I was listening to an old interview with Earl Scruggs where he said they “never played what folks today call ‘bluegrass music.’ We just called it country music.”
Since I’ve been living on Mars, I had no idea that “Wagon Wheel” was a big hit for Darius Rucker. According to Wiki, Rucker " it was largely an issue of musical genre and the high school group changing his thinking on it: “I knew the song, and to me it was such a perfect bluegrass tune that I didn’t think I could do it. But they did a country version of it, with drums and pedal steel. I was like, 'Wait a minute. That would be a great country song.”
Excuse me? I only recently became aware of this song and have eagerly listened to every version I could find. I cannot find one that sounds like “bluegrass,” what ever that is.
Bill Monroe defined bluegrass as “contemporary music arraigned for these instruments.” That might be right, but if by giving it the bluegrass label, should the music be dismissed, (Are your listening Nashville?")
So I have no use for bluegrass music. According to the records, “Dueling Banjos” (1972) was one of the biggest hits of the rock & roll era. Good thing it’s not bluegrass or we never would have heard it!
Oh, and the first #1 country song on the Billboard Hot 100 was “The Ballad of Jed Clampett” by some country music people.
A good song is a good song. Anything beyond that is just BS.
