courier-journal.com    The Courier-Journal – Louisville, Kentucky

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Hall of Fame buys Bill Monroe's mandolin

By Pete Cooper  --  The Tennessean

On what would have been Bill Monroe's 94th birthday, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum announced the acquisition of Monroe's 1923 Gibson F-5 mandolin, unquestionably the most famous and consequential mandolin in existence.

Grand Ole Opry member Ricky Skaggs first played the F-5 as a young boy, when Monroe allowed him onstage during a concert and put the mandolin in the child prodigy's hands. Skaggs was on hand at the Hall's Ford Theater stage yesterday morning for a ceremony and celebration of Monroe's legacy and of the mandolin, which was Monroe's primary instrument from the time he purchased it in 1943 until his death in 1996.

"There is so much more music left in this instrument, it's unbelievable," Skaggs told the audience of music industry dignitaries.

The mandolin's dark wood is scratched and worn, from more than 50 years of use by Monroe and from a 1985 incident in which someone took a fireplace poker to the instrument and smashed it to bits. Repairman Charles Derringer pieced it back together, saving Monroe's prize from ruin.

Just released from a bank vault, the mandolin looked fragile yesterday, as if a vigorous chop from a plectrum might shatter it. That was, however, not the case. Skaggs played it on the Hall's Ford Theater stage, leading his Kentucky Thunder band through several of Monroe's classic tunes, following Monroe's dictum that the best way to play a mandolin is to "whip it like a mule."

The instrument responded by giving rise to what Monroe used to call the "ancient tones," sounds that recalled the green hills of Kentucky, the greener hills of Scotland and a musical tradition that was fully realized 60 years ago, when Monroe held the F-5 and led a band, which included banjo master Earl Scruggs, onto the Ryman stage and gave the first radio performance of what is now recognized as "bluegrass music."

Since Monroe's death, the mandolin's ultimate fate had been in question, tangled in lawsuits. In 2002, the Bill Monroe Foundation had agreed to purchase the mandolin from son James Monroe for more than $1 million, but financing ultimately fell through. Businessman and philanthropist Bob McLean, who previously had purchased guitars used by Mother Maybelle Carter and Johnny Cash for the Hall, arranged for the facility to have Monroe's mandolin, and a confidential purchase arrangement between James Monroe and the Hall was agreed to on June 30, 2005.

Immediately after yesterday's ceremony, the Hall placed the mandolin on public display, in an exhibit called "Precious Jewels."