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If you travel down Indiana State Highway 135 between Morgantown and Nashville, IN and get something in your eye, you might never remember going through a place called Bean Blossom. Many Hoosiers have never heard of it, but every bluegrass fan in the world knows where it is. One event transformed this oddly named Indiana hamlet from obscure to famous – it is the place where Bill Monroe started his annual June bluegrass music festival in June of 1967.
That festival has now become the oldest continuously running bluegrass festival in the world, and the road that runs by it has been officially named the “Bill Monroe Memorial Highway”. But they were playing music in scenic Brown County, IN, and in Bean Blossom years before Monroe brought his high lonesome sound here.
Hilly country and string music go together. The term “hillbilly music” is firmly established in American rural culture. Fiddles and banjos supplied the background for many a Saturday night dance in Appalachia and in other early American settlements, where you “rolled up the rug” and provided your own entertainment. Rural Brown County, Indiana was no different. In 1926, the “Brown County Fiddlers” were photographed backstage on a vaudeville tour. Dressed in the rough country clothing of the time, there were two guitarists and four fiddlers in the group. The others pictured made up two sets of four square dancers each.
In the early 1940s, a roadside show was held on weekends in Bean Blossom, IN. Several local men, including Dan Williams and Guy Smith, promoted it. A Flat bed truck would serve as a stage and people would crowd the roadside to watch local musicians perform. Sometimes the crowd grew so large it became a traffic hazard, causing problems for the sheriff and state police.
Jack McDonald, a Bean Blossom grocer, remembers that a fence was erected bordering the roadside show, and if you bought a ticket to get inside the fence you would be eligible for a drawing to win a bag of groceries.
Sensing a business opportunity, Francis Rund, who owned property in Bean Blossom just north of the show site, eventually erected a huge show tent there, and later replaced it with a rough native lumber building to house this popular venture. This building was known as the Brown County Jamboree Barn. It officially opened in 1943.
During the years of World War II (1941-’45), soldiers bussed from nearby Camp Atterbury bolstered the crowds of locals who enjoyed a great variety of entertainment at the Brown County Jamboree Barn. A hookup was arranged with an Indianapolis radio station, and Jamboree shows also played in nearby communities.
In 1951, Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys played at the Brown County Jamboree. Monroe liked what he saw and before the year was out he had contracted to buy the property from Francis Rund. Birch Monroe, Bill’s older fiddle-playing brother, moved to nearby Martinsville, IN, to manage the property for Bill. Birch continued to book entertainment at the Jamboree Barn for weekend shows, with round and square dances on Saturday night and two shows on Sunday. With Bill Monroe’s long-standing Grand Ole Opry connection, many of the Sunday acts consisted of his fellow Opry stars, and nearly every major Opry star of that period played at the Brown County Jamboree Barn. On one occasion a Sunday show featuring Bill Monroe, Roy Acuff and Ernest Tubb drew so many fans that it was “standing room only”, and extra shows had to be scheduled to accommodate the crowd. Birch Monroe also booked lesser known bands and entertainers, as well.
It was during this period that Carlton Haney worked for a brief time with Bill Monroe. Haney was later to ignite the outdoor bluegrass festival movement that was to have a tremendous effect on the music and on Bean Blossom.
When Bill Monroe first came to the Grand Ole Opry in 1939, his style of music was just another style of “country” music. It is interesting to note that when Don Reno and Red Smiley brought their band to the Brown County Jamboree for the first time in 1958 they did not once refer to their show as a “bluegrass” show, but instead used the term, a “country show”. It was not until the country radio disk jockeys began to notice that many other bands were copying the musical style and instrumentation of Bill Monroe that the term “bluegrass” began to emerge to describe the style of the music.
In 1967, Carlton Haney talked Bill Monroe into using his Bean Blossom property for a two-day (Saturday and Sunday) bluegrass festival. It could be argued that the first annual June Bean Blossom festival was not a festival at all. In fact, Bill Monroe himself referred to it as a “celebration”, and it was held in the Brown County Jamboree Barn. In addition to Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys, other acts that headlined this first Bean Blossom festival included Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys, Red Allen, Hylo Brown, Benny Martin, Rudy Lyle, and the McCormick Brothers. The Blue Grass Boys at that time were Roland White on guitar, Butch Robins, banjo, Byron Berline, fiddle, and James Monroe, bass.
