Del McCoury

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• Top 6 Bluegrass Artists of All Time

  Currently #6 · score 0

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• Bill Monroe

  Bill Monroe is widely credited as the founder of bluegrass music, and the genre itself takes its name directly from his band, the Blue Grass Boys, formed in 1939 and named after his native Kentucky's nickname as "the Bluegrass State." His distinctive high-pitched "high lonesome" vocal style, combined with his rapid, virtuosic mandolin playing, established much of the core musical vocabulary that subsequent bluegrass musicians have continued to build on, blending old-time string band music with blues and gospel influences into a genuinely new genre. Monroe's Grand Ole Opry performances throughout the 1940s and beyond gave bluegrass sustained national radio exposure, and his band served as a foundational training ground for numerous other significant bluegrass musicians, including Earl Scruggs and Lester Flatt, who both passed through Monroe's band before forming their own influential group. His combination of genuinely founding an entire musical genre and his direct mentorship of subsequent generations of bluegrass musicians who passed through his band has made Monroe the single most foundational figure in the entire history of bluegrass music.

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• Earl Scruggs

  Earl Scruggs revolutionized banjo playing with his distinctive three-finger picking technique, now universally known as "Scruggs style," a rapid, syncopated approach that transformed the banjo from a rhythm instrument into a genuine lead instrument capable of intricate melodic solos. His partnership with guitarist and vocalist Lester Flatt, after both had played in Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys, produced Flatt and Scruggs, one of the most commercially successful bluegrass acts in the genre's history, including the theme song for the television show The Beverly Hillbillies. Scruggs's banjo instrumental "Foggy Mountain Breakdown," featured prominently in the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde, introduced his distinctive banjo style to a massive mainstream film audience well beyond bluegrass's traditional listener base. His technical banjo innovation remains so foundational to the instrument that "Scruggs style" picking is still the standard technique taught to virtually every subsequent bluegrass banjo player, making him one of the most technically influential instrumentalists in the history of American roots music.

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• Alison Krauss

  Alison Krauss has won more Grammy Awards than any other female artist in history, and her combination of technically precise fiddle playing and a distinctively pure, clear vocal tone has made her one of the most critically respected artists in bluegrass and broader American roots music. Her 2007 collaborative album Raising Sand with rock legend Robert Plant, blending bluegrass and Americana with rock influences, became a major critical and commercial success, winning Album of the Year at the Grammy Awards and introducing Krauss's music to a significantly broader mainstream audience. Krauss's work on the soundtrack for the 2000 film O Brother, Where Art Thou? contributed to a significant mainstream revival of interest in traditional American roots and bluegrass music, with the soundtrack itself becoming a multi-platinum commercial phenomenon. Her combination of technical instrumental mastery, an instantly recognizable vocal tone, and her sustained ability to bring bluegrass and Americana music to mainstream audiences through high-profile collaborations has made Krauss one of the most significant contemporary figures in bluegrass history.

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• Ricky Skaggs

  Ricky Skaggs began performing professionally as a child prodigy, appearing on stage with Bill Monroe himself at just six years old, and Skaggs went on to become one of the most significant figures bridging traditional bluegrass with mainstream country music throughout the 1980s. His multi-instrumental mastery across mandolin, fiddle, and guitar, combined with his high tenor vocal style directly rooted in traditional bluegrass "high lonesome" singing, gave Skaggs's country-crossover material a genuine bluegrass authenticity that distinguished him from more purely pop-oriented country artists of the era. Skaggs's decision to return primarily to bluegrass music in the mid-1990s, after his significant mainstream country chart success, reflected his stated preference for the genre's traditional roots over the increasingly pop-influenced direction mainstream country music was taking during that period. His combination of childhood bluegrass credibility, his significant mainstream country crossover success, and his eventual return to traditional bluegrass has made Skaggs one of the most significant bridge figures connecting bluegrass's traditional roots to mainstream American country music.

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• The Stanley Brothers

  The Stanley Brothers, Carter and Ralph Stanley, helped establish the "mountain style" of bluegrass, emphasizing traditional Appalachian vocal harmonies and a rawer, less polished sound than some of their contemporaries, drawing directly on the old-time string band and gospel traditions of their native Virginia mountains. Their 1950s and '60s recordings, particularly gospel-influenced material reflecting the brothers' deep Primitive Baptist religious background, established a template for bluegrass gospel music that remained influential across subsequent generations of the genre's musicians. Carter Stanley's death in 1966 ended the original duo, but Ralph Stanley continued performing and recording for decades afterward, and his haunting a cappella performance of "O Death" on the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack introduced his distinctive vocal style to a massive new audience decades into his career. The brothers' combination of authentic Appalachian musical tradition and their significant gospel bluegrass contributions have made the Stanley Brothers one of the most historically significant and traditionally rooted acts in the entire history of bluegrass music.

