OK WYS, I'll give it a go. I'm going to ramble a bit, so I'll leave it to you to find the "snappy paragraph."

I've heard it said that bluegrass is simply folk music in overdrive. Back in the early days of radio, Bill Monroe and his brother Charlie had a duet called the Monroe Brothers. Being dissatisfied with their sound, Bill struck out on his own and formed the Blue Grass Boys in the late 1930s. But World War II came along, and rather disrupted things a bit.

After the war was over, to make a long story short, the classic version of the Blue Grass Boys was formed with Earl Scruggs on banjo, Lester Flatt on guitar and lead vocal, Chubby Wise on fiddle, and Cedric Rainwater on bass, with Bill on mandolin and singing tenor. Among the things that began to separate the new bluegrass sound from the earlier old-time string band sound was that Bill Monroe wrote much of his own material. Lester Flatt also composed a few songs, and Earl Scruggs of course composed "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" during this period.

With a few exceptions of Jimmie Rodgers, Charlie Poole and A.P. Carter, the older country groups had been content to arrange traditional folk material, or earlier material from the minstrel show stage, Tin Pan Alley, and Victorian parlor songs. Groups like the Bogtrotters from Galax VA, and the Skillet Lickers from GA had a large repertoire of traditional fiddle tunes that can be traced back as far a 18^th century Great Britain.

The music comes around full circle in the fiddle tune repertoire. Almost all bluegrass players know such tunes as Soldier's Joy, Miss McLeod's Reel, Fisher's Hornpipe, Sailor's Hornpipe, and Devil's Dream.

Perhaps I might insert a personal note here. I consider myself to be a practitioner of the old-time style of fiddling. Often I have requests "Do you play any Irish tunes?" My stock answer is, "I just did."

Well, WYS, I didn't read the whole thread. I hope this helps.
Jim