Customer Reviews

Can't You Hear Me Callin': The Life of Bill Monroe, Father of Bluegrass

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a biography comes along that one reads and comes away feeling like they really know the subject...that is certainly true of CAN'T YOU HEAR ME CALLING by Richard D. Smith. Bill Monroe is portrayed in all his glory but also shown as a real person with all the foibles and flaws but also his genius. Living a few miles from his birthpalce Rosine KY I knew of Bill Monroe but until reading this book I had no idea of his many contributions to the music industry. To find he composed many songs that I love but had never connected to Bluegrass (Georgia Rose, Rawhide etc.) was a surprise and makes me anxious to hear more of his music. The author conveyed so well how Bill Monroe the man was a product of a time, a place and a family that so influenced not only his music but also the person he became...one comes way a little more aware of how that is true of all of us.

Smith's book is conflicted. The distinct contribution of this book is not so much what it says about the music. There isn't much here about the music that is new, sustaining, or distinct. In fact, at times, Smith seem to inflate the importance of Monroe in rather trifling ways that really undercut the significance of Monroe.

I am very glad Smith accurately and fairly portrayed the role the late Ralph Rinzler played in really saving Monroe's career and making him more known in the folk revival.

What is interesting is what the book shows about Monroe's character. Despite Smith's desire to guild the lily and create a halo around his hero, he unearths a history of great emotional problems that had a heavy impact on Monroe's life. Smith traces them from the difficult, lonely, childhood Monroe had all the way to Monroe's last days very consistently. Monroe was a compulsive womanizer throughout his life, never faithul in any relationship, usually having a semi permanent mistress in addition whatever common law or legal wife he had, and usually having several other women out on the road.

Plainly, Monroe was small minded and propriatorial about "owning" Bluegrass. He was especially hateful to others like his former employees starting with Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs who dared to play it on their own. Monroe refused to speak to Lester and Earl for decades, threatened to fire his own band members for merely talking to Lester and Earl or members of their band, and refused to appear on the same bill at Bluegrass Festivals with them until he was forced too. This despite the fact both Flat and Scruggs retained a professional respect for Monroe then and now, while Lester Flatt and his wife always had a deep personal admiration and care for Monroe.

It's still shocking to me to read about the great fiddle genius Kenny Baker who played with Monroe on and off for 23 years!. Baker simply demanded to know where the band would be touring so his family could send him word of the progress of Baker's dying brother. Monroe refused to tell him because he'd never told band members where the tour was going before. Even though Baker was an acknowledged genius of Bluegrass fiddle whose work suited Monroe's taste more than any of a number of fiddlers who preceded him and followed him, an interview I saw on the web with a long-time band members, explains Monroe always referred to Baker as a "drunk."

Monroe tended to treat and pay band members like they were farm hands on a farm in Western Kentucky in the 1920s. If Bill Monroe needed his house painted, fence posts put in on one of his farms, or other work around home or farm, if you were in the band, you were expected to show up on time at 6 am in the morning and do that work as well for nothing extra,.

This book seems to accurately root Monroe's character in the difficulty he had with a disability in his eyes as a child and early teen, a disability cured when his older brothers moved to the Midwest and got jobs in factories and oil refineries and got together money for a healing operation. Monroe never seems to recover for the hazing and unkindness he faced from his brothers before the operation. This book recounts how even when Monroe was in his late 60s and an internationally famous cultural figure, while his brothers were in their seventies, men who had been mostly rescued from financial failure by their younger brothers, he would still fall into tears about how cruelly they had treated him as a child when he visited them!

There are many other stories of Monroe's small
mindedness, jealousy, and campaigns against musicians who worked for him. However, on reflection, the important question seems to be, that with all these problems, Monroe always had one of the great organizations in music of any kind, and the seminal group in Bluegrass. Musicians fought to work for and stay with Bill Monroe harder than some might have fought to get away. Musicians who Monroe chased away out of jealousy and then castigated once they left the band have seen their careers as a tribute to Monroe.

