Joe Val and the New England Bluegrass Boys
Live and Let Live
Musicians
“Live and Let Live” was recorded by Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys on the 1962 Decca album Bluegrass Ramble, the version associated with this entry. The recording belongs to Monroe’s productive early-1960s period, when the band’s working lineup included Bessie Lee Mauldin on bass and Tony Ellis on banjo at various points across the album sessions.
The song was written by Wiley Walker and Gene Sullivan, the Western-swing duo who recorded as “Willey and Gene” and contributed several pieces that crossed into the country and bluegrass repertoire. The lyric is a domestic-philosophy piece: the narrator preaching the live-and-let-live attitude as the only sustainable way through a marriage, with verses cycling through the small disappointments and corrections that the central principle is meant to defuse. The song sits in the lighter register of Monroe’s catalogue — not a heartbreak text, not a gospel piece, but a working-philosophy declaration.
Monroe’s high tenor lead carries the lyric’s wry tone; the brisk tempo and the band’s tight backing make the recording feel like one of his more relaxed cuts of the period. The song has been covered widely in traditional bluegrass through the 1960s and 1970s. It works as a moderate-up-tempo singer’s piece in G or A with a comfortable banjo break and a clear chorus harmony slot.
