The facts of Monroe's life are easily enough available for those who care to learn them - his difficult Kentucky childhood, his adoption in the mid-1930s of music as a full-time career, his success with older brother Charlie in the Monroe Brothers, the launching of the Blue Grass Boys in 1939 and their hiring on at the Grand Ole Opry in the fall of that year, the seminal recordings made by the 1945-8 edition of the Blue Grass Boys (Monroe, Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs, Chubby Wise and Howard "Cedric Rainwater" Watts) and the subsequent codification of that band's sound into the country music style called "bluegrass"), the lean years of the 1950s and his subsequent "rediscovery" by the folk music movement of the 1960s, his ultimate veneration in the 1970's and '80s by traditionally- (and not-so-traditionally-) minded country artists.
What is harder to grasp is the unique combination of traits that characterized the man and his music - urban and rural, aloof and generous, private and public, disciplined and wild, black and white, old-time and modern.
If those who are unfamiliar with bluegrass think of it as a relic of a bygone world, that is in large part due to the influence of Bill Monroe; if those who are familiar with it think of it as profoundly modern, that too is in large part due to the man and the complex dualities he embraced.
Monroe didn't intend to invent "bluegrass."
What he wanted was to create his own kind of country music, one which would be instantly identifiable as his and no one else's.
The contradictions of the music were the contradictions of the man, and it is a measure of how deeply he identified with it that when, in 1949, his label (Columbia) signed the Stanley Brothers, who had transmuted their own early approach into a close facsimile of Monroe's (they had already succeeded in releasing their version of Monroe's "Molly And Tenbrooks" before his), he moved to Decca.
Similarly, the resignations of key Blue Grass Boys Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs to pursue their own variation on the sound he had, with their assistance, created, prompted a decades-long refusal to speak to either man.
Though he would later adopt the term, "bluegrass" as a stylistic descriptor was the creation of fans and radio announcers, not Monroe.
While he was instrumental in establishing weekend festivals as a prime venue for his kind of music and took advantage of the interest of folk-minded urbanites, he carefully maintained his association with the Grand Ole Opry, of which he was a member, and Nashville's country music establishment until the very end.
Protective of and opinionated about his own style of music, he was unusually generous when it came to those who adapted his songs to other styles, telling a young Elvis Presley that if his rockin' version of "Blue Moon Of Kentucky" would help his career, to go right ahead and do it and appearing on TV with the Kentucky Headhunters to give his blessing to their electrified rave-up approach to his (and co-writer Jake Landers') "Walk Softly On This Heart Of Mine."
Throughout his career, Monroe remained true to his intensely personal vision. He was never afraid to experiment until he got the results he wanted; while polishing his image as atraditionally-minded musician who brought out the "ancient tones" of mountain music, he overdubbed not only a sizable string section but environmental sounds on 1981's "My Last Days On Earth"; he recorded entire songs in falsetto; his most widely-known version of "Blue Moon Of Kentucky" - a post-Elvis remake which echoed Presley's recording by curtailing its initial waltz time in favor of an up-tempo two-beat gallop - had no banjo at all; his mandolin breaks were notorious for their idiosyncrasy.
Having once heard Monroe, even a casual listener is unlikely to ever again have to ask who he or she is hearing.
Yet, despite his insistence on maintaining his artistic integrity, Monroe never adopted a take-it-or-leave-it attitude when it came to his audiences. Few performers devote as large a portion of their show to fulfilling requests as Monroe did.
Even when age and illness slowed him down, he spent enough time shaking hands, posing for pictures, signing autographs and simply chatting with fans to wear out a man less than half his age.
A strict taskmaster with band members, he was generous and encouraging to would-be pickers; as recently as last year, I saw him take 20 minutes in the middle of a 100-degree Indiana August afternoon to teach a young man the proper way to kick off "Roanoke." If a picker was serious about learning to do it "the right way," Bill Monroe would always find a way to encourage and instruct.
The list of musicians who worked with Monroe runs into the hundreds, even without adding the pickers whose tenure as a Blue Grass Boy consisted of a single appearance in one of the many pick-up bands he had to work with during the lean years of the late 1950's and early 1960's.
Even longer is the list of recordings of his songs by other artists, ranging from virtually every bluegrass band to ever make an album to Elvis Presley, Ray Charles and Paul McCartney.
Yet these - and other - lists of verifiable facts are dwarfed by the man's influence, which encompasses not only style and repertoire, but an uncompromising devotion to a sound that was heard by him alone until he brought it to the world. His show business career spanned almost the entire history of country music, and he never retired, never abandoned his course, and never disengaged himself from the country music scene or from the world around him.
A private man, it was nevertheless apparent to his friends and supporters that he would not long survive off the stage, outside of the public arena.
In one of his most powerful compositions, "Memories of Mother andDad," Bill Monroe quoted the epitaphs carved on his parents' tombstones; for this giant of country music, of American music - of music, period - let them also be said: "On Mother's `Gone But Not Forgotten,' on Dad's `We'll Meet Again Someday.'"
