The early history of bluegrass music provides numerous opportunities to examine the tangly issues of song authorship and ownership. Emerging as a sub-genre of country music in the years immediately following World War II, the bluegrass sound and repertoire are rooted in pre-war ‘hillbilly’ music, traditional Anglo-Celtic folk song and tunes, as well as African American blues, jazz, and spirituals. The bluegrass sound found an audience and became a ‘genre’ within the context of a booming post-war commercial country music industry.1 Indeed, the most highly esteemed bluegrass groups, such as Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys, Flatt and Scruggs, and the Stanley Brothers, were established in the late 1940s and 50s. It is during this period that many bluegrass standards were first composed and recorded for commercial release. Bluegrass, then, reaches back into the tradition of anonymously penned, publicly shared folk song, but evolved in a nascent country music industry that peddled publishing contracts and legally determined composition credits.
Focusing on the early career of bluegrass pioneer Bill Monroe, this chapter explores the tensions that emerge between songwriting practice and conventional views of authorship in the commercial music industry. Monroe, the self-proclaimed and widely acknowledged ‘father of bluegrass’, began his professional performing career in the 1930s amidst a quickly evolving recording industry. During this period, underdeveloped and vague copyright legislation enabled industry executives and, in some cases, artists to secure copyright in ways that did not necessarily reflect the songwriting process. Authorship claims were even murkier in the country music industry where artists regularly recorded, ‘arranged’, and/or asserted ownership of a vast repertoire of ‘traditional’ material. While most of Monroe’s songwriting credits are sound, a number of ambiguous or decidedly misleading authorship claims have surfaced.2 In some instances, erroneous credits stem from the politics of ensemble composition and Monroe’s governing position in his ever-changing group, the Blue Grass Boys. More often, however, it appears he was adopting conventional industry practice (e.g., using pseudonyms, purchasing material, et cetera) and attitudes towards songwriting and ownership.3
I begin with a brief biographical profile of Bill Monroe (1911–1996), which is inevitably intertwined with the early histories of both bluegrass and the country music industry. This section provides context for an examination of one of Monroe’s most well-known songs, ‘Uncle Pen’. Through this case study I consider songwriting as a collaborative pursuit while examining the ensemble politics and industry pressures that perpetuate a rigid view of songwriting concerned with individual composers and their works. In addition to providing a profile of one of the most celebrated songwriters in bluegrass and country music, this chapter aims to broaden our understanding of the songwriting process and demonstrate how song authorship is not only determined by creative practice, but is influenced by the mechanisms of the commercial music realm.
Bill Monroe, bluegrass, and the early country music industry
Bill Monroe’s interest in music flourished during his adolescent years. The youngest of eight children, the music he encountered in church, on recordings, and in his small community near Rosine, Kentucky, provided respite from boredom and loneliness.4 He was encouraged by his mother Malissa Vandiver, a multi-instrumentalist with a vast repertoire of old-time tunes and ballads, and was particularly drawn to the fiddle playing of her brother, Pendleton Vandiver. As a teenager, he experimented with his voice, singing old-time songs or ‘hollering’ in a bright, high tenor on the vacant fields of his family farm.5 Monroe was largely a self-taught musician and during these early years he closely observed a number of local musicians, picking up fragments of musical knowledge and sounds that would later form the basis of his own style. Aspiring to perform with his older brothers, Charlie and Birch, he adopted the mandolin as his primary instrument. With a few rudimentary lessons from Hubert Stringfield, one of his father’s farmhands,6 Monroe quickly excelled on the instrument.
Through the 1920s, Bill Monroe began his performance career accompanying, on rhythm guitar, two local musicians who would become major influences on his artistic growth. Shortly after his father died in 1928 (his mother died just six years prior), the teenaged Monroe briefly resided with his Uncle Pendleton (aka Pen), the relative who initially sparked his deep interest in traditional music. Pen, who maintained an extensive repertoire of fiddle tunes, regularly performed at weekend barn dances. Alongside his Uncle Pen, Bill not only acquired paid performance experience, but he also developed a strong sense of rhythm and amassed a collection of tunes that he could transpose to his mandolin.
