Earl Scruggs

American country singer, songwriter, guitarist, and banjo player

• Born: January 6, 1924
• Birthplace: Flint Hill, North Carolina
• Died: March 28, 2012
• Place of death: Nashville, Tennessee

Propagating the three-finger rolling style of playing, Scruggs established the technique that almost every banjo player uses. He also invented the Scruggs peg, a device that allows the retuning of the banjo while playing, which greatly expanded the versatility of the instrument.

Member of The Foggy Mountain Boys; Flatt and Scruggs; the Earl Scruggs Revue

The Life

Earl Eugene Scruggs was born into a musical farming family in the Piedmont section of North Carolina. He starting playing the banjo when he was four years old, around the time his father died, and he basically taught himself the complex three-finger picking style that some old-time players in the area used. Spending every spare minute playing the banjo, Scruggs soon extended this technique, emphasizing melodic lines and complicated syncopated rhythms in original ways. Scruggs got his first professional job in 1939 when he was fifteen, but it was not until after World War II ended that the fledgling musician had more opportunities to play. When the group Scruggs was playing with disbanded, Lester Flatt, the guitar player with the Bill Monroe band who was impressed by Scruggs’s dynamic and unique style, pushed for him to join the group. Monroe, after hearing Scruggs on a Saturday, told him to be ready to tour Monday.

The Music

Early Works. Scruggs’s early work included twenty-one cuts with Bill Monroe and Blue Grass Boys in 1946 and 1947. These tracks created by this band are considered by many to be a defining moment in bluegrass history. When Flatt and Scruggs left in 1948 to form their own group, the Foggy Mountain Boys, they established a solid reputation with such standards as “Rollin’ in My Sweet Baby’s Arms,” “Salty Dog Blues,” and “’Tis Sweet to Be Remembered” (which became a Top 10 country hit in 1952). The 1959 gospel hit “Cabin on the Hill” stayed on the Billboard chart for almost thirty weeks. Two songs that became synonymous with Flatt and Scruggs and the Scruggs banjo sound are “The Ballad of Jed Clampett” and “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.”

“The Ballad of Jed Clampett.” During the 1950s, Flatt and Scruggs were a major presence on the country and bluegrass music scene in the Southeast of the United States, although their major audience was still rural. Their live radio programs and appearances on television variety shows brought them many fans. With the urban folk music revival in the 1960s, they found new listeners on college campuses and at the outdoor music festivals that hosted a new generation of folksingers, such as Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. The music of Flatt and Scruggs made thousands of new bluegrass fans; performances at Carnegie Hall and Vanderbilt University made bluegrass music mainstream. After seeing Flatt and Scruggs at the Newport Folk Festival, a New York Times music critic called Scruggs the Niccolò Paganini of the banjo. This attracted the notice of the producer of a new television program, The Beverly Hillbillies, and the show’s theme song—“The Ballad of Jed Clampett,” which provided the backstory for the series—became a number-one country hit single in 1962, and it reached number forty-four on the pop charts.

“Foggy Mountain Breakdown.” Another signature piece, this song may be the most widely recognized bluegrass song in the world. Recorded in 1949 (and later again in 1965), this was the first instrumental to clearly showcase the three-finger Scruggs style of banjo picking. While it did not rise on the charts in the 1950s, it was often used for radio-show openings and closings because of its exciting rhythm and technical musical virtuosity. It was supposedly handpicked by producer-star Warren Beatty to be the theme for the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde. Riding on the film’s success, Flatt and Scruggs recorded it a third time, and that rendition reached number fifty-five on the Billboard pop charts.

Will the Circle Be Unbroken. Flatt and Scruggs split in 1969 over musical differences (Flatt wanted to remain more traditional; Scruggs wanted to become more pop-oriented). Scruggs formed a new group—the Earl Scruggs Revue—with his sons Randy and Gary, designed to appeal to younger listeners and to take the banjo in new directions. Around this time, in search of its musical roots, the country-rock group the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band started a project with established (though sometimes forgotten) country superstars such as Maybelle Carter and Roy Acuff. Scruggs was critical in uniting the members of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band with the older country musicians, and eventually three Will the Circle Be Unbroken albums were released to much critical acclaim (in 1972, 1989, and 2002). One of Scruggs’s contributions, “Earl’s Breakdown,” demonstrated how rock and bluegrass might meet. It was a new version of a classic Flatt and Scruggs song from the 1950s. It also featured one of Scruggs’s detuning tricks, whereby he would change the pitch on the B or G strings of the banjo with a special cam on the headstock, giving it a different kind of gliding twang sound.

