and bluegrass. He continues this challenge in his solo career, advocating for historical authenticity while also experimenting with old-time tradition.20 The genre still has a long way to go, though, if it is to fully embrace and represent its roots.
Coda
When I began writing this post, I did so under the impression that bluegrass was old-time music. It’s not. Old-time music is like Baroque dance music—rooted in tradition and community. Bluegrass then is the stylized dance suite that evolved from it.21 Shaped by Nashville, Bill Monroe, Earl Scruggs, and the folk revivals, bluegrass emerged from tradition but quickly became something distinct.
Bluegrass is still evolving—blending with jazz, classical, and even pop music. Much of cellist Yo-Yo Ma’s work has been in bluegrass and bluegrass-adjacent works.22 His collaborations with mandolinist Chris Thile; fiddler/banjoist Stuart Duncan; and my cousin(!), bassist Edgar Meyer, on The Goat Rodeo Sessions (2011) are a tongue-in-cheek, genre-bending testament to the elasticity of bluegrass.23
Postlude
I don’t have a lot of memories from growing up. Not many that I can openly recall, at least. But when I visit Chattanooga or listen to bluegrass, I remember. I remember coming in last place in a 5K run by my school with an unbeatable time of 57 minutes and 29 seconds. I remember seeing the tree limbs on East Abercrombie the first time I got glasses. I remember playing with my sisters in our little kiddie pool with the slide in it, climbing our fence so I could follow Claudia into the maple tree, playing with Roz’s Barbie dolls, and trying on my grandma’s dresses with my cousin. I remember looking at the stars and trying to find Betelgeuse with dad and staying late after school in mom’s classroom while she graded papers. Bluegrass keeps these memories safe for me.
It also holds the memory of the Cherokee we ousted and killed; of the Africans and Black people we enslaved; of the old and new immigrants from the British Isles and central Europe that made the Appalachians their home; of a mountain culture that was (and is still) disparaged and exploited. It also reflects the beauty of their influences on the style and their integrality to Appalachian culture. It remembers the mountains it came from and the many histories it carries.
These are memories that bluegrass conjures and that are worth remembering.
Bluegrass is memory, and to listen to bluegrass is to remember.
It’s also just really fun to listen to.
My Favorite Bluegrass (and Adjacent) Albums:
Carolina Chocolate Drops. Leaving Eden. Nonesuch, 2012.
Duncan, Stuart, Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, and Chris Thile. The Goat Rodeo Sessions. Sony Masterworks, 2011.
———. Not Our First Goat Rodeo. Sony Masterworks, 2020.
Flatt, Lester, and Earl Scruggs. Foggy Mountain Jamboree. Columbia, 1957.
Fleck, Béla. Natural Bridge. Rounder Records, 1982.
———. My Bluegrass Heart. Béla Fleck Productions, 2021.
———. Perpetual Motion. Sony Music Entertainment, 1998.
Krauss, Alison, and Union Station. Every Time You Say Goodbye. Rounder, 1992.
Ma, Yo-Yo, Edgar Meyer, and Mark O’Connor. Appalachia Waltz. Sony Music Entertainment, 1996.
Monroe, Bill. Bluegrass Ramble. Decca, 1961
———. I Saw the Light. Decca, 1958.
Thile, Chris. How to Grow a Woman from the Ground. Sugar Hill, 2006.
Bibliography:
Black, Bob. “Bluegrass 101.” In Come Hither to Go Yonder: Playing Bluegrass with Bill Monroe. University of Illinois Press, 2005. 75–95.
Flemons, Dom. “Black Roots.” The Bluegrass Situation. May 21, 2024. https://thebluegrasssituation.com/read/black-roots/
Kalra, Ajay, and Charles Reagan Wilson. “Bluegrass.” In The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Volume 12: Music, edited by Bill C. Malone, 24–31. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008.
Kirby, Rich. “Our Own Music.” In Colonialism in Modern America: The Appalachian Case, edited by Helen Matthews Lewis, Linda Johnson, and Donald Askins, 229–50. Boone, NC: Appalachian State University, 1978.
Krakauer, Benjamin. “A ‘Traditional’ Music Scene and Its Fringes: Experimental Bluegrass of 1970s New York City.” American Music 36, no. 2 (2018): 163–193.
Malone, Bill C., and Tracey E. W. Laird. “Bluegrass.” Country Music USA: 50th Anniversary Edition. University of Texas Press, 2018. 380–432.
Pecknold, Diane, ed. Hidden in the Mix: The African American Presence in Country Music
Roach, Ron R. “‘The Story of Bluegrass:’ Carlton Haney, Bill Monroe, and Redemption Dramain the First Bluegrass Festivals.” Journal of Appalachian Studies 20, no. 1 (2014): 7–23.
Rockwell, Joti. “What is Bluegrass Anyway? Category Formation, Debate and the Framing of Musical Genre.” Popular Music 31, no. 3 (2012): 363–381.