During these years Monroe also accompanied Arnold Schultz, a local African American blues guitarist and fiddler. Backing Schultz’s fiddle, he clocked in more hours playing all-night barn dances and earned respect as a capable performer.7 Perhaps more valuably, elements of both Schultz’s guitar and fiddle playing seeped into Monroe’s own style. ‘There’s things in my music’, he states, ‘that come from Arnold Schultz – runs that I use a lot in my music’.8 Schultz also galvanised Monroe’s fondness for blues music.9 Indeed, blues-inflected harmonies, rhythm, and phrasing permeate his music and bluegrass in general.10
In 1929 Bill Monroe followed his brothers Charlie and Birch to Chicago where the three found work at an oil refinery.11 While there, the brothers began to take their music in a more professional direction performing as the Monroe Brothers at Chicago area barn dances and on local radio stations. By 1934 Birch departed for a more stable livelihood just as Charlie and Bill secured a regular radio spot on Iowa’s KFNF. Now, sponsored by a patent medicine company called Texas Crystals, the pared-down Monroe Brothers were able to perform music on a full-time basis. Soon after, they would encounter Victor Records Artist and Repertory producer, Eli Oberstein.
In 1933, Oberstein was in charge of relaunching a subsidiary of Victor called Bluebird Records, which specialised in southern blues and country music. Oberstein, like many of his counterparts in the early country music industry, embarked on ‘field trips’ throughout the rural south with the aim of unearthing marketable songs and unexploited talent. Setting up makeshift recording studios throughout the southern United States, he ‘discovered’ and established recording deals with a number of notable early country artists including Ernest Tubb and the Carter Family. In February 1936, while on a field trip to Charlotte, North Carolina, he crossed paths with the Monroe Brothers and promptly made plans to record them. Under Oberstein’s direction, the Monroe Brothers recorded a total of sixty songs for Bluebird, the majority of which consisted of material from established gospel songbooks, commercial country/hillbilly music, as well as a smattering of traditional folk songs, ballads, and popular songs from the African American tradition.12
That the Monroe Brothers’ repertoire drew so heavily on popular, religious, and folk music written by other songwriters, both known and anonymous, is not exceptional. Indeed, those on the ground floor of the commercial country music industry in the 1920s and 30s inherited a vast catalogue of unrecorded music that had circulated between amateur and folk musicians for decades prior. This large stock of pre-composed material provided lucrative, and often questionable, opportunities to release a continual flow of music. Eli Oberstein was particularly notorious for his ability to attain legal control of artists and their music, aggressively hunting artists already signed to contracts, establishing dummy publishing houses, and publishing songs using pseudonyms with most of the royalties directed towards himself.13 Not surprisingly, working with Oberstein, Bill and Charlie did not retain publishing royalties for their Monroe Brothers recordings and made only dismal returns with Bluebird’s sales royalty rate (0.125 cents per side sold).14
While they were not necessarily profitable for the Brothers, the Bluebird singles were a valuable marketing tool that helped them establish a place within the country music industry. Stylistically, the Monroe Brothers represented the ‘brothers duet’ trend that surfaced in the 1930s and included such acts as the Delmore Brothers, the Blue Sky Boys, and Karl and Harty. The brothers duet sound is characterised by close harmony singing. In the Monroe Brothers, Bill built on his early experimentation ‘hollering’ in isolation by harmonising with his brother, working his powerful, high pitches into performance and recording contexts, and incorporating his distinctive voice into the Brothers’ interpretations of stock material. In later years, Bill Monroe’s singing style, commonly described as the ‘high lonesome sound’, would become a defining characteristic of bluegrass music.
Like a number of other brother ensembles, the Monroe Brothers backed their vocal harmonies with guitar (Charlie) and mandolin (Bill). However, as Neil Rosenberg observes, their virtuosic musicianship set them apart. They often performed at a much quicker tempo than their counterparts, giving their music a driving sense of urgency. Furthermore, while Charlie ornamented his rhythm guitar playing with melodic bass runs, Bill chopped percussively on his mandolin and burst into explosive leads.15 In his mandolin solos, Bill aimed to capture all of the nuances of his favourite fiddlers, especially his uncle Pen. He also worked in other influences such as ‘accidental notes and half-tone ornamentations taken from blues guitar’.16 In doing so, he not only developed his own style, but reimagined the mandolin as an exhilarating lead instrument.
