Our Mansion Is Ready · A Valley Of Peace

Charlie Monroe was born in Rosine, Kentucky, in 1903, the older brother of Bill Monroe. As the Monroe Brothers the two broadcast daily on WBT in Charlotte, North Carolina, and recorded for Bluebird from 1936, with Charlie usually singing lead. They split in 1938, and each formed his own band: Bill’s became the Blue Grass Boys, Charlie’s the Kentucky Pardners.

Charlie’s first records as a leader were made for Bluebird in rooms of the Andrew Jackson Hotel in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and were billed as Charlie Monroe’s Boys. On 29 September 1938 he cut ten sides there with Bill Calhoun and Zeke Morris singing harmony, among them “The Great Speckled Bird,” and in 1939 eight more with Morris on mandolin. With them he was trying to recreate the brothers’ duet sound. In the early 1940s he was based at WBIG in Greensboro, North Carolina, with a daily show called the Noonday Jamboree, and in 1944 and 1945 he spent time at WSJS in Winston-Salem; radio shows from 1944 were later issued by County. Lester Flatt, Curly Seckler, Red Rector and Ira Louvin all played in his band.

Monroe signed with RCA Victor in 1946. The first Victor session, at the Piedmont Hotel in Atlanta on 30 September 1946, had Curly Seckler on mandolin and harmony, Larry Isley on guitar, Robert Lambert on bass and Paul Prince on fiddle. It produced “There’s No Depression in Heaven” and “Mother’s Not Dead, She’s Only Sleeping” (Victor 20-2055). In Chicago on 25 March 1947, with Ira Louvin on mandolin and James Martin on fiddle and harmonica, he recorded “It’s Only a Phonograph Record” (Victor 20-2304) and both sides of Victor 20-2416, “Down in the Willow Garden” and “Bringing In the Georgia Mail.” Three sessions in New York on 7 November 1947, with Red Rector on mandolin and Orne Osborne and Rex Henderson on guitars, yielded twelve sides, among them “When the Angels Carry Me Home” and “If We Never Meet Again” (Victor 20-2961).

On 1 February 1949, at the Fox Theatre Building in Atlanta, Rector, Osborne and Lavelle Coy on bass backed him on eight sides, including “They Didn’t Believe It Was True” with “Rosa Lee McFall” (Victor 21-0054) and “Our Mansion Is Ready” with “A Valley of Peace” (21-0100). Two sessions followed in 1950 at Brown Radio Productions in Nashville; on the March date his brother Birch Monroe sang harmony. The last Victor session, in Atlanta on 6 May 1951, produced “That Wild Black Engine” with “You’ll Find Her Name Written There” (Victor 47-4291). Stephen Sholes produced or co-produced most of the Victor dates.

Monroe then recorded for Decca: at Castle Studio in Nashville on 20 January 1952, with Grady Martin on guitar and Paul Cohen producing, when he cut “I’m Old Kentucky Bound,” and again in August 1956 with Owen Bradley on piano. He announced his retirement in 1957. In 1962 he recorded again at REM Studios in Lexington, Kentucky, with J. D. Crowe on banjo, and in 1972 Jimmy Martin brought him to the Gettysburg Bluegrass Festival. He died at his farm in Reidsville, North Carolina, in 1975.

Session details drawn in part from the Bluegrass Discography.