Rosenberg, Neil V. “From Sound to Style: The Emergence of Bluegrass.” The Journal of American Folklore 80, no. 316 (1967). 143–150.
Sharp, Cecil, and Olive Dame Campbell. English Folksongs of the Southern Appalachians. New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1917.
Smith, L. Mayne. “An Introduction to Bluegrass.” The Journal of American Folklore 78, no. 309 (1965): 245–256.
Thomas, Jeannie B., and Doug Enders. “Bluegrass and ‘White Trash’: A Case Study Concerning the Name ‘Folklore’ and Class Bias.” Journal of Folklore Research 37, no. 1 (2000). 32–52.
Thompson, Deborah J., and Darrin Hacquard. “Region, Peace, Representation: Observations from Interviews with African American Musicians in Appalachia.” Journal of Appalachian Studies 15, no. 1/2 (2009): 126–139.
Wolfe, Charles. “Rural Black String Band Music.” Black Music Research Journal 10, no. 1 (1990): 32–35.
Obligatory video game reference. I probably won’t be discussing any other video games in this post. Sorry ‘bout it.
“Take Me Home, Country Roads,” track 7 on John Denver, Poems, Prayers & Promises, RCA Victor, 1971. Folky music, but most certainly not bluegrass.
And often greener on the other side.
Discussed notably in L. Mayne Smith, “An Introduction to Bluegrass,” The Journal of American Folklore 78, no. 309 (1965): 245; Joti Rockwell, “What is Bluegrass Anyway? Category Formation, Debate and the Framing of Musical Genre,” Popular Music 31, no. 3 (2012): 364; and Neil V. Rosenberg, “From Sound to Style: The Emergence of Bluegrass,” The Journal of American Folklore 80, no. 316 (1967): 144–145.
Cecil Sharp and Olive Dame Campbell, English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians (New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons: 1917). viii.
Ibid.
Rich Kirby, “Our Own Music,” in Colonialism in Modern America: The Appalachian Case, ed. Helen Matthews Lewis, Linda Johnson, and Donald Askins (Boone, NC: Appalachian State University, 1978), 230.
Ibid., 232; and Smith, “An Introduction to Bluegrass,” 250.
Kirby, “Out Own Music,” 232. You can tell Kirby was deeply invested in Appalachian culture.
Bill Monroe, as quoted in Rockwell, “What is Bluegrass Anyway?” 365.
Rosenberg, “From Sound to Style,” 148.
Flatt and Scruggs soon left the Blue Grass Boys and moved to the mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina. They formed their own band (called Flatt & Scruggs) and Monroe started a commercial rivalry with them.
Rosenberg, “From Sound to Style,” 149.
As with any musical genre, bluegrass is still heavily influenced by the market. While artists like Alison Krauss make strides to push the bluegrass envelope, they can’t fully resist the call to popwash the genre. (See “There’s a Light Up Ahead,” track 10 on Alison Krauss & Union Station, Arcadia, Down the Road, 2025. There are other poppy songs on this album, but this was the most striking to me. Track 9, “Snow,” is pretty bluegrassy, though.)
Smith, “An Introduction to Bluegrass,” 245. Emphasis added.
Rich Kirby argues “Old-time mountain music belongs to everyone. So should new-time music,” in Kirby, “Our Own Music,” 246. New-time music (read: bluegrass) should belong to all people because it originates from such a diverse group of people. Old-time music, though, has similar issues with gatekeeping and should similarly be opened up to those who influenced the style.
Charles Wolfe, “Rural Black String Band Music,” Black Music Research Journal 10, no. 1 (1990): 33.
Bill Monroe, as quoted in Wolfe, “Rural Black String Band Music,” 32. Emphasis added.
See Dom Flemons, Black Cowboys, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings (2018). This music is definitely more in the old-time tradition, but even still there have clearly been some reciprocal influences between recent performances of old-timey music and bluegrass music. Banjo is more of a rhythmic instrument in these tracks, but there is still a focus on virtuosity and solo moments, particularly for the fiddle.
Dom Flemons, “Black Roots,” The Bluegrass Situation (2024): paragraph 4.
Whereas dance music had a concrete social function (i.e. get a group of well-to-dos on their feet doing an allemande), dance suites were stylized versions of dance forms and were meant to demonstrate instrumental virtuosity. Dance suites, as I have often said, are dance music you sit to. Bluegrass is old-time music you sit to and where the performers get to do some crazy stuff.
My aunt who plays in the Chattanooga Symphony got to play with Yo-Yo Ma one time. If you ask her, she’ll show you a really poorly-taken selfie with him. That separates me from Yo-Yo Ma by only one degree through Aunt Lee, Edgar Meyer, and my undergrad music theory professor.
According to Wiktionary, a goat rodeo is “a chaotic, unmanageable situation.” Things get so wild in this album that Edgar Meyer ends up playing viola da gamba on a J.S. Bach sonata. So fun!