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More in Music

• Naftule's Dream

  Naftule's Dream grew out of the Shirim Klezmer Orchestra, a Boston-area group that had already been playing traditional klezmer for 14 years before Newton, Massachusetts-born clarinetist Glenn Dickson and accordionist-songwriter Michael McLaughlin spun off a more adventurous, improvisation-focused outlet from within it. The band released two records on their own, "Search for the Golden Dreydl" in 1997 and "Smash, Clap" in 1998, before going on to record three further albums for composer John Zorn's Tzadik label under its Radical Jewish Culture series, a significant marker of downtown-avant-garde credibility. The Boston Globe praised the group for fusing "klezmer music, Phish-like improvisation, and radical Yiddish poetry," a description that captured how directly the band pushed past traditional acoustic klezmer instrumentation and arrangement. Their combination of their roots in a 14-year-old traditional klezmer orchestra and their three albums on John Zorn's boundary-pushing Tzadik label has made Naftule's Dream one of the most musically adventurous bands in the klezmer revival movement.

• Brave Old World

  Brave Old World formed in 1989 with members drawn from California, Chicago, New York, and Berlin, an unusually international lineup for a klezmer band, originally featuring clarinetist Joel Rubin, drummer Ben Bazyler, multi-instrumentalist Stu Brotman (a former member of 1960s rock band Kaleidoscope and a sideman for Canned Heat), keyboardist Alan Bern, and violinist Michael Alpert. Rubin was later replaced by Kurt Bjorling, musical director of the Chicago Klezmer Ensemble since 1984, bringing another deeply credentialed klezmer specialist into the lineup. The Washington Post called Brave Old World "the revival's first supergroup," noting that "every player is a virtuoso," and the band won first prize at the 1992 International Klezmer Festival in Safed, Israel, a significant early validation from within the genre's own community. Their combination of their genuinely international, virtuoso-level lineup and their 1992 Safed festival win has made Brave Old World one of the most artistically respected bands in the klezmer revival.

• Kapelye

  Kapelye was assembled in 1979 when ethnomusicologist Henry Sapoznik organized a group of musicians to perform at a klezmer lecture at Temple Beth-El in Providence, Rhode Island; the November 18, 1979 debut went well enough that the musicians agreed on the spot to keep performing together as a full-time band. The group took its name from the Yiddish word for "a band" and began actively researching and collecting turn-of-the-century klezmer recordings, drawing several members, including fiddler and vocalist Michael Alpert, from the overlapping Balkan music community. Their 1981 debut album, "Future & Past," mixed traditional Yiddish folk ballads with labor and political anthems and songs pulled directly from Yiddish theater, and the band followed it with "Levine & His Flying Machine" in 1985 and "Chicken" in 1987, before "Old-Time Jewish American Radio" became their most successful release. Their combination of Sapoznik's foundational archival research and their genre-launching 1981 debut album has made Kapelye one of the most historically significant bands in klezmer's modern revival movement.

• Andy Statman

  Andy Statman, born in New York City in 1950, started on banjo and guitar at 12 before switching to mandolin, which he studied briefly under lifelong friend David Grisman, and by 1970 he was playing in the experimental bluegrass group Country Cooking, followed by stints with David Bromberg's band. In 1975, Statman sought out klezmer clarinet legend Dave Tarras and became his protégé; Tarras wrote melodies specifically for him and eventually bequeathed Statman four of his own clarinets, deliberately passing the older master's living klezmer lineage directly to him. His late-1970s album "Jewish Klezmer Music" became a touchstone recording for that decade's klezmer revival, released alongside his mandolin-focused "Flatbush Waltz," and the National Endowment for the Arts later named him a National Heritage Fellow, the nation's highest honor in the traditional arts. His combination of his direct mentorship under Dave Tarras and his rare parallel mastery of klezmer clarinet and bluegrass mandolin has made Statman one of the most historically important figures in klezmer's modern revival.

• Giora Feidman

  Giora Feidman was born in 1936 in Buenos Aires to a family of klezmer musicians spanning his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, and by 18 he was already leading clarinetist of the orchestra at Argentina's Teatro Colón before joining the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in 1957 on the recommendation of conductor Paul Kletzki. He played with the Israel Philharmonic until 1974, then launched a solo career and was crowned "the King of Klezmer" in New York already in the 1970s, well before klezmer's broader American revival movement took hold in subsequent decades. In the early 1990s, Steven Spielberg invited Feidman to record alongside violinist Itzhak Perlman on the score for "Schindler's List," and Feidman's solo clarinet became a defining voice on that soundtrack, which went on to win the Academy Award. His combination of a multi-generational klezmer family lineage and his solo clarinet performance on the Oscar-winning "Schindler's List" score has made Feidman one of the most significant ambassadors for klezmer music worldwide.