painting a regional context
A Confluence of
Genres
1: Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys on tour with the Grand Ole. Opry. Courtesy of Country Music Hall of Fame.
2: Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys, vintage concert poster. Courtesy of Kentucky Museum Library of Special Collections at WKU.
Pride in Place
Southcentral Kentucky has been home to many musical icons, a fact which remains in the hearts of those who call the region home today. These icons remain an influence on the sounds played in venues across the region, on radio stations and playlists, and in classrooms studying the history and cultures of Kentucky and American music. Their talents – whether fostered on a back porch or a stage – have contributed to a unique cross-pollination of music in this region over the past century.
Mothers and Jams
It is documented that Kennedy Jones and Bill Monroe first learned music from their mothers. Bill Monroe’s mother, Malissa Vandiver Monroe, was a singer and fiddle player – much like her brother, Pen Vandiver. Ask nearly any musician of the region about their primary influences, and the answers come back to family and roots. Many women were just as talented as the men we celebrate, but the profession of roving entertainers was not commonly a socially acceptable role for them. Instead, they played in other spaces: on the porch and in the parlor, providing profound influence and tutelage for developing musicians.
Like many folk traditions, the musical traditions of Kentucky are passed down between generations – often on the porches, in the parlors and kitchens, and seated together. These jams or pickin’s bring together people, instruments, stories, laughter, and possibly bourbon – to create space for playing, experimentation, and passing knowledge. Today, these jams continue – in their original inception as word-of-mouth, people-you-know type but also as larger, community-welcome gatherings such as Hart County’s Thursday Night Jammin’ on the Porch.
We honor these oft-unnamed mothers and jam holders, and thank them – wherever and whenever they are – for all they have done to foster our musical landscape.
Blues, Jazz, and Ragtime
While many would cite New Orleans or Memphis as hubs of early Blues and Jazz, Bowling Green was also home to some of the genres’ most beloved musicians. Likely influenced by its connection between these jazz hubs and major metropolitan areas thanks to the rivers and railroads of the early 20th century, blues and jazz became part of the regional music scene, notably among African Americans.
One early contributor and Bowling Green native is Peter Hampton, born in 1871. While not considered a Blues artist during his lifetime, Hampton is the first known African American artist to record a harmonica song; because of this, he is considered an early pioneer who paved the way for other Blues artists and harmonica players. During his lifetime, Hampton spent minimal time in the United States as he mostly toured in Europe with his theatre touring group known as the “Down in Kentucky Act.” While there were around 150 early recordings of his, primarily from 1903-1911, most of these have been lost or destroyed. Even with the archival limitations and brief fragments of Hampton’s history and life story, his role as an early African American harmonica player helped pave the way for other musicians to follow in his footsteps.
Another early contributor is Henry “Hank” Duncan, an American jazz pianist and composer born in Bowling Green in 1894. In 1919, after graduating from University, Duncan formed the “Kentucky Jazz Band” in Louisville, KY. Starting in 1926, Duncan was on some of the earliest jazz recordings with prolific musicians such as Fess Williams and the Royal Flush Orchestra, King Oliver, Sidney Bechet, and Snub Mosley and his Band. He also performed with jazz piano legend Fats Waller.
Born in Bowling Green’s Shake Rag district in 1891, Porter Grainger (also called “Harold Gray”) was a Blues and Jazz pianist, composer, and bandleader. While not for certain when he started learning to play piano and compose, it was likely during his time living in Bowling Green. Grainger later moved to Louisville, then Chicago, a hub of jazz and blues. Grainger became cutting-edge blues and jazz composer, bandleader, musician, and piano accompaniment player. However, the peak of his personal recording success occurred while living in New York City when he played piano with Blues legend and pioneer Bessie Smith.
Between the years of 1923 and 1928, Grainger and Smith recorded over a dozen sides for Columbia records. Throughout his career, Grainger was an accompaniment to other early female Blues legends including Viola McCoy, Clara Smith, Mamie Smith (the first recorded blues artist), and Victoria Spivey. While Grainger did perform on many recordings, perhaps the most prominent archival traces and tangible evidence of his influence are credits on songs he composed; a few of his compositions became standards in blues, jazz, and other musical genres. One of the most famous Blues/Jazz standards “‘Taint Nobody’s Bizness if I Do,’ ‘ was arranged and composed by Grainger and Everett Robins in 1922. The song became a standard that defied music genre lines as it was performed by Billie Holliday, Eric Dolphy, Charles Mingus, T-Bone Walker, B.B. King, Eric Clapton, Hank Williams, Willie Nelson, Ike and Tina Turner, Dianna Ross, Sam Cooke, and The Ink Spots, to name a few. Even jazz luminary and American music pioneer Duke Ellington recorded four different compositions of Grainger in some of his earliest recordings around 1927/1928. The playlist at right features many of Grainger’s compositions and songs recorded by blues and jazz artists.