The Monroe Brothers recorded their Bluebird singles over the course of six hasty sessions. For the most part, the rapid-fire succession of songs demanded straight reproductions of pre-composed material. At times, however, they used their vigorous and occasionally haunting brothers duet sound to enliven songs they heard in their community, on the radio, or discovered in gospel songbooks. While they did not claim songwriting credits for any of their Bluebird material, the brothers demonstrated compositional skill through their arrangements. For instance, the success of their signature song, ‘What Would You Give in Exchange for Your Soul?’, spawned three sequels, which included alternate lyrics and made slight melodic deviations from their original source, a gospel songbook called Millennial Revival.17 Meanwhile, Bill’s mandolin leads were becoming more exploratory and inventive on songs like ‘Nine Pound Hammer is a Little too Heavy’ and ‘I Am Ready to Go’.18
In 1938, after prolonged sibling tensions came to a head, the Monroe Brothers disbanded. Soon after, Bill Monroe established his first band, the Blue Grass Boys. Looking to distance himself from the sound of the Monroe Brothers, he fused instrumental prowess with a range of musical influences in a small ensemble context. This required musicians that were both capable instrumentalists and could follow direction. In addition to Monroe’s mandolin, the first Blue Grass Boys line-up19 consisted of Cleo Davis (guitar), Art Wooten (fiddle), and Amos Garren (upright bass). By including the fiddle, Monroe created opportunities for new melodic possibilities while tying his musical vision to the fiddle-tune traditions he held in such high regard. Amos Garren’s bass, on the other hand, encouraged a tight rhythmic discipline, which was lacking in the Monroe Brothers.20 Monroe coached each musician, imparting specific runs, licks, and textures inspired by his love of folk tunes, old-time string band music, blues, and jazz.
With all four members sharing the vocal duties, Monroe’s new band also broadened the harmonic scope beyond that of his previous act. Like his instrumental coaching, Monroe facilitated quartet-singing rehearsals in which the band arranged harmony parts for a number of well-known gospel songs. All-male gospel quartets, which sang in close four-part harmony, were popular during the 1920s and 30s. Appearing as the Blue Grass Quartet, Monroe’s group would perform gospel standards, reducing the instrumentation to just guitar and mandolin in order to showcase their vocal harmonies.21 In later years, quartet singing would have a strong presence in the harmonies of secular bluegrass music.
Through the early 1940s Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys achieved a distinctive sound within the country music field. It wasn’t until the second half of that decade, however, that ‘bluegrass’ was solidified as a genre.22 Specifically, the 1946–48 roster demonstrated unparalleled virtuosity, released a string of commercially successful singles, and maintained a popularity that yielded dedicated fans, as well as imitators. This ‘classic’ Blue Grass Boys era included Lester Flatt’s smooth lead vocals and rhythm guitar, was pinned down by Cedric Rainwater’s walking bass lines, and featured exhilarating instrumental breaks from Monroe (mandolin), Chubby Wise (fiddle), and Earl Scruggs (banjo).
Apart from the band’s capability as a cohesive unit, perhaps the most noteworthy contribution during this era was Earl Scruggs’ exceptional banjo playing. Employing his thumb, index, and middle fingers, Scruggs was able to produce continuous, rapid arpeggios that contained complex melodies while propelling the music forward. The sound became known as ‘Scruggs-style’ banjo, and for many fans it is a defining feature of bluegrass music.
By the early 1950s, bluegrass was characterised as a style of music rooted in the ostensible simplicity of folk song and early country, but with a sonic explosiveness and instrumental mastery more reminiscent of bebop. Bluegrass, Alan Lomax famously reported, is ‘folk music in overdrive’.23 While each Blue Grass Boy brought their unquestionable talents to the group, and many contributed to the genre in the decades following, bluegrass is ultimately a realisation of Bill Monroe’s musical vision. The Blue Grass Boys became a space where he could creatively assemble his musical influences. What’s more, utilising the resources of a highly skilled band, Monroe was able to earnestly demonstrate his proficiency as a songwriter and arranger. Over the course of his career with the Blue Grass Boys, he composed or co-composed a number of bluegrass and country standards such as ‘Kentucky Waltz’, ‘Blue Moon of Kentucky’, ‘Can’t You Hear Me Callin’’, and ‘Uncle Pen’.
While Monroe’s contributions to the popular music canon are now widely recognised,24 his legacy has been dogged by questions regarding the legitimacy of his songwriting credits. These uncertainties emerged from three main philosophical and ethical discussions surrounding creative influence, the songwriting process within an ensemble setting, and the mechanisms of the early country music industry. The remainder of this chapter explores issues of composition, authorship, and ownership focusing on one of Monroe’s most well-known songs, ‘Uncle Pen’. The song is noteworthy for how it reflects Monroe’s biography and influences, was composed collaboratively, and highlights some of the complexities that emerge when establishing authorship in the commercial music realm.
