The Chattanooga History Center will honor Fletcher Bright and the Dismembered Tennesseans as the recipients of its 4th Annual History Makers Award. The award recognizes local individuals or groups who have made significant contributions to Chattanooga, the region, the state, or the country.

The 2009 honorees were chosen for the contributions they have made to southern regional music, both as cultural preservationists and musical entertainers.

They will be honored at a luncheon at 11:30am-1:00pm, November 18th, at the Chattanooga Convention & Trade Center. This event is the History Center’s major fund raiser of the year.

Individual tickets are $45, and table sponsorships begin at $500. The registration deadline is November 10th. For information, call 265-3742, extension 10.

Bill Monroe, the acknowledged “Father of Bluegrass,” and his band, The Bluegrass Boys, joined Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry in 1939. Seven years later, a young native Chattanoogan, who was then a student at McCallie School, discovered Monroe and his band on the Opry’s radio show.

“It absolutely sent me up the wall,” Bright said of his first exposure to Monroe’s hard driving music and the band’s fiddle player’s “bow shuffling” technique. Thus began an interest and avocation that continues full force today.

The Dismembered Tennesseans were organized in 1946 and have played continuously throughout the past 63 years. Bright was not, he said, the original bandleader. That was a classmate, Sammy Joyce, “…and I,” Bright said affectionately, referring to co-founder and emcee Frank McDonald who died in 2000, “was just a sideman till after Frank McDonald died.”

There is little question, however, that Bright was a driving force, and responsible for the band’s longevity, which, he says, is attributable to the fact that “we are all good friends.”

As young bluegrass musicians, Bright and his band member friends searched out opportunities to study the music that had captivated them in every way that was available to them. There was little written music to pick up in a music store, and learning involved listening carefully to the radio and records.

Often, however, the fast tempo made it impossible to figure out exactly what the musicians were doing, and Bright began to seek out meetings with noted players in the broader Chattanooga area, northeast Tennessee, and southwest Virginia.

Bright credits these meetings as being very important to his development as a fiddler. Roy Acuff, Flatt & Scruggs, and, of course, Bill Monroe were early heroes.
Bright maintains that he has always played because “it’s fun.”

Sixty-three years of playing in concerts, on the radio, for parties, and in festivals has, however, significantly contributed to the continued development of traditional regional music.

There have been periods during those years when it receded into the back of public consciousness, and could have, without a persistent few like Fletcher Bright and the Dismembered Tennesseans, faded out completely.

Though we speak of the group as cultural preservationists, it is well recognized that culture cannot, and should not, be preserved as it is at any given moment, but is in constant change. If it stops changing, it has already died, and preservation only means safeguarding what physical evidence remains.

Gathering musical knowledge from the best in the region, and using what he learned in public performance, Bright and the band kept a cultural element alive and in motion.

No one is more aware of the evolutionary nature of his favorite music than Bright himself. “When I was growing up,” he said, “fiddle playing was scratchy. Each generation seems to take it to a new level.”