Bluegrass Patriarch Del McCoury

Big Mon worked in mysterious ways. Bill Monroe, the “Father of Bluegrass,” hired a young banjo player named Del McCoury in 1963 to play in his band, the Blue Grass Boys. It took McCoury a couple of months to make it to Nashville for the job, however, and when he arrived, he found that Monroe had just hired another young banjo player, Bill Keith. (Photo L to R: Bill Monroe, Joe Stuart, Bill Keith, Del McCoury (1963). Photo by Jim Peva.)

Rather than send the disappointed McCoury home, Monroe asked him if he’d done any singing and just like that, Monroe had another great lead singer, in a line that reached back to Clyde Moody and Lester Flatt in the 1940s. If the phrase “high lonesome sound” hadn’t already been coined to describe the singing of Bill Monroe, it would surely have come up in the case of Del McCoury.

Del McCoury has led his own bluegrass band since 1967 and is the most celebrated bluegrass singer of his generation. He has won four Male Vocalist of the Year awards from the International Bluegrass Music Association and an unprecedented nine Entertainer of the Year awards at the head of the Del McCoury Band. Throw in the band’s other IBMA awards—Instrumental Group of the Year (two), Album of the Year (two), Song of the Year, Instrumental Album of the Year and 13 individual Instrumentalist of the Year awards—and you’ll get a sense of the power of the Del McCoury Band.

Lots of ambitious bluegrass bands have tinkered with the music trying to reach more fans, but the Del McCoury Band has pulled off a much more difficult feat: “crossing over” without changing the basic sound of bluegrass as played by Bill Monroe. The band plays it high, hard and fast and has introduced bluegrass to millions through touring with Phish, playing at Bonnaroo and other huge rock festivals and recording with country-rocker Steve Earle.

Where the Del McCoury Band embraces the modern is in its material. Some of the band’s biggest hits have come from outside bluegrass, from Richard Thompson (“1952 Vincent Black Lightning”) and Robert Cray (“Smoking Gun”) to Tom Petty (“Love is a Long Road”) and the Lovin’ Spoonful (“Nashville Cats”).

In the final analysis, what makes Del McCoury so special is that he’s stuck to his guns for 50 years and enjoyed massive success by not changing. Country star Vince Gill (a former bluegrass picker, by the way) speaks to that when he says, “What I most admire about Del is that he’s one of the last patriarchs that really plays the music in its authentic way. And even though he’s willing to bend a little bit, to be out there playing at jam band festivals and things like that, it doesn’t sound like what the new people do with bluegrass. He’s done a great job of bringing new songs into the fold, but when he sings them they sound like 1959 or 1962 again. It still has the element of his voice, and the authenticity of it never goes away, never changes.”

Hear that unchanging authenticity at the Dayton Masonic Center on Saturday, January 23. Joe Mullins and the Radio Ramblers will open the show.