‘Uncle Pen’: authorship, ownership, and collaborative composition
While it is difficult to pin down exactly when ‘Uncle Pen’ was composed, accounts from former Blue Grass Boys indicate that the song emerged around 1949–50.25 It was first recorded for Decca Records on 15 October 1950. In the decades following, ‘Uncle Pen’ would become one of Monroe’s signature compositions, featured regularly in his live shows, sprinkled throughout his recorded output, and performed innumerable times by both professional and amateur bluegrass groups. What’s more, Monroe’s Uncle Pendleton Vandiver (d. 1932), for whom the song is a tribute, would emerge as a key presence in the artist’s biography and the broader narrative of bluegrass music. Indeed, for fans and followers of Monroe, especially those within the 1960s urban folk revival, Uncle Pen, the person, became something of a mythical figure – a repository of obscure Irish and Scottish fiddle tunes, a catalyst of bluegrass’ driving rhythm, an emblem of and musical link to some notion of pre-modern, pre-commercial ‘authenticity’.
Meanwhile, ‘Uncle Pen’, the song, has emerged as an archetypal bluegrass composition. As David Gates observes, recounting the life of ‘an old fiddler and the tunes he used to play’, the song imparts an anxiety ‘that the old ways of life, and the music that went with them, are vanishing’.26 This is certainly reflected in Monroe’s nostalgic lyrics, which offer a bucolic image of Pen’s fiddle resounding through the countryside, drawing the townspeople together. In an allegorical move alluding to the anxieties observed by Gates, the final verse laments the death of Uncle Pen and the silence that comes over the community.
Like many bluegrass songs, ‘Uncle Pen’s’ lyrics convey nostalgia for a pre-modern sense of community and a view of traditional music as part of the social fabric of rural America. This is tied to notions of collective music-making, which the bluegrass ensemble epitomises and celebrates. Within bluegrass discourse there is an emphasis on the collective; the constituent parts coming together as one unit, listening and responding to one another in order to create a tight, cohesive musical entity. Indeed, the bluegrass sound relies on interlocking rhythms, vocal blending, and subtle shifts in the instrumental balance.
Within this collective music-making environment, songs are often composed as group members exchange and build upon each other’s musical ideas. Such was the case with ‘Uncle Pen’. The first recording of the song features, in addition to Monroe, Jimmy Martin (guitar, vocals), Merle ‘Red’ Taylor (fiddle), Rudy Lyle (banjo), and Joel Price (bass, vocals). There are slightly divergent accounts of who exactly produced the initial spark for the song, though most agree it started with Monroe and Red Taylor.27 All agree that ‘Uncle Pen’ was a group effort and, indeed, the first recording bears the stylistic mark of each performer.
Rudy Lyle recalls that Monroe first begin composing the song ‘in the back seat of the car … on the way to Rising Sun, Maryland’.28 This scenario is likely given the numerous accounts of Monroe picking his mandolin and devising lyrical fragments while on the road between performances.29 Sometimes the musicians surrounding Monroe would latch on to and experiment with one of his musical ideas.30 Alternatively, he might approach particular Blue Grass Boys with a basic melody or single verse in the hopes that they might help develop it into a complete song. According to Merle ‘Red’ Taylor, this is precisely how the framework for ‘Uncle Pen’ was initially sketched out. While resting at a hotel near Danville, Virginia, Monroe came to Taylor’s room with a few ideas for a song about his uncle Pendleton Vandiver. Monroe directed his fiddler to come up with a melody that would mimic the ‘old-timey sound’ of Pen’s fiddling. After spending some time working on his own, Taylor emerged with a fiddle melody that pleased Monroe and became the song’s primary instrumental hook. ‘Bill wrote the lyrics for “Uncle Pen”’, Taylor recalls, ‘and I wrote the fiddle part of it’.31
Two other contributions also stand out in the performance and arrangement of ‘Uncle Pen’. Firstly, as Rosenberg and Wolfe note, Monroe, Jimmy Martin, and Joel Price’s three-part harmony on the song’s chorus was uncommon in the group’s Blue Grass Boy repertoire during this time.32 They were, however, accustomed to singing harmony during their gospel quartet features, and if Monroe did not specifically direct his singers, it is likely that they were experimenting with the stylistic conventions of gospel harmony in arranging the song’s chorus. The second contribution is Jimmy Martin’s guitar run, which caps off the final a cappella moments of the song’s chorus while providing an elasticity that propels the reintroduction of Taylor’s fiddle melody. The lick strongly resembles what is now referred to as the ‘(Lester) Flatt run’ and has become a stylistic marker of bluegrass guitar.
