Bill Monroe

William Smith Monroe was an American mandolinist, singer, songwriter, and bandleader honoured as the "Father of Bluegrass," the high-lonesome string-band style he forged out of Appalachian, blues, and gospel materials in the mid-twentieth century. Born in Rosine, Kentucky in September 1911, the youngest of eight children, he grew up cross-eyed and shy on a hill farm where his uncle Pendleton Vandiver and the African-American fiddler and guitarist Arnold Shultz taught him much of his musical vocabulary.

After his parents' deaths he moved north in 1929 to work in oil refineries near Chicago. With his brothers Birch and Charlie he formed the Monroe Brothers, recording for Bluebird from 1936 and producing hits including "What Would You Give in Exchange for Your Soul." After Charlie left in 1938, Bill assembled a new band, the Blue Grass Boys, named for his home state, and joined the Grand Ole Opry in October 1939.

The 1945-1948 line-up of Monroe, banjoist Earl Scruggs, guitarist Lester Flatt, fiddler Chubby Wise, and bassist Howard Watts crystallised the style now called bluegrass: high-pitched lead and tenor harmony, driving syncopation, and instrumental virtuosity. "Blue Moon of Kentucky," written in 1946 and recorded by Elvis Presley in 1954, became the official Kentucky bluegrass song.

Inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1970, he toured almost continuously for sixty years and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997. He died in Springfield, Tennessee in September 1996.

The given name Bill, an English short form of William, derives from the Germanic Wilhelm, joining wil meaning "will" or "desire" and helm meaning "helmet" or "protection." Carried into English by the Conqueror in 1066, it suited the Kentucky farm boy whose will gave a new music to the world.