Bluegrass, Thumpicking, & early Commercial Country
Stylistically, bluegrass is indebted to musicians and styles from a variety of
non-mountain and mountain sources, and its songs come from no one region.
Bill Monroe
Bluegrass, Thumbpicking, & Early Commerical Country
“Bluegrass” as a music genre took shape in the 1940s and 1950s partly due to the success and fame of Bill Monroe, who left a lasting imprint on music performers ranging from Elvis to Jerry Garcia. Born in Ohio County, KY, on September 13, 1911, Monroe received much of his vocal inspiration by participating in shape-note and congregational singing at various churches near Rosine, his hometown. This was complemented by instrumental training he received from his uncle, Pendleton Vandiver, and from fiddler and guitarist, Arnold Shultz.
Acoustic in nature and drawing upon earlier string-band and vocal styles, Bluegrass suggests similarities to so-called oldtime of music, but is actually far from it. Developed in the mid-1940s and named a decade later, Bluegrass significantly modified its roots. Bluegrass took its name from Monroe’s band, The Blue Grass Boys, whose members included Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs, and many others over the years. These musicians would continue to shape the genre and influence future musicians.
Bill Monroe - I'm On My My Way Back to the Old Home (Live)
"High Lonesome: The Story of Bluegrass Music"
Bill Monroe & Dolly Parton - (LIVE) - "Mule Skinner"
Bill Monroe - I'm On My My Way Back to the Old Home (Live)
"High Lonesome: The Story of Bluegrass Music"
Bill Monroe & Dolly Parton - (LIVE) - "Mule Skinner"
Bill Monroe & The Bluegrass Boys - (LIVE) - 1986 Austin City Limits - "Legends of Bluegrass"
Bill Monroe & The Bluegrass Boys - (LIVE) - "Uncle Pen"
Bill Monroe (Live) – Playlist
Arnold Schultz
While Bill Monroe’s legacy is remembered generously, one of his most important influences is often overlooked. A central figure whose work as a performer influenced two distinct regional genres, Bluegrass and Western Kentucky thumbpicking, was the coal miner and itinerant fiddler Arnold Shultz (1886-1931). His contributions to these two musical styles cannot be understated. A laborer by day and a musician by night, Shultz first learned guitar from his uncle while growing up in Ohio County, KY, and expanded his musical reach by adding fiddling to his instrumental repertoire in the 1920s. Schultz is one of the better-known examples of the central yet under-acknowledged role that black musicians played in the region’s musical landscape in the early twentieth century.
Schultz was known for playing dances from Kentucky to Mississippi and down through New Orleans. His own bluesy, soulful style was a significant influence on “The Father of Bluegrass” Bill Monroe, who grew up playing with his brothers on their home place near Rosine, and who also performed with Shultz for local events. The influence of Shultz , as well as that of Monroe’s fiddle-playing uncle Pen Vandiver, helped Monroe develop his own distinct style.
There are many examples of one traditional style having influence on another. Many musicians would dabble in multiple styles, depending on whichever group they were playing with. The late John Edmonds, a prolific gospel entertainer, was exposed to Bluegrass and Old-time by way of family members who hosted Bluegrass picking sessions in their backyards on Sunday afternoons. This is an example of the unique musical cross-pollination that happened in this area.
“But my grandfather was from Scottsville. On Sunday afternoon, he would get a bunch of his friends together, they will play bluegrass music, and he could play any stringed instrument, fiddle, guitar, mandolin, whatever. And he knew how to read and write music too, because he was the first one that sat me down and showed me how to draw the treble clef and the five lines to create a staff. I can remember hearing them play John Henry. And they'd have vocalist and in the front yard right down on Raglan Lane. But to my five, six year old ears, it sounded wonderful.”
JOHN EDMONDS
EXCERPT FROM KFP INTERVIEW
Merle Travis
Originally from Muhlenberg County, Merle Travis moved to California after his service in the United States Marine Corps. He quickly rose in the ranks of country entertainers there, playing and hanging with other artists such as Speedy West, Ted Daffan, and Hank Thompson. Now regarded as one of country music’s most brilliant and multi-talented entertainers, he is credited with popularizing “Travis style” fingerpicking. Travis himself called it “thumb style” and picked it up from guitarists such as Kennedy Jones and Mose Rager in Muhlenberg County, within the coal mining district of Western Kentucky.
