I’m a bluegrass musician. So you can imagine I spend a lot of my time explaining to people what bluegrass is because no one seems to know. One of the most popular misconceptions is that bluegrass is traditional Appalachian music (sometimes called mountain music) or some other older American folk style. Most folks are surprised to learn that bluegrass is a much more modern genre. A lot of musicologists point to the 1945 Bill Monroe and The Blue Grass Boys lineup with Earl Scruggs and Lester Flatt as the first fully formed bluegrass band. You can contrast that with the release of the single Rocket 88 in 1951 which marks the start of rock and roll just six short years later.
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I play jazz piano, bluegrass mandolin and other things in Raleigh, North Carolina. I’m a self proclaimed music nerd and recently found myself in a unique position due to my background in both bluegrass and jazz. I run a periodic newsletter of weird, obscure and interesting music called The Orphic. Like many productive members of society, I work a desk job to finance my unhealthy interest in music. The following is a rewrite of a response I made on the r/jazz subreddit about the relationship between improvisation…