In some respects, then, ‘Uncle Pen’ can be viewed as a collaborative composition that involved the creative work of the entire band. The social context in which the song was composed, however, extends well beyond the immediate ensemble. Richard D. Smith maintains that the concept for ‘Uncle Pen’ emerged when a Decca Records executive suggested that Monroe record Hugh Ashley’s song, ‘The Old Fiddler’ (113).33 ‘The Old Fiddler’ is inspired by and features an old-time fiddler from Arkansas named Frank Watkins. While the song is quite distinguishable from ‘Uncle Pen’, both incorporate old-time fiddle tunes in their arrangement. One of Watkins’ tunes is at the centre of ‘The Old Fiddler’. Likewise, during ‘Uncle Pen’s’ instrumental outro, Red Taylor transitions into the fiddle tune ‘Jenny Lynn’, which Monroe learned from his uncle.
The network of influence surrounding ‘Uncle Pen’ is expansive, comprising pre-commercial tunes, early country recordings, and input from several artists. In his discussion of the song Richard Smith describes Monroe as ‘the synthesizing creator who … brought it all together’ (113).34 There’s no doubt that he was pivotal in composing ‘Uncle Pen’, and, like most popular music artists, he was a synthesising creator. However, the apparent obligation to elevate Monroe in this role reflects the difficulty of reconciling, on the one hand, Western representations of the songwriting process and, on the other hand, conventional songwriting practice. Western romantic and legal understandings of the songwriting process maintain a rigid emphasis on the ‘genius-author’ who, working alone, creates static ‘works’.35 A thorough investigation of the narratives surrounding ‘Uncle Pen’s’ composition, however, supports Morey and McIntyre’s assertion that ‘It is more productive to understand creativity as distributed across the participants in musical practice, while composition itself – often seen as the paradigm of individual creation – is better understood in implicitly social terms.’36
Removing the emphasis from an individual author demystifies the songwriting process while drawing attention to collaboration and ensemble performance as a mode of composition.37 This is particularly befitting of bluegrass, which, as noted above, celebrates the collective. Within the bluegrass ensemble, musicians carve out a sonic space from which to listen and respond to their peers, all the while attempting to maintain or elevate the performance with their own contributions. This might involve, for instance, subtle dynamic shifts that draw attention to a particular performer. Alternatively, instrumentalists might step out front during improvised solos. Here the artist responds to the overall feel of the song or competes with other soloists. Over the course of a solo the performer draws on his/her own specific influences and instrumental skills. Former Blue Grass Boy fiddler Gordon Terry, for example, describes Merle Taylor’s inventive ‘slow bow’ and ‘funny reverse’ on ‘Uncle Pen’.38 Like the basic melody, structure, or lyrics, such features of performance shape songs like ‘Uncle Pen’ in ways that draw attention to the collective as author. This becomes more palpable when we consider that Monroe generally offered little creative direction to his Blue Grass Boys.39 Indeed, like others in the group, Monroe communicated with the musicians around him in the moment of performance with subtle bodily or musical gestures. Furthermore, when subsequent Blue Grass Boys approached him for direction on staples like ‘Uncle Pen’, he would often refer them to the original recording.40 In this way, the creative exchanges not only occur between contemporaries, but also cut across time as artists engage with and build upon past performances.41
With all of this in mind, why has the narrative of ‘Uncle Pen’ as a musical work composed during a particular time (c. 1949–50) by a lone Bill Monroe maintained such authority? For one, it complements the hierarchical politics of ensemble music-making. In this case, Bill Monroe was the leader of the Blue Grass Boys, and, according to the logic of the early country music industry, he was the central force behind that ensemble’s creative output. So, while some viewed the Blue Grass Boys as a largely ‘democratic’ outfit42 and were satisfied with their role within the ensemble, there was a general understanding that Monroe was the ‘bossman’ and hence he would receive credit for the group’s music. Mark Hembree, who played bass with Monroe from 1979–84, compares the Blue Grass Boys to a corporation, stating ‘Any work you did for the corporation belonged to the corporation … I think you had to go a long way before you got any kind of a half credit … on something that you wrote with Bill’.43
Hembree’s reference to ‘half credits’ points to another reason why ‘Uncle Pen’ is viewed as a fixed work composed by an individual author: the ‘author→work’ model of artistic production underpins copyright law and has a utilitarian value in the mechanisms of the commercial music industry.44 ‘Copyright’, Jason Toynbee argues, ‘institute[s] a form of property in music … As such it has been central to music industry strategies of profit-making’.45 While copyright law doesn’t necessarily reject the possibility of co-authorship – Monroe’s catalogue includes a number of shared composition credits – ‘half credits’ tend to complicate the simplicity of individual authors and their works in ways that increase the potential for disputes and interfere with gainful flows of capital. Accurately representing the creative milieu of a bluegrass ensemble can prove altogether messy.
