Bluegrass music creator Bill Monroe dies at 84

Tuesday, Sept. 10, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

The Father of Bluegrass died at a hospice in Springfield, just north of country music's capital, after suffering a stroke earlier this year.

Monroe influenced bluegrass legends like Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, as well as newer stars such as Ricky Skaggs and Alison Krauss.

"There's probably nobody really on the face of the Earth that ever influenced more music than Bill Monroe," Skaggs said. "In all of history, he's the biggest single influence in country music. And he didn't just influence country music, he influenced music in general."

Scruggs, who started his career in Monroe's band, recalled those days as "a wonderful time."

"It was a band that really fit together. We seemed to work off each other's energy," he said. "It was a new sound for that day and time and it's one that he's kept ever since."

Monroe's son, James, checked on him last week before heading for the annual bluegrass festival Monroe started at his Indiana campground, Bean Blossom, and learned of his father's death Monday after he arrived home.

"He looked pretty good, but evidently his heart gave out," James Monroe said.

Monroe's best known song was "Blue Moon of Kentucky," which he wrote in 1946 and which Elvis Presley also recorded in 1954 on his way to stardom. Other records included "Kentucky Waltz," "Mule Skinner Blues," "Pike County Breakdown" and "A Letter From My Darling."

As a singer, songwriter and instrumentalist, Monroe was a headliner around the world and was honored at the White House. He sold more than 50 million records and remained active well into his 80s, despite bouts with cancer, pneumonia and heart trouble.

"I love to play music and hear it," he told the Associated Press in 1989. "I love to put the sounds and notes in there that I want to hear. I want to do the best I can for my friends and fans sitting out there in the audience."

Bluegrass music relies heavily on banjos, mandolins, acoustic guitars and fiddles, with lightning-fast picking and a yodeling vocal style. It gets its name from Monroe's band, the Blue Grass Boys, and the grass of his native Kentucky.

Monroe could play most of the string instruments but was best known as a mandolinist. While performing, he nearly always wore a coat and tie, with a white cowboy hat crowning his silver hair.

In the 1940s, he hired Flatt and Scruggs -- Flatt on guitar, Scruggs on banjo -- and they became two of the most acclaimed musicians in bluegrass history. Monroe, a proud man, was said to have refused to speak to the pair for more than 20 years after they left him in the late '40s.

Monroe was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1970. He played on the Grand Ole Opry from 1939 throughout his career. He won the National Medal of the Arts in 1995.

Monroe was born near Rosine, Ky., the youngest of eight children. He learned to play after he was orphaned at 11 and taken in by his uncle Pendleton Vandiver, a talented fiddler. In tribute, Monroe wrote one of his biggest hits, "Uncle Pen," and founded the annual bluegrass gathering known as the Hall of Fame and Uncle Pen Day Festival.