10/10/2024
Bluegrass: 1961 to 2024
As a teen in the 1960s, I traveled with friends to Sunset Park in West Grove, PA, and New River Ranch in Rising Sun, MD, where Carlton Haney hosted bluegrass shows. He produced performances by the Country Gentlemen, Jim & Jesse, the Stanley Brothers, Bill Clifton, and the father of it all, Bill Monroe.
Admission was a buck, and a good crowd was 150, most of us in our teens and twenties. The music was raw, unvarnished - no major 7ths allowed – played by men who mostly worked the land or in factories. Big Mon’s rendition of “Uncle Penn” stunned me as I heard the verse banging into the a ca****la “Uncle Penn played the fiddle …”, spilling into a G-run that ran into a fiddle refrain. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeZPAQRl7TA
In 1961 Bluegrass was my age, 16 years, and its future was anything but assured. Carlton would close each show by pumping his fist and calling out to the crowd, “Help keep bluegrass alive!” We stood and cheered back loudly, hopefully.
I just returned from the IBMA’s 2024 “World of Bluegrass” in Raleigh, North Carolina. Thousands of fans swarmed the downtown area, cramming into hotel lounges, bars and restaurants, tapping toes to emerging bands. Young groups with hot musicians entertained fans from teenagers to nonagenarians. The Saturday evening show at Red Hat Amphitheater (5,500 seating capacity), featured Sierra Hull, who only yesterday, it seems, was a newcomer herself. Tix went from $10 for lawn seating to $70 for reserved front rows. The week, a torrent of bluegrass, was shadowed by the torrent of rain Hurricane Helen was dumping from Florida to western North Carolina, just 200 miles away – a human tragedy.
In the 1960s, bluegrass felt like a cult, an insider story that hadn’t traveled far. Today it’s a global phenomenon, thanks to the CBA, IBMA and other bluegrass associations worldwide, and to thousands of bands and musicians playing the high lonesome sound.
Rest easy, Carlton, bluegrass will always be alive.
Best regards to all,
Bill Amatneek
https://VineyardsPress.com
Bill Monroe & The Blue Grass Boys - Uncle Pen (1965).