Merle Travis went on to influence many country greats such as Chet Atkins, Carl Perkins, Scotty Moore, and Doc Watson. Chet Atkins remembers growing up in East Tennessee and hearing Travis on the radio and was later amazed to discover that so much music could be made with only two fingers.
Merle Travis (Live) – Playlist
LEGENDARY ORIGNS OF WESTERN THUMBPICKING
Kennedy Jones, like Arnold Schultz, is an example of another under-acknowledged musician with significant influence on Country and Bluegrass music. Jones learned to play guitar from his mother, and he is credited by Travis as the originator of thumbpicking.
Around 1918, a young musician named Kennedy Jones had played his thumb raw, hitting the bass notes on his guitar for hours while playing a square dance. The next morning, he went down to a Central City music store and found a box of thumbpicks, at the time used exclusively for Hawaiian music, then a fad. [...] That sore thumb was the irritation in the oyster that produced the pearl of thumbpicking as a regional, then national, and now globally recognized style of guitar playing.
WESTERN THUMBPICKING TODAY
No musician alive has done more to expand the audience for “That Muhlenberg Sound” than Eddie Pennington, currently living in the town of Princeton in Caldwell County. National Thumbpicking Champion in 1986 and 1987, he has performed across the country from the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, DC, to overseas trips delighting European fans.
Pennington’s style is perhaps the purest representation of the unbroken line of musicians extending from Kennedy Jones to Mose Rager, Eddie’s teacher, and Merle Travis, his musical hero. Pennington’s talented musicianship has also been passed down to his son, Alonzo Pennington, and his grandson, Caleb Coots. Despite his reverence for Travis, Eddie Pennington is much more than an interpreter: his own musical repertoire has a clarity and drive all his own. Whether it be emblematic thumbpicking classic tunes like “Dark as a Dungeon” or “Nine Pound Hammer,” which illustrate the hardships of his region’s coal-mining culture, Pennington’s soulful spirit continues to pay homage to his musical forebears in rich and reverent ways.
Cousin Emmy
THE UNDER-REPRESENTED ROLE OF WOMEN
IN COUNTRY MUSIC
Barren County-born Cynthia May Carver, better known by her stage name of Cousin Emmy, broke an early glass ceiling of musical entertainer, a role that had been reserved for men. This paved the way for Country stars such as Kitty Wells and Dolly Parton.
Cousin Emmy began performing as a child, playing banjo to accompany Carter family broadcasts in Kansas City. Her solo career began in the 1930s, including becoming the first woman to win the National Oldtime Fiddlers’ Contest (1935). By the early 1940s, she had her own radio program on Louisville’s WHAS and was recording with Decca records. Her career spanned multiple collaborations, albums, broadcast and live shows, and a Hollywood movie. In the 1960s, she became an inspiration within and part of the folk revival.
Ernest Hogan & Ragtime
Born Ernest Rueben Crowdus on April 17, 1865, in the Shake Rag District of Bowling Green, KY, Hogan took his initial musical influences from a number of genres including Jazz, Blues, and Vaudeville performers who traveled through the region as riverboat and railroad workers. In 1877, at age 12, he left Kentucky to sing in minstrel shows. Hogan became a prominent songwriter and, in 1895, wrote “La Pas Ma La” and promoted it as the first published ragtime song.
The story of Ernest Hogan is one of complicated success. While Hogan overcame social and musical boundaries as an African American, elevating black music to a wider, more national audience, he did so by perpetuating many harmful stereotypes that African Americans are still working against today. Much of the music that furthered Hogan’s career utilized derogatory themes that many activists at the time denounced. Although he became the first black man to produce a show on Broadway, he came to regret the stereotypical themes utilized in his works.
Early Rock & Roll and The Everly Brothers
Although only Don could claim Kentucky as his birthplace, the Everly Brothers’ close harmonies drew what they later referred to as “songs our Daddy taught us,” influencing musicians around the world, most notably The Beatles.
They developed their singing style as children in a family group headed by their father, Ike Everly, who worked in the coal mines of Western Kentucky. This style became the signature harmonies that made the Everly Brothers into some of Rock & Roll’s earliest stars.
The British Invasion of music in the early 1960s had profound effects on musicians across the United States, and Southcentral Kentucky was no exception. But in the case of British Rock & Roll, a lot of the elements were almost returning to the region’s origins.
TOMMY JOHNSON
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