The second annual festival was held outdoors on a newly built stage in the same wooded area where it is held today. Some of the Blue Grass Boys barely laid down their hammers and saws in time to pick up their musical instruments for the three-day affair. Featuring a band contest on Friday, and Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys and nine other major bands and stars on Saturday and Sunday, the event began two Bean Blossom traditions that are still honored today. On Friday evening Monroe invited everybody with an instrument to join him in a massive sunset jam session near the front gate of the festival grounds. Amateurs and professionals played side by side as curious motorists on the highway passed by -- or turned in at the gate. On Sunday morning, Bill and his band and others, (with their hats removed), kicked off the second tradition, a Gospel Music show, later to evolve into a full worship service. Workshops took place in the Jamboree Barn on Saturday morning and a square dance was held there Saturday night.
The June festival continued to grow and in 1969, it was four days long, with Bill Monroe and eighteen other bands and stars. Doc and Merle Watson were special guests, and a banjo contest was added to the program while other traditions continued. Wade Mainer and family conducted the Gospel singing and a regular church service was held at 11:00 a.m. on Sunday. Ralph Emery from WSM Radio, and Paul Mullins served as MCs.
By 1970 the June Bean Blossom festival had grown to one of the largest in the nation and it grew to five days in length.
The trend continued, and the six-day 1971 festival became the first international event with the Hamilton County Bluegrass Band from New Zealand and the Bluegrass 45 Band from Japan performing. This festival also saw the reunion of Bill Monroe and Lester Flatt on stage for the first time in twenty-three years, a great emotional experience for all fans present, probably the highlight of the festival. Tex Logan Ph.D., the renowned old-time fiddler, started another Bean Blossom tradition by preparing a free barbecued bean dinner for all ticket holders. A school of bluegrass music for youngsters was held in the Jamboree Barn with instructors Bill Monroe, Kenny Baker, Jack Hicks, Joe Stuart, and Mike Seeger. Church services and hymn singing were held in the Barn on Sunday. The festival windup on Sunday afternoon featured the Bluegrass Music Story with Ralph Rinzler, then the Director of the Smithsonian’s Festival of American Folklife. This was a similar historical presentation to that given by Carlton Haney at his earlier festivals in Virginia. Nine fiddlers performed together on stage and the festival was closed with a giant jam session featuring all performing artists still present.
In 1972, the sixth June festival was eight days long. Barbecue Bean Day continued, along with the banjo and band contests. A new feature was added, the “Little Miss Bluegrass” contest. Open to teenage girls, the winner was picked by a panel of judges selected from the audience.
The Bean Blossom festival had become so widely known and popular by 1973 that MCA records produced a live, long-play album at the festival, titled appropriately, “Bean Blossom”. MCs were Hairl Hensley of WSM radio, and Billy Cole of WHO radio. The six acts recorded on the album provided a good cross-section of the music. The album also included the closing of the festival by a dozen fiddlers, virtually a “who’s who” of bluegrass fiddlers, all performing together on stage under the direction of Bill Monroe. By this time the annual Bill Monroe Bluegrass Festival at Bean Blossom had come into its own. Its reputation was unsurpassed for bluegrass talent and both professional and amateur jamming. Its founder had become an American music legend in his own lifetime.
Meanwhile, the bluegrass festival tide was sweeping America and even spreading to foreign countries. As the novelty wore off at Bean Blossom and festivals became more numerous and more widely spread geographically across the United States, the drawing power of Bean Blossom was diluted. Fans no longer had to travel long distances to see their favorite stars in person. Most of the larger festivals continued to book the most popular acts in bluegrass. But Bill Monroe stuck with his annual June festival, and even added a fall festival in September. Probably the largest of the festivals under Bill Monroe took place in 1971, ’72 and ’73. These festivals were six, eight, and nine days, respectively. Trying to find a point of diminishing returns, Monroe scheduled the festival for nine days in 1974, 1977, and 1980. Ten-day festivals were held in 1981, 1983, and 1985 to 1987. The festivals were scheduled for five days in 1975 and ’76 and again in 1984, and were dropped to four days from 1988 through 1998.
In 1988 Bill Monroe announced that he had decided to sell the Bean Blossom property and retire from the road. That announcement seemed to generate renewed interest in attending the event and the 1989 and 1990 festivals drew large turnouts, which may have changed his mind, (if he had ever seriously considered retirement). Bill Monroe was loyal to the Grand Ole Opry and proud to be a member of that longest-running radio show. He often referred to the coincidence between radios “WSM”, the initials for “William Smith Monroe”. He was just as loyal to Bean Blossom. Through bouts of ill health and financial setbacks, he continued his annual festival year after year. Other major bluegrass festivals would come and go, but still Bean Blossom rolled on.
Birch Monroe, Bill’s older brother and right-hand-man at Bean Blossom, passed away in 1982. After Birch’s death the Sunday shows at the Brown County Jamboree Barn were discontinued.
