ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, September 13, 1996 TAG: 9609130197
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SETH WILLIAMSON SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES
The passing of American music legend Bill Monroe earlier this week had a special resonance in the Roanoke Valley. The career of the man known as the father of bluegrass was intertwined with the Roanoke area in several ways.
Bluegrass promoter Carlton Haney is credited with staging the world's first bluegrass festival on a hot weekend early in September 1965 in a big field at Cantrell's Horse Farm in Fincastle.
Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys were the major attraction at the three-day festival, which revolutionized the way bluegrass was presented to its fans and precipitated a huge resurgence in its popularity.
Haney had to choke back emotion several times in the course of remembering Monroe during a telephone interview earlier this week from his home in Reidsville, N.C. "The world has lost the greatest musical genius who ever lived," he said.
Haney compared the singer, band leader and mandolinist to the Greek mathematician and music theorist Pythagoras in the way he understood the mathematical relationship between voices, tone and stringed instruments.
Monroe also understood show business.
"I told Bill, 'We're gonna get out there in a cow pasture in a horse farm,' and he said, 'You ought to have it in Roanoke where you got television,'" Haney recalled.
A memorable finale took place on stage on the last day of that festival when fellow mandolin picker Bobby Osborne sung with Monroe for the first time in his life. Banjo player Sonny Osborne, who had been a Blue Grass Boy in 1952 when he was only 14 years old, also joined in the session.
"Everybody cried," Haney said, "and I had to take Sonny Osborne offstage because he was crying - and I looked at Monroe, and he had a single tear coming down his cheek."
Monroe also wrote a fiery twin fiddle tune titled ``Roanoke,'' which he named after the city after many appearances at the old American Theatre on Jefferson Street.
Haney said that the Nashville recording session where the tune was worked up started on the night of Dec. 30, 1954, and ran past midnight. He said he was there when Monroe declared, "Yeah, I'm gonna call this 'Roanoke."
Dave Freeman moved to Roanoke from New York City he said because of Bill Monroe's music.
Freeman owns the Record Depot, which is one of the largest roots music distributors in the country. He also owns several bluegrass and old-time music record labels, including County Records based in Floyd.
"He changed my life. I wouldn't be down south, I wouldn't be in this business, I don't know what I would be doing. A lot of people, he affected their whole lives with his music," said Freeman, who now lives in Charlottesville and drives to Roanoke several days a week.
Monroe was famous for his prickly personality and his legendary decades-long feuds with other musicians. But Freeman said that when he produced an album with Monroe and fiddler Kenny Baker in the 1970s, Monroe had mellowed some. And yet, as Freeman diplomatically put it: "He was still easily perturbed if people didn't acknowledge him or give him credit. If people deferred to him, he was on your side right away."
Freeman reflected on Monroe's role in American music.
"How do you deal with somebody who was as huge as he was? He was just an unbelievable master and creator of a whole style of music," he said. ``There is no equivalent that I can think of."
Another Northerner who moved to the Roanoke area indirectly because of Bill Monroe is Bill Vernon of Wirtz, a veteran bluegrass writer and the dean of bluegrass broadcasters in Virginia. Vernon said Monroe's music had "no artificial ingredients. And he kept it that way, all the way from [his native] Rosine, Ky., to the White House."
Vernon moved to Franklin County in the 1970s to be closer to the Appalachia region where the music was born.
Tina Liza Jones of Floyd, a professional musician who plays old-time and Cajun music, credits Bill Monroe with keeping the candle lit in dark times for those who loved bluegrass. "He kept plugging when our Blue Ridge music had really nose-dived in the '50s and '60s. I give him credit for reviving old-time music, because he took it and turned it into bluegrass, and the old-time revival paralleled that."
Jones added, "You can say, 'The king is dead, long live the king.' But when the father dies, who replaces him? Nobody."
LENGTH: Medium: 90 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. Bill Monroe, the father of bluegrass, in a 1993by CNBpublicity photo: "How do you deal with somebody who was as huge as
he was? He was just an unbelievable master and creator of a whole
style of music," said Roanoke record distributor Dave Freeman.
"There is no equivalent tha I can think of." 2. Bill Monroe was sick
but touring when Roanoke Times photographer Wayne Deel shot this
picture at the New River Valley Fair in Dublin in August 1994.
color.