Musical Legacy

In 1985 Flatt and Scruggs were inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame as well as into the Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music’s Preservation Hall of Greats. Scruggs has been nominated for Grammy Awards more than a dozen times, with “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” winning in 1968 for Best Country Instrumental Performance and a rerecorded version of the song winning again in 2001. In 1999 “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” was placed in the Grammy Hall of Fame for songs of historical significance. Scruggs won a Grammy Award for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals for “Same Old Train” in 1998. With the Nitty Gritty Dirty Band, he took the Grammy Award for Best Country Instrumental Performance for “Earl’s Breakdown” in 2004. Scruggs received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008. Scruggs was made a National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellow in 1989, and he received the President’s National Medal of Arts. He got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2003 (the first banjo player so honored). He was given an honorary doctorate from the Berklee College of Music in 2005. In 2007 Flatt and Scruggs were inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the North Carolina House and Senate passed a joint resolution honoring Scruggs.

Principal Recordings

albums (solo): Earl Scruggs: His Family and Friends, 1972; I Saw the Light with Some Help from My Friends, 1972; Dueling Banjos, 1973; Rockin’ ’Cross the Country, 1973; The Earl Scruggs Revue, 1973; Family Portrait, 1976; The Earl Scruggs Revue 2, 1976; Strike Anywhere, 1977; Bold and New, 1978; Today and Forever, 1979; Storyteller and the Banjo Man, 1982 (with Tom T. Hall); Top of the World, 1983; Superjammin’, 1984; Earl Scruggs and Friends, 2001 (with others).

albums (with Flatt): Foggy Mountain Jamboree, 1957; Country Music, 1958; Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, 1959; Flatt and Scruggs with the Foggy Mountain Boys, 1960; Songs of Glory, 1960; Foggy Mountain Banjo, 1961; Songs of the Famous Carter Family, 1961; Folk Songs of Our Land, 1962; The Ballad of Jed Clampett, 1963; The Original Sound of Flatt and Scruggs, 1963; The Fabulous Sound of Flatt and Scruggs, 1964; Beverly Hillbillies, 1965; Town and Country, 1965; The Versatile Flatt and Scruggs, 1965; Stars of the Grand Ole Opry, 1966; When the Saints Go Marching In, 1966; Changin’ Times, 1967; Hear the Whistles Blow, 1967; Sacred Songs, 1967; Strictly Instrumental, 1967; Nashville Airplane, 1968; The Original Foggy Mountain Breakdown, 1968; Original Theme from “Bonnie and Clyde,” 1968; Songs to Cherish, 1968; The Story of Bonnie and Clyde, 1968; Detroit City, 1969; Breaking Out, 1970; Final Fling, 1970; Flatt and Scruggs, 1970; Foggy Mountain Chimes, 1970; Country Boy, 1972; A Boy Named Sue, 1973; Blue Ridge Cabin Home, 1979; You Can Feel It in Your Soul, 1988; Father’s Table Grace, 2002; Foggy Mountain Special, 2003.

Bibliography

Carlson, Elizabeth A. North Carolina String Music Masters: Old-Time and Bluegrass Legends. Charleston: History P, 2016. Print.

Goldsmith, Thomas, ed. The Bluegrass Reader. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2004. Print.

Kingsbury, Paul, and Alanna Nash, eds. Will the Circle Be Unbroken: Country Music in America. New York: DK, 2006. Print.

Malone, Bill, and Judith McCulloh, eds. Stars of Country Music. New York: Da Capo, 1975. Print.

Rosenberg, Neil. Bluegrass: A History. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2005. Print.

Scruggs, Earl. Earl Scruggs and the Five-String Banjo: Revised and Enhanced Edition. Milwaukee, Wis.: Hal Leonard, 2005. Print.