Earl Scruggs Dead at 88

[Gurn Blanston]

Bluegrass banjo legend Earl Scruggs passed yesterday. So it goes.



(CNN) -- Earl Scruggs, whose distinctive picking style and association with Lester Flatt cemented bluegrass music's place in popular culture, died Wednesday of natural causes at a Nashville hospital, his son Gary Scruggs said. He was 88.

"I realize his popularity throughout the world went way beyond just bluegrass and country music," Gary Scruggs told CNN. "It was more than that."

For many of a certain age, Scruggs' banjo was part of the soundtrack of an era on "The Ballad of Jed Clampett" -- the theme song from the CBS sitcom "The Beverly Hillbillies," which aired on CBS from 1962 to 1971 and for decades afterward in syndication.

But much more than that, he popularized a three-finger picking style that brought the banjo to the fore in a supercharged genre, and he was an indispensable member of the small cadre of musical greats who created modern bluegrass music.

Scruggs was born in 1924 to a musically gifted family in rural Cleveland County, North Carolina, according to his official biography. His father, a farmer and a bookkeeper, played the fiddle and banjo, his mother was an organist and his older siblings played guitar and banjo, as well.

Young Earl's exceptional gifts were apparent early on. He started playing the banjo at age 4 and he started developing his three-finger style at the age of 10.

"The banjo was, for all practical purposes, 'reborn' as a musical instrument," the biography on his official website declares, "due to the talent and prominence Earl Scruggs gave to the instrument."

The 1967 film "Bonnie and Clyde" featured their 1949 instrumental "Foggy Mountain Breakdown," with its distinctive Scruggs-style banjo solo perhaps the most ubiquitous of bluegrass sounds.

The duo split in 1969, and Scruggs' fame as a solo and featured act continued to grow, even as his most iconic licks echoed through the years among his acolytes -- basically, anyone who played banjo, and many who picked other instruments.

Playing "Foggy Mountain" on banjo became a staple of Steve Martin's comedy routine, and blossomed into a reverential tribute. In November 2001, Martin and Scruggs were joined by Vince Gill, Marty Stuart, Jerry Douglas and others on "Late Show With David Letterman" to play a fiery version of the song -- soloing alternately on banjo, guitar, mandolin, fiddle, steel guitar and harmonica. Even Paul Schafer took the chorus for a spin on piano.

In an article in the New Yorker in January, Martin wrote, "A grand part of American music owes a debt to Earl Scruggs. Few players have changed the way we hear an instrument the way Earl has, putting him in a category with Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, Chet Atkins, and Jimi Hendrix."

Flatt & Scruggs were inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1985, six years after Lester Flatt's death. In 1991, Scruggs, Flatt and Monroe were the first inductees in the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame.

[Geo Dude]

Wow.  Truly a legend, and he certainly lived a long, fulfilling life.  I'm sure I have some Flatt and Scruggs around here somewhere...

[Karl Henning]

I smile to think that I learnt of this by Steve Martin tweeting (on Twitter, that is) . . . .

[chasmaniac]

This news will send me back to those dusty boxes where I keep my old cassettes. Gotta be some Scruggs in there.

I've cycled through numerous musical styles and genres over the years decades, and folk/traditional was one of them. But there is so damn much beautiful music in the world that I can't handle more than a few of its tranches at any one time.

Rest in peace, Earl!

[Gurn Blanston]

This news will send me back to those dusty boxes where I keep my old cassettes. Gotta be some Scruggs in there.

I've cycled through numerous musical styles and genres over the years decades, and folk/traditional was one of them. But there is so damn much beautiful music in the world that I can't handle more than a few of its tranches at any one time.

Rest in peace, Earl!

At this point in my life, I have been down most musical roads at one time or another. Of all genres, Bluegrass is the only one today that I voluntarily listen to outside of Classical.