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Bill Monroe

BILL MONROE

YEAR

1997

INDUCTED BY

Emmylou Harris & Ricky Skaggs

CATEGORY

Early Influences

The Father of Bluegrass music and an idol to none other than Elvis Presley.

Before Bill Monroe, country music was dismissed as unsophisticated backwoods music. Monroe legitimized the form with his frank, heartrending lyrics and gift for storytelling.

Bill Monroe

Bill Monroe

HALL OF FAME
ESSAY

By Holly George Warren

Truth be told, Bill Monroe was not much of a fan of rock & roll.

Yet Monroe’s own powerful music — the gospel, blues and old-timey string-band blend that he and his ecstatic mandolin transformed into bluegrass – helped to give birth to the rock & roll sound.

“It was a Bill Monroe song that was the first-ever rockabilly song,” Carl Perkins declared recently in his South by Southwest keynote address.

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Class of 1997
Well, Uncle Pen played the fiddle, Lordy, how it would ring
"Uncle Pen"
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