Monroe was a great, decisive, and innovative musician, singer, performer and arranger. His ability to lead, train and continue a band that became elite training school for all of bluegrass, matched with his ability to bring what blues, swing, and even jazz offered to the musicwithout losing what he called the "ancient sounds" congealed Bluegrass out of the ferment that was going through country music after World War II. Everybody with ears needs to hear him.

Of course, if you aren't familiar with Monroe's musical history and contributions, this book, does provide a basic introduction to that as well. But the real interest in the book is the conflict between Monroe's contributions to music, and his troubled emotions.

This is a powerful book, and Richard Smith has succeeded in presenting an especially well-rounded portrait of an especially complex individual.

There's been quite a bit of discussion of the book on several Bluegrass oriented internet lists, most of it positive, although there have been a few carping posts on the decision to expose some of unpublished, but oft-rumored, facts and incidents in Monroe's life.

Wisely bypassing the on-going "what is Bluegrass, anyway" debate, the book offers a very common-sensible approach to whether or not Monroe indeed invented the genre -- RDS posits an "auteur" theory of the foundation of Bluegrass, giving WSM the principle credit, but also elevating several others to near-founder status: Earl Scruggs, Jimmy Martin and, to a lesser, but important extent, Don Reno.

Richard talked to many (if not most) of the (surviving) women in WSM's life; they were seemingly very forthcoming about Bill and his good and bad traits, and their stories are integral to the overall picture. The one person who did not talk to him, who's input would have been invaluable, but who come across much better than I (and, I suspect, many others in the BG world) expected, was Bill's son, James. Input from surviving members of the BG Boys is also critical to the overall success and utility of the book.

One of the complaints that I have: the book is too short, and neglects to cover many of the stories that circulate in the Bluegrass world, either to confirm or debunk. My other major complaints: the index, which seems rather perfunctory, and the notes -- I would have preferred source notes at the back (as they appear), but with parenthetical remarks in the body of the text, as footnotes, rather than combining the two in one section after the entire text. These notes are integral to the story, and I'm going to have to reread the book just to coordinate these asides with the main text; I was flying through it on my first of, (probably) many readings.

But these are nits, and I almost had to search in order to pick 'em. Overall, it's an outstanding job. Also, I feel very proud both for Richard and for Mr. Monroe that the book appears under the imprint of a mainstream trade publisher, rather than being in the relative backwater of an academic press.

Thank you, Richard, for spending the time and effort to bring this book to us. It passes my own personal test for great art: It made me laugh, it made me cry, it made me think. What more can one ask!

This is the first major biography of Bill Monroe, and it won't be the last. Some, no doubt, will be written in more eloquent prose -- Richard D. Smith's is at best pedestrian -- but it's hard to imagine a future biography that could manage to be as balanced and as affectionate without ever sliding into sentimentality, apologetics, or hagiography. Though no sensible observer disputes the greatness of Monroe's music, some writers cannot resist snide treatments of the man's personal foibles and limitations, which were many. Smith does not hide Monroe's unattractive qualities, but he also shows his other side, which came more and more to the fore as Monroe gradually came to understand that, almost in spite of himself, he had become loved and revered. In other words, more than any other writer before him, Smith makes Monroe not just an icon, not just a difficult, imperious, narcissistic man, but a human being who struggled most of his life against the shadows cast by a bitter chldhood. The reader begins to comprehend why so many who knew Monroe cared so much about him, and Smith makes the reader care, too. By the end of the book, as Monroe is buried and mourned by the many whom his life and music touched, I felt emotionally drained and profoundly moved -- and newly grateful for the art that endures even after the artist is gone.

