Editing Bill Monroe (section)

== Folk revival ==

{{More citations needed section|date=February 2020}}

Monroe's fortunes began to improve during the [[American folk music revival]] of the early 1960s. Many college students and other young people were beginning to discover Monroe, associating his style more with traditional folk music than with the country-and-western genre with which it had previously been identified.

The word "bluegrass" first appeared around this time to describe the sound of Monroe and similar artists such as Flatt and Scruggs, the Stanley Brothers, [[Reno and Smiley]], [[Jim & Jesse|Jim and Jesse]], and the [[Osborne Brothers]]. While Flatt and Scruggs immediately recognized the potential for a lucrative new audience in cities and on college campuses in the North, Monroe was slower to respond. Under the influence of [[Ralph Rinzler]], a young musician and folklorist from New Jersey who briefly became Monroe's manager in 1963, Monroe gradually expanded his geographic reach beyond the traditional southern country music circuit.<ref name="LarkinGE"/> Rinzler was also responsible for a lengthy profile and interview in the influential folk music magazine ''[[Sing Out!]]'' that first publicly referred to Monroe as the "father" of bluegrass. Accordingly, at the first bluegrass festival organized by Carlton Haney at [[Roanoke, Virginia]] in 1965, Bill Monroe was the central figure.<ref name="LarkinGE"/>

In 1964, before the [[Grateful Dead]] got together, [[Jerry Garcia]] caravanned across the country from California to tag along with Monroe.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://gardenandgun.com/articles/jerry-garcias-bluegrass-roots/|title=Jerry Garcia's Bluegrass Roots|date=May 3, 2018|website=Gardenandgun.com|access-date=August 8, 2021}}</ref> He was playing in the band The Black Mountain Boys in Palo Alto with Sandy Rothman, and in May 1964, he visited Neil Rosenberg at Bean Blossom, playing the banjo and making tapes of Monroe's performances.

The growing national popularity of Monroe's music during the 1960s was also apparent in the increasingly diverse background of musicians recruited into his band. Non-southerners who served as Blue Grass Boys during this period included banjo player [[Bill Keith (musician)|Bill Keith]] and singer/guitarist [[Peter Rowan]] from Massachusetts,<ref name="LarkinGE"/> fiddler Gene Lowinger from New Jersey, banjo player Lamar Grier from Maryland, banjo player Steve Arkin from New York, and singer/guitarist [[Roland White]] and fiddler [[Richard Greene (musician)|Richard Greene]] from California.