I almost think the authorship of a tune looses significance when it's performed by Monroe. He made every piece his own. Think of the Jimmie Rodgers tunes Bill recorded. They become an entirely different music in his hands.

Of course many wonderful players have enhanced and extended the genre since its inception in 1945 but one thing that's remained a constant has been the beat and the phrasing that Monroe imparted to his music.

Some of Monroe's music uses airs and lyrics from Scottish/Irish/Appalachian traditional sources but the music itself, as others have mentioned, owes more to blues and jazz than anything else. Yes, bluegrass is highly structured and somewhat rigid in its forms but then so is flemenco. Just as there are infinitely many numbers between 0 and 1, so is there great opportunity for innovation and variation within the structures of traditionally based music like bluegrass and flemenco.

The area of western Kentucky that helped define Monroe's music also helped define the music of Merle Travis. Travis' music is also jazz and blues based. I know a great deal has been written about both of these great masters but I wonder if serious academic research has been done on that area of Kentucky, in general, with a view to discovering why so much innovative music was spawned there.

We've had quite a few threads on the origin and definition of bluegrass music. I'm surprised that links to those threads don't appear at the top of this one. I guess I don't understand how the common themes are identified and structured.

      - Mark