The Birthplace of Bluegrass

When Drew Luttrell, 8, takes the stage at the Rosine Barn Jamboree to sing Blue Moon of Kentucky, he’s living proof that bluegrass music is alive and well in the hometown of the man who created the musical style in the 1930s.

When Drew Luttrell, 8, takes the stage at the Rosine Barn Jamboree to sing Blue Moon of Kentucky, he’s living proof that bluegrass music is alive and well in the hometown of the man who created the musical style in the 1930s.

Bill Monroe, the Father of Bluegrass, was born Sept. 13, 1911, on a farm just outside Rosine, Ky., (pop. 200) and each Friday night local residents and visiting pilgrims gather to carry on his legacy, honoring the musical icon by singing his songs and his praises.

“Bill was a genius and he just happened to be born here,” says Campbell Mercer, who spearheaded a project in 2001 to restore Monroe’s boyhood home. “If he’d been born somewhere else, he might have been a nuclear physicist.”

Each Friday, musicians sign up to perform on the stage where Monroe made one of his last public appearances before his death in 1996. The show features traditional bluegrass music—epitomized by soaring fiddles, chopping mandolins, and fiery banjos—and usually includes a few tunes, such as Muleskinner Blues or Uncle Pen—made famous by Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys.

“I’ve never been anywhere that has the musical talent that is here in Ohio County,” says Gwynn Cagle, a guitarist with the Jerusalem Ridge bluegrass band and chairman of The Rosine Association, which hosts the jamboree.

The jamboree started about 20 years ago as an impromptu jam session in the parking lot of the Rosine General Store. Once during a rainstorm, owner Edith Woosley invited the musicians to play on the store’s front porch. When the crowd outgrew the porch, the music moved to the adjacent barn, which now swells with bluegrass fans from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. each Friday, rain or shine.

On quiet nights, the down-home music and heartfelt applause can be heard drifting over the nearby Rosine Cemetery, where Monroe is buried alongside his father, mother, and seven siblings. Monroe’s uncle, fiddler Pendelton Vandiver, who taught his nephew to play music, also is buried there.

Local residents speak with pride about knowing the Monroe family or having Monroe blood coursing through their veins, and some diehard bluegrass fans are working hard to preserve the music and legacy of the town’s most famous son.

In 2001, Mercer sold his London, Ky., veterinary practice and moved to Rosine to save Monroe’s deteriorating childhood home on Jerusalem Ridge two miles west of town. The five-room wooden structure was painstakingly restored to its 1917 glory and now is filled with family heirlooms and mementos from Monroe’s illustrious 70-year musical career.

“I’ve always wanted to do this,” says Mercer, 46, executive director of the Bill Monroe Foundation. “When I was growing up, my baseball hero was Mickey Mantle and my music hero was Bill Monroe.”

The foundation wants to buy the 930-acre Monroe family farm and build a museum and amphitheater in Rosine where bluegrass music can be played during annual spring and fall festivals.

Merlene Austin, 63 and a Rosine native, gives tours of the Monroe home and tells heart-warming stories about the Monroe family and what life was like on Jerusalem Ridge during the 1920s and 1930s.

Pointing to a rose bush fragrant with white flowers, Austin recalls a song written by Charlie Monroe, Bill’s brother, about the roses his mother wore in her hair. “My mother’s rose of white still blooms in springtime, and it seems to tell the story of the past,” she says, reciting the lyrics.

The rose bush died—or was stolen—several years ago, but a neighbor who was given a cutting returned the favor when the Monroe home was restored. Now roses bloom in the front yard of the Monroe home again, just as bluegrass music blossoms in Rosine each time a youngster takes the stage at the Friday night jamboree.

Stuart Englert is American Profile’s senior editor.

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