I recently purchased a nice DVD about the history of bluegrass called High Lonesome. You can see more about it here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107111/

The film is centered around excellent interview and performance footage of Bill Monroe. He’s a very humble and reverent gentleman, as you’d expect, and comes across very nicely to my eye. There are some particularly emotional shots of him looking through the shell of his former home in Kentucky, where it all started for him several decades ago.

Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs, Mac Wiseman (he narrates), Jimmy Martin, Ralph Stanley and many other bluegrass luminaries are also well represented. There is at least one mind-bogglingly good snippet of Scruggs playing his patented machine-gun fire banjo (and looking damn cool doing it). Another interesting moment is Monroe and his band playing late 60’s San Francisco with the oil-gel lightshow oozing around them.

In addition to tracing the roots of bluegrass music itself, the film also provides a very nice recent history of the United States as rural and urban cultures overlapped, industries and economies rose and fell, and musical tastes and technologies shifted along with it all.

It should be noted that Elvis Presley does not achieve hero-status in this film.

Highly recommended viewing.