Del McCoury Honors Bill Monroe Through Tribute Album

Posted by Julia Stamper on 09/26/2011
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With this year marking the 100th anniversary of Bill Monroe’s birth, it is not surprising to see a number of tribute albums to the “Father of Bluegrass” cropping up. Yet Del McCoury did not originally set out to make such an album. Del had covered the legend’s music before on various albums, but had never considered making a record consisting only of his music, until one day it suddenly seemed like a project he wanted to undertake. And so Old Memories: The Songs Of Bill Monroe was born, set to be digitally released through McCoury Music on September 27. 
 
Del tells about the day he decided to craft an album made up entirely of Bill Monroe’s music. "I had done songs of his on different albums I made through the years," says Del, who worked one year with Monroe's Blue Grass Boys from 1963 to early 1964. "But I'd never really thought about doing a whole album until the day we were flying home from the Grammy awards—and  by the time we got to Nashville, I'd made a pretty good list of what I wanted to do. I didn't want to do a lot of things that everybody had already done; I wanted to do some things that weren't real popular but were really good. Some were songs I'd never heard him sing, some were songs that he'd sing on a show—and  some were songs that he sang on the record, but he made me learn the lead. And I wanted to do them in the same keys he did, because if you change that, you just don't have the same sound he had on them."
 
The album contains a wide variety of music, including both well-known songs, such as “Rose of Old Kentucky” and “Close By,” as well as some rarely heard songs of Bill’s like “Alabama Waltz” and “Train 45.” Throughout the album, Del is backed by his band, consisting of son Ronnie on the mandolin, son Rob on the banjo, fiddler Jason Carter, and Alan Bartram on bass. Through the combined efforts of all involved, Old Memories: The Songs Of Bill Monroe, becomes a tribute not only to the great Father of Bluegrass, but also a testimony of the talent of Del McCoury, the newest member of the Bluegrass Hall of Fame.