After Birch’s death, James Monroe, Bill’s only son, became more active in the management of the Bean Blossom Park. Bill and James decided to tear down the old Jamboree Barn, which had been erected in 1941. They built in its place a handsome new building to house the Bill Monroe Museum and Hall of Fame, and they moved it to Bean Blossom from Tennessee. Also, a replica of Uncle Pen’s cabin, where the orphaned Bill Monroe had lived in Rosine with his uncle, was erected near the Museum. The original stage, built before the first outdoor festival in 1968 was torn down and replaced with a much larger stage. The festivals continued but in April of 1996 Bill Monroe suffered a stroke. The 1996 festival went on as usual, but for the first time, Bill Monroe was not there to greet his fans and entertain them. Rumor spread through the assembled fans that he would make an appearance, even if only a momentary one – maybe in a wheelchair on stage. But it did not happen. The festival was dedicated as a tribute to Mr. Monroe, the founder, the master, and the friend, who lay hospitalized in Tennessee.
Bill Monroe died on September 9, 1996, four days short of his eighty-fifth birthday. The depth and duration of the media coverage was itself a tribute to his standing as a major American musical figure. Rolling Stone magazine called him a “…peer of such giants as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Miles Davis…” He was a part of Bean Blossom, Indiana, for forty-four years and his spirit is very much there still.
Early in 1998 James Monroe sold the Bean Blossom festival property to Dwight Dillman, a former Blue Grass Boy, (banjo, 1974). Dillman set about immediately to address the physical needs of the property. Tons of crushed rock were used to improve the interior roads. Flowerbeds were planted and the grounds were manicured by close and careful mowing of grass on a regular basis. Signs were erected naming roads, campsites, and other features for famous bluegrass performers or loyal Bean Blossom patrons. The number of RV campsites with water and electric hookups was greatly increased and many more primitive campsites were cleared. The stage was painted and a new roof put on; (the stage has recently been enlarged and a new workshop stage has been built on Hippie Hill). Bathrooms with flush toilets, hot showers, and a Laundromat were installed. The Museum was adorned with new displays and the gift shop was re-stocked with brand new merchandise and souvenirs. At first five, and eventually thirteen new camping cabins were erected, three of them completely modern. Two new dump stations for RV campers were built and the swamp behind the main stage was filled in and transformed into a parking lot for entertainer buses. All of this was accomplished without disturbing the natural beauty of the park.
Dwight Dillman also promoted and brought to into prominence the fall festival he inherited from Bill and James Monroe, the “Bill Monroe Bluegrass Hall of Fame and Uncle Pen Days” festival. The highlight of this festival is the induction of a new member into the Bluegrass Hall of Fame each September. The festival also celebrates the great musical heritage passed down to Bill Monroe by his Uncle Pen Vandiver, from whom he learned the importance of timing in bluegrass music. This festival, although traditionally only four days in length, now comes close to the older June festival in weekend attendance.
Dillman left no stone unturned in publicity and advertising. A web site for the park was established at www.beanblossom.com. The 1999 Indiana General Assembly passed a Resolution naming Indiana highway 135 from Morgantown to Nashville, IN, the “Bill Monroe Memorial Highway”. In the year 2000, the annual June festival was designated a “Local Legacy” by Indiana Congressman Baron Hill as a part of the celebration of the 200th anniversary of the Library of Congress
Bluegrass fans responded. The crowds have returned. Shortly after Dillman bought the park, his office received an anonymous call stating, “Your sign is out front”. And sure enough, just outside the door was the original stage sign that someone had stolen after Bill Monroe announced he was selling the park in 1988. It was promptly re-painted and put back at the top of the stage where Bill Monroe had put it in 1968. Bean Blossom is back. It is a place unique among all bluegrass festival parks in the world. It is the site established by the Father of Bluegrass Music, Bill Monroe, and, as he stated, it was his favorite place to perform. And it is the place that every bluegrass fan in the world would like to visit, at least once in his lifetime; it is the MECCA of bluegrass music.
And now it is for sale again, and that is why the Bean Blossom Brown County Jamboree Preservation Foundation Inc. exists – so that its rich traditions and history can be preserved for future generations.
All images courtesy, Sandy Rund, Thomas A. Adler, Rich Hersberger- Copyright Thomas A. Adler.
To contact the Bean Blossom Brown County Jamboree Preservation Foundation,
a nonprofit foundation applying for I.R.C. Section 501(c)(3) status,
please call 1-877-989-BBJF (toll free),
Click here to Email us
or write us a letter at
BBJF, Inc., 5163 North State Road 135,
Morgantown, Indiana 46160
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