Bill Monroe and James Monroe

James joined his father’s band as a bass player in the mid-1960s; he is on bass at Bill’s Decca sessions from March 1965 to November 1968, through the years when Peter Rowan, Richard Greene, Roland White, Vic Jordan, Byron Berline and Kenny Baker passed through the Blue Grass Boys. In 1969 he moved to guitar, and on 26 March that year, at Columbia’s studio in Nashville, father and son recorded their first duet, Damon Black’s “I Haven’t Seen Mary in Years,” with James singing lead to Bill’s tenor and Rual Yarbrough on banjo, Kenny Baker and Red Hayes on fiddles and Joe Zinkan on bass. Decca issued it in May 1969, backed with Bill’s instrumental “Crossing the Cumberlands.” At Bradley’s Barn in Mount Juliet, Tennessee, on 17 December 1969 they recorded Juanita Southern’s “Bonny,” again James on lead and Bill on tenor, which came out in March 1970 as a single under James’s name with Damon Black’s “Sweet Mary and the Miles in Between.”

The duet album was made at Bradley’s Barn on 14, 15 and 21 March 1972, produced by Walter Haynes, with Jack Hicks on banjo, Kenny Baker and Tommy Williams on fiddles, Joe Stuart adding a third fiddle on the last day, and Monroe Fields on bass. James sang lead on most of the songs, among them “Sweetheart You Done Me Wrong,” “Tall Pines,” “Walls of Time” and “Banks of the Ohio,” while on “Mother’s Only Sleeping” and “Foggy Mountain Top” Bill took the verses and James the lead on the choruses. MCA released it as Father & Son on 1 March 1973, with “I Haven’t Seen Mary in Years” and “Bonny” added. That June, at Bill’s Brown County Jamboree in Bean Blossom, Indiana, James had his own set and sang “Roll On, Buddy” with his father on the live album MCA recorded there.

By then James was also making records of his own for the Atteiram label, beginning in 1974, while still playing guitar in his father’s band. The second duet album was cut at Bradley’s Barn on 24 and 30 January and 8 February 1978, again produced by Walter Haynes, with James and Wayne Lewis on guitars, Alan O’Bryant and Butch Robins on banjos, Kenny Baker and James Bryan on fiddles and Randy Davis on bass. Together Again came out on MCA on 15 June 1978, with “Six Feet Under the Ground,” “Those Memories of You,” “Who’s Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet” and “Golden River” among its ten songs. After his father’s death James recorded the tribute album My Father: In Memory of Bill Monroe (Raintree, 1997).