The Essential Bill Monroe & His Blue Grass Boys
Given his reputation as a tight-assed traditionalist, it's not easy to think of the late bluegrass fountainhead Bill Monroe as a revolutionary, but that's exactly what he was. As Mark A. Humphrey's liner notes contend, "Bluegrass was teething at the same time as bebop and rhythm & blues." Indeed, the music created by Monroe and his crack sidemen reflected the same anxious innovation as, say,Charlie Parker's contemporaneous creations. Four of the six recording sessions chronicled in this box featured the classic BlueGrass Boys lineup, which fell apart in 1948 whenLester Flatt,Earl Scruggs, and Cedric Rainwater left to form a splinter group that took bluegrass in a more commercial direction.--Steven Stolder