The American Innovation $1 Coin representing Kentucky recognizes the invention of bluegrass music. Bluegrass has roots in traditional English, Scottish, and Irish ballads and dance tunes, as well as in traditional African-American blues and jazz. The genre derives its name from the band “Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys,” which has been dubbed the “Original Bluegrass Band.”
Bluegrass historians point to Bill Monroe’s first Columbia sessions in 1946 as the advent of bluegrass music as we know it today: including breakneck tempos, sophisticated vocal harmony arrangements, and instrumental proficiency demonstrated in solos or “breaks” on the mandolin, banjo, and fiddle.
