Sunday, May 04, 2014

AccuRadio Song Of The Day-Lester Flatt and Bill Monroe

Artist:Lester Flatt and Bill Monroe
Song:Will You Be Loving Another Man?
Album:Live At Vanderbilt





Of course Bill Monroe basically invented bluegrass music. He even named it "bluegrass". Lester Flatt was a member of Monroe's band The Blue Grass Boys in the mid-40s. Will You Be Loving Another Man? was a song the two wrote together and it was on the B-side of the 1946 hit Blue Yodel No. 4. Flatt left The Blue Grass Boys in 1948 to form The Foggy Mountain Boys with Earl Scruggs. They were very popular and are probably best known for the theme of the TV series The Beverly Hillbillies. By the late 60s, Scruggs was looking to do more than bluegrass and Flatt was a traditionalist and didn't like the direction Scruggs was going. So they split up in 1969. Scruggs started The Earl Scruggs Revue. Flatt started The Nashville Grass. Monroe was inducted into The Country Music Hall of Fame in 1970. He also ran his own Bean Blossom Festival. Flat and Monroe reconciled when Flatt appeared at the festival in the early 70s. The result was that Flatt and Monroe started doing the occasional show together. This CD was recorded at Vanderbilt University in Nashville in 1974. The band is The Nashville Grass including 15 year old Marty Stuart on guitar along with guys like Curly Seckler, Charles Nixon and Kenny Baker. It's unclear if Flatt's record company CMH released this concert on LP at the time. But it didn't turn up on CD until the German label Bear Family released it as part of the Lester Flatt box set Flatt On Victor. Then in 2002 they released Live At Vanderbilt as a single CD. Monroe and Flatt performed together occasionally until Flatt's 1979 death. I think bluegrass fans will be interested in this CD of the two performing together. Here's Lester Flatt and Bill Monroe performing Will You Be Loving Another Man? on The Grand Ole Opry in Nashville in the mid-70s.

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