Earl Scruggs' profile as the face of bluegrass banjo style was significantly heightened via a groundbreaking appearance--without Lester Flatt--at the very first Newport Folk Festival in 1959.

Earl at Newport, Sans Lester

A culture clash dooms the bluegrass giants’ duo act

By Billy Altman

Hearing about the death of Earl Scruggs at age 88 on March 28, I was reminded of the wonderful comment made by Porter Wagoner at a 2004 party celebrating the American musical giant's then 80th birthday. "Earl," said Wagoner, "was to the five-string banjo what Babe Ruth was to baseball."

What a perfect comparison. Just as there were plenty of fine players before Ruth singlehandedly changed the way people approached hitting a baseball, there had been plenty of fine instrumentalists before Scruggs singlehandedly changed the way people approached playing a banjo. And outside of baseball and apple pie, is there anything more All-American than traditional bluegrass music?

Of course, they weren't calling it by that name in 1945 when Scruggs and his guitarist partner Lester Flatt were hired by mandolin master Bill Monroe to join fiddler Chubby Wise and bassist Cedric Rainwater (aka Howard Watts) in Monroe's Blue Grass Boys--so-dubbed to honor his home state of Kentucky. But once folks heard the pioneering music made by the band--and in particular Scruggs' incredible rolling, three-fingered style--the name was soon appropriated to describe the entire country string band genre that sprang up around them as a result of their startlingly influential work.

Flatt and Scruggs, ‘Ground Speed’

The basic storyline of Flatt and Scruggs' career together is fairly familiar to most bluegrass fans. Monroe's talent and vision, alas, was matched by an ego and tightfistedness that led the underpaid and overworked "sidemen" to strike out on their own in early 1948, and within a few years Flatt & Scruggs and their Foggy Mountain Boys (named, it should be noted, for the Carter Family classic "Foggy Mountain Top"), had eclipsed Monroe in popularity. (He never really forgave them, either.) Nonetheless, for just about two full decades, the two, in their matching outfits (featuring small-brimmed cowboy hats and string ties), became synonymous with bluegrass and rural country music to most Americans, exemplified by their music for the Beverly Hillbillies TV Show, as well as 1967's hit film Bonnie and Clyde, which featured their Scruggs-composed instrumental evergreen, "Foggy Mountain Breakdown." To many people, that one song, first recorded in late 1949 and highlighted by several of Scruggs' signature original riffs, was and still is the essence of bluegrass; it's certainly the one song any aspiring young banjo player has to be able to play to be taken at all seriously in the rigorous discipline that is bluegrass musicianship.

It wasn't long after the counterculturally informed Bonnie and Clyde appeared that Flatt and Scruggs had their own culture clash, leading to their eventual breakup in 1969. Conventional wisdom has always posited that it was Scruggs' interest in the progressive country-rock music that his musical sons Gary, Randy and Steve were beginning to play, along with Flatt's allegiances to traditional bluegrass, that caused the split. That's certainly true to an extent. But what's often forgotten is the basis of that back story, when Scruggs' profile as the face of bluegrass banjo style was significantly heightened via a groundbreaking appearance--without Lester Flatt--at the very first Newport Folk Festival in 1959.

Scruggs' experience at Newport no doubt opened his eyes and ears to the folk movement that was just starting to gather steam, and he seemed to have no problems with the liberal, non-Southern folk audience's interest in traditional American roots music.

Scruggs was invited by Mike Seeger, who had recently put together an album for Folkways Records titled American Banjo: Tunes and Songs in Scruggs Style, which featured field recordings of various early progenitors of the syncopated three-finger style that had first been introduced in Scruggs' native North Carolina (most notably DeWitt "Snuffy" Jenkins, whose radio popularity in the late 1930s really put the new technique on the map in the South). Scruggs accepted, and he amazed young urban folkies whose banjo knowledge theretofore mostly centered on Mike's half-brother Pete Seeger's older, more strumming-oriented clawhammer style.

Scruggs' experience at Newport no doubt opened his eyes and ears to the folk movement that was just starting to gather steam, and he seemed to have no problems with the liberal, non-Southern folk audience's interest in traditional American roots music. Lester Flatt, on the other hand, was reportedly insulted by Seeger's not asking both of them to come to Newport together--after all, he was the lead singing frontman and had top billing in their group--and Flatt never really warmed to the folk movement. For him the most important thing about the folk revival was probably that it enabled him and Scruggs to make good money playing to college kids all across the country, and that was as deep as it went. (To be fair to Flatt, who was ten years oldeer than Scruggs, most bluegrass musicians most likely felt like he did, and that's one of the more fascinating things about the folk movement's attraction to old-time country and bluegrass music throughout the 1960s. The music really did forge a unique common ground relationship between North and South, and left and right wing America.) Suffice it to say that when the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band connected all the dots with 1972's generation-bridging Will The Circle Be Unbroken landmark project with country legends Mother Maybelle Carter, Doc Watson, Roy Acuff, Merle Travis and Jimmy Martin, Scruggs was there; Flatt was not.

Ultimately, Earl Scruggs' legacy--to his instrument, to country music, to American music of the 20th century--simply cannot be overestimated. His virtuosic skills remain the gold standard for anyone who attempts to play a banjo, and his proud but ever-humble image is one that any highly talented musician should strive to emulate. Earl Scruggs knew he was the best banjo player who ever lived; he also made it abundantly clear in the way that he carried himself throughout his life that the music, and the genius, ran through him, not because of him. With his passing, a piece of American history is now gone forever, and there's not many people, musician or otherwise, that you can say that about. That angel band just added one pretty fair picker, though, didn't it?