Over the years, a few anthologies have offered tantalizing glimpses of the Monroe Brothers, and a two-LP set, long extinct, came out in 1975.

Like Johnson, the Monroe Brothers prodded a rural idiom out of a sleepy past into a hardboiled, hopped-up present.

"The Monroe Brothers blow away anything Bill ever did on his own," said the guitarist and musicologist John Fahey recently.

Also at this time, sibling Country music acts such as the Delmore Brothers and the Monroe Brothers were enjoying great popularity.

The Monroe Brothers still have not finished the Douglases' bedroom.

When Birch refused the offer, Bill and Charlie took the bill as The Monroe Brothers.

The Monroe Brothers made their first recordings in 1936, but split up after two contentious years.

He and his brother Charlie billed themselves as "The Monroe Brothers."

They were heavily influenced by the Delmore Brothers and Monroe Brothers.

Ira played mandolin with Charlie Monroe, guitar player of the Monroe Brothers in the early 1940s.