Monroe was a stubborn and proud man whose legendary status seems to have fended off a three-dimensional biography during his lifetime. It is fortunate that while his memory is still fresh, and while many of the people who knew him best are still alive, that he has been captured, humanized and made accessible in this terrific book. Other than the occasional teaser at the end of a section or paragraph, it is well written, exhaustively researched, and clear. For the musicians, it is technical enough without getting purely scholarly, which would put off those who don't play. The book puts a new and intriguing perspective on Monroe's music and on the development of the bluegrass form. Highly recommended not only to bluegrass fans, but to anyone with an interest in the development of American music in the twentieth century.

While Smith does give us some great facts on Monroe and his life, but has missed the mark on the details....No Discography, No List of Bluegrass Boys, No setlist, and very little on the last 10 yrs of his life and his money woes and accusations of stealing song credits...etc. A good read, but lacking in areas.

I, too, couldn't put the book down, although I have a quibble with the way the author transitioned from one subject to the next in the same way the announcer uses a "teaser" on TV shows to bring viewers back after the break. "But soon Bill would hear the knock of a man whose offer he couldn't refuse" then that'd be the end of that section. A quibble. At any rate, I read the entire thing in one sitting. It definitely humanized the idol and also added shadings to someone who always seems to be portrayed as a stiff, distant man, who always seemed to be able to be clearly viewed in black and white. After reading this, a person realizes that Mr. Monroe was humane and vulnerable. I also liked the fact the author didn't hit too hard how his terrible childhood affected his future life. Just kind of gentley pointed it out to the reader. No pscyhobabble, which is nice in this day and age. The author shied away from making any leaps in logic or pandering to purient gossip.

The reviewers here are crazy... this is not the best biography by any measurement. The author inserts himself into this book in a way that made me think he was trying to defend his own legitimacy... which of course made me immediately doubt his legitimacy. The author's point seems to be that Bill was a musical icon and flawed human being--which by all counts he was--but his delivery just made him come off as kind of a jackass.

If you want some racy "insight" into Bill and Bessie's relationship, this book sells that. If you want to be told Bill wasn't a great businessman, it's in there too. If that makes a good biography, this book is for you. Otherwise, read Bob Black's "Come Hither to Go Yonder" which lacks a professional writer's touch but is written from the heart by a man whose legitimacy can not be questioned. Or better still, listen to Bill's music... which I doubt most here do. Everything you need to know about the man is in there.

I was amazed to read reviewer comments like "this is the best biography I've ever read..." and "Smith does an outstanding, thorough job..".

This has to be one of the most patronizing, biased, and poorly written books that I've come across in a long time. To begin with, the entire book is overloaded with superlatives that are totally out of context with the event/situation previously described as if the author is trying to lessen the very real story of an narrow-minded, over-sexed zealot. Then there is a real lack of factual detail throughout the book - over and over you'll find statements like "sometime in late 1949 or early 1950" and "about 1961...". If you don't have the facts straight on basic items like dates, how can there be reliability?

It's sad because I'm both a musician and a bluegrass fan and was looking forward to learning about the beginning of the music and the people who formed it; this sad attempt is just too biased a crusade to redeem Mr. Monroe that the real story is lost.

This is quite possibly the best biography I have ever read. Bill Monroe is a facinating character who lived a life of musical genius and person contradicitons. His story is told here in great depth and detail, and makes for a good read.

But what makes this book stand out above all others is the research. Every single anecdote and fact is footnoted. Flip to the back and you'll find that the author took the time and effort to interview every major person in Bill Monroe's life. In some bios you'll read a famous story and wonder if that's how it happened or just the author re-telling the legend. Mr. Smith gets to the truth behind the legend with first-hand interviews of the parties involved or from transcripts of other Bill Monroe interviews.

And the subject is a worthy one. Bill Monroe transformed country music to such a degree he invented his own genre, named after his band, the "Blue Grass" Boys. Defining American music, and influencing musicians from jazz to rock and roll, Monroe's music will live on forever. This particular biography is the most in-depth and factual of any you'll find. Highly recommened for the music history and for the true story behind the man.