This note, posted in March on the Cybergrass page on the World Wide Web, appeared after bluegrass music stalwart Bill Monroe suffered a stroke and was hospitalized at the age of 84.
On September 9, four days short of his 85th birthday, Monroe died, and the sad Web-site note became an epitaph.
Monroe is credited with inventing bluegrass music, although he consistently said he merely sang the music he learned in his childhood. A combination of American mountain music, gospel tunes and old English balladry played on acoustic stringed instruments, bluegrass was named after the grass around his Kentucky home.
The mandolin, Monroe's main instrument, was highlighted in his band, often ringing at breakneck speed. Music historian Alan Lomax referred to bluegrass music as "folk music in overdrive."
Monroe's string band of guitar, mandolin, banjo, fiddle and string bass, a kind of Appalachian chamber ensemble, is known as The Blue Grass Boys.
Monroe added his high tenor harmonies above a baritone or tenor lead and provided a mournful, whining sound that has become a hallmark of traditional bluegrass music. Monroe called his sound "high lonesome," and it comes through on many recordings as he skims the thin line between his highest tenor range and a brilliant falsetto.
Indeed, "high lonesome" ranks as the signature of a Monroe bluegrass song, whether performed by The Blue Grass Boys or an imitating band.
Many of the best known musicians in bluegrass music played in Monroe's band: Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, Mac Wiseman, Don Reno, Sonny Osborne, Del McCoury, Ricky Skaggs, Alison Krauss and Vasser Clements among them.
Many who weren't a part of The Blue Grass Boys nevertheless trace Monroe's influence on their music. Even Elvis Presley began his career with a recording of what is probably Monroe's most familiar song, "Blue Moon of Kentucky."
Presley, mildly embarrassed at his rocking version, once apologized to Monroe for the cover, but Monroe characteristically encouraged the expansion of the influence of bluegrass.
Perhaps most fascinating from those paying tribute to Monroe's influence are these words: "He's one of the most important guys in 20th-century music. He invented a music that's peculiarly American."
This tribute was spoken by the late Gerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead.
Fans of bluegrass cherish stories of a connection with Monroe.
Bob Cherry, a former Xerox employee who maintains the Cybergrass Internet site, recalls his first trip to a Monroe concert and finding the only available parking place in a space that would have blocked the bus that brought the Blue Grass Boys to town.
"Bill came up and said to go ahead and park there and he'd find me when he had to leave," Cherry writes.
Cherry cherishes LP records he purchased at that concert whose labels Monroe patiently autographed, records Cherry has never played.
Shirley Jinkins, a writer for the Fort Worth Star Telegram who'd been back stage to interview several country singers during her career, recalls a difference in interviewing Monroe.
In country circles, Jinkins writes, "It's always 'Reba' or 'Garth' and even 'Merle,' whether you're a record exec, a journalist or simply a fan.
"This time," Jinkins writes, "it was definitely 'Mr. Monroe.'"
Jinkins remembers the band playing a tune she didn't recognize that "sounded the way wisteria looks in moonlight." To her surprise and delight, Monroe asked to dance with her, and he flirted with her as he glided her around the floor.
I never attended a Monroe concert, though I consider myself a bluegrass afficianado. I was one of those strange teens who grew up in New York City favoring the country music played on a New Jersey radio station. Later, I was absorbed in the urban folk revival of the '60s.
My key memory of Monroe arises from my work as a journalist. A newspaper I worked with, as do many newspapers, prepared biographies of elderly Americans for later obituaries. These are known in the trade as pre-obits that often involve interviewing the principal with full knowledge of the intent of the interview.
I once arranged an interview with a famous professor whose first question startled me: "This isn't an obituary interview is it? Because your paper's already done one of those with me."
At any rate, I drew the assignment of preparing a pre-obit on Bill Monroe, who was then in his early 70s and, as I recall, battling colon cancer. Had Monroe ever come through the Northeast while I was working there, I would have attempted to interview him for his obituary.
Monroe survived the cancer, never came through the Northeast on my watch, and left me with a catalog of facts, most of which came to my attention again in the fine obituary tributes to the fallen legend in The Washington Post and Bluegrass Unlimited magazine.
The night I learned of Monroe's death, I listened
to tapes I have of his music and rued that I'd never seen him in concert.
Sadly, all future Bill Monroe performances have been cancelled.