Bill Monroe filed the copyright for ‘Uncle Pen’ in 1951. By this time, institutions were already established for legally declaring authorship-cum-ownership of a song and charting the flow of royalties. Most significantly, private publishing companies provided the resources to promote a song, monitor its use, collect royalties, and distribute money to the author (after subtracting an agreed upon percentage for these services). By the early 1950s, two decades into his professional career, Monroe was familiar with the benefits of such institutions. What’s more, influenced by mid-century recording industry culture and people like Eli Oberstein, Monroe was well-versed in business tactics such as publishing songs under pseudonyms and purchasing song rights directly from other composers. All that’s to say, there were several institutional and strategic options available when Monroe asserted ownership of ‘Uncle Pen’.
Despite using pseudonyms like James B. Smith and Albert Price just a year prior, Monroe filed the copyright for ‘Uncle Pen’ under his own name with the publishing company Hill and Range Songs, Inc.46 While it is only possible to speculate on Monroe’s rationale, his decision in this instance reflects shifts in his career and in the broader country music industry during the 1950s. At the end of 1949, Monroe left Columbia Records. Shortly after, in February 1950, he performed on his first recording session for Decca Records. Around this time Monroe began to record in Nashville, and indeed his transition to a new label was accompanied by the increasing professionalisation of a country music industry concentrated in that city. When he signed with Decca, he also formed relationships with Nashville-oriented institutions, such as the publishing conglomerate BMI and its affiliate, Hill and Range. During these transitional years Monroe likely used pseudonyms as a strategy to skirt contractual obligations to Columbia and the ASCAP affiliated publishing company Peer-Southern.47 By the time he published ‘Uncle Pen’, however, it appears Monroe’s relationship with Decca had been solidified. He was publishing under his own name and sometimes through his own publishing house, Bill Monroe Music. Indeed, by the early 1950s, Monroe was ensconced in the song-publishing culture of the burgeoning Nashville country music industry. The romantic assumptions about composition circulated within this industry would ultimately inform how we understand Bill Monroe as a songwriter.
By examining the collaborative composition and publication of ‘Uncle Pen’, the goal of this chapter has not been to diminish Monroe’s status as a creative and original songwriter. Rather, this case study creates opportunities to question common assumptions about authorship, musical works, and the songwriting process. As an artist, Monroe was engaged with the music and styles that surrounded him. He experimented with these influences in his work as an instrumentalist, composer, and bandleader. In this way, his role as a ‘synthesising creator’ is best reflected in developing the bluegrass sound.48
Monroe, however, was also protective of his musical vision, and recording industry institutions provided the tools and legal principles to safeguard the work of the Blue Grass Boys. The publication of ‘Uncle Pen’ illuminates how romantic notions of authorship influence legalistic representations of songwriting and the business strategies that form around them. We see, for instance, the significance of (individual) names within the mechanisms of publishing. Interestingly, despite contemporary concerns with the oeuvre of ‘great’ songwriters, the prevalence of pseudonyms in the early recording industry suggests that the names tied to particular works had less to do with composer identity than with securing compensation through legal ownership. What’s more, Monroe’s navigation of and reliance on private publishing houses to affix his (or some other) name to a song demonstrates how the recording industry infrastructure privileges, if not demands, adherence to the rigid ‘author→work’ model. As Toynbee observes, ‘most writers and composers are forced to sell on their copyright. No-one can make it without a publishing deal’.49 Concerned primarily with the copyright that ‘subsists in songs’50 – hence, approaching songs as property, which can be purchased, endowed, or revoked – corporate publishing conglomerates promote the notion of fixed ‘works’ and individual authors, both of which can be managed as concrete units of exchange. Such rigid categories overlook performative and collaborative modes of composition that are often more applicable to the creative exchanges within a bluegrass ensemble. Stepping outside of the ‘author/genius model’,51 however, provides opportunities to explore alternative, flexible approaches to songwriting that, in many cases, more accurately reflect the social realities of songwriting in a popular music context.
