Earl Scruggs

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Earl Eugene Scruggs (January 6, 1924 – March 28, 2012) was an American musician best known for his promoting a three-finger banjo picking style, now known as the "Scruggs style" in the style, which is a defining characteristic of bluegrass music.

His three-finger style of playing was very different from the traditional way the five-string banjo had been played.

This new style of playing has made the banjo go from its previous position as a background rhythm instrument to a soloist role.

He praised the instrument in a variety of genres of music.

Scruggs' career began at the age of 21 when he was recruited to play in Bill Monroe's band, The Blue Grass Boys.

The word "bluegrass" became the eponym for the entire genre of country music now known by the term.

Despite considerable success with Monroe, appearing on the Grand Ole Opry and recording hits like "Blue Moon of Kentucky," Scruggs resigned from the company in 1946 due to their exhausting touring schedule.

Lester Flatt, a fellow band member, resigned, and Scruggs and Scruggs formed a new group called Flatt and Scruggs, which later became the Foggy Mountain Boys.

"Foggy Mountain Breakdown," a Scruggs banjo instrument that debuted in 1949, became a hit with a younger audience, and it was a resurgent success to a younger generation when it was included in the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde.

The song received two Grammy Awards and was selected for the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry of Works of Special Merit. With their country's hit, "The Ballad of Jed Clamt," Flatt and Scruggs' theme song, the first Scruggs recording to reach top of the Billboard charts, the first Scruggs hit.

Flatt and Scruggs released more than 50 albums and 75 singles in their 20-year career.

Flatt was a traditionalist who opposed the change in 1969, primarily because Scruggs wanted to change styles to suit a more modern look, but the pair feared doing so would alienate a fan base of bluegrass purists.

Although each of them formed a new band to reflect their dreams, neither of them ever recovered from the success they had as a team. Scruggs has been nominated for four Grammy Awards, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and a National Medal of Arts.

He was inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame as a member and was named on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Flatt and Scruggs were inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame together in 1985 and named as a pair number 24 on CMT's 40 Greatest Men of Country Music.

The National Endowment for the Performing Arts awarded Scruggs a National Heritage Fellowship, the highest award in the folk and traditional arts in the United States.

Scruggs' four works have been in the Grammy Hall of Fame.

The Earl Scruggs Center in Shelby, North Carolina, was established near his birthplace in 2012, with the support of a federal grant and corporate contributors following Scruggs' death at the age of 88.

The center is a $5.5 million facility that showcases Scruggs' musical contributions as well as serving as an educational center that offers lessons and field trips for students.

Early life

Earl Scruggs was born January 6, 1924, in the Flint Hill neighborhood of Cleveland County, North Carolina, just south of Boiling Springs, about ten miles west of Shelby. When Earl was four years old, his father, George Elam Scruggs, was a farmer and a bookkeeper who died as a result of a long illness. Georgia Lula Ruppe, the Scruggs' mother, was left to take care of the farm and five children, of whom Earl was the youngest, following his death.

All of the family members performed music. The father was a fan of the frailing technique, but an adult Earl had no recollection of his father's playing. Mrs. Scruggs was a member of the Pump Organ. The Earl's siblings, older brothers Junie and Horace, as well as older sisters Eula Mae and Ruby, all played banjo and guitar. Scruggs related a trip to his uncle's house at age six to learn a blind banjo player named Mack Woolbright, who had a finger-picking style and had appeared on Columbia Records. It gave Scruggs, who wrote, "He'd sit in the rocking chair," someday, to pick some and it was just amazing. I couldn't believe it—he was the first, what I would describe as a good banjo player." Scruggs then took up the instrument, realizing that he was too young to hold it at first and improvised by placing his brother Junie's banjo beside him on the floor. He turned it around depending on what part of the neck he was playing. Scruggs seemed to take solace in music after his father's death, and when not in school or doing farm chores, he spent virtually every spare moment practicing. On a talent scout show at age 11, his first radio appearance was at age 11.

Personal life

Scruggs was informed in 1955 that Lula, his mother, had died of a stroke and heart attack in North Carolina. There was only one operating from Nashville, but it was not feasible to fly due to a string of connecting cities. Scruggs and his wife, along with sons Gary and Randy, decided to drive all night from Nashville to see her after they were involved in a car accident about 3 a.m. October 2. They were struck by a nebriated driver, a Fort Campbell soldier who had turned left off a side road into their direction, and then fled the scene after the accident. The children were not hurt, but Earl suffered with fractured pelvis and dislocation of both hips, which would continue to plague him for years, and Louise had been thrown into the windshield, causing multiple lacerations. They were airlifted to a Nashville hospital, where Scruggs remained hospitalized for about two months. Thousands of letters from well-wishers have been sent to him. In January 1956, about four months after the accident, he returned to music, but one of the hips collapsed, and he returned to the hospital for a metal hip replacement. The other hip required similar surgery seven years ago. The first metal hip lasted for more than 40 years, but it died after requiring a complete hip replacement in October 1996, when he was 72 years old. Scruggs suffered a heart attack after this hip surgery, and he was rushed to the operating room later the same day after quintuple coronary bypass surgery. Despite the difficult circumstances, he recovered and resumed his musical career.

Scruggs was involved in a solo plane crash in October 1975. Around midnight from a performance of the Earl Scruggs Revue in Murray, Kentucky, he was flying his 1974 Cessna Skyhawk II plane home to Nashville. On his landing approach, he was enveloped in dense fog and overshot the runway at Cornelia Fort Airpark in Nashville, where the plane flipped over. The plane's automatic crash alert system didn't work, and Scruggs stayed without assistance for five hours. He crept about 150 feet from the wreckage, cracked nose, and facial lacerations, afraid that the plane would catch fire. His family was driving home from the same concert and was unaware of the accident, but his niece became concerned when he did not arrive. About 4 a.m., she called police and they rushed to the airport, where Scruggs' calls for assistance from a field near the runway were heard. He recovered, but he was in a wheelchair for a few weeks, including for the premiere of Scruggs' documentary Banjoman at the Kennedy Center.

At one point, Earl Scruggs' youngest son, Steve Scruggs, was the drummer for the Earl Scruggs Revue. According to prosecutor Dent Moriss, he died in September 1992 from a self-inflicted gunshot after murdering his wife. Randy Scruggs, the Middle Son, was a musician and singer who died of a short illness on April 17, 2018.

Scruggs' birthday was commemorated every January by a party at his house on Franklin Road in Nashville. Guests will dine and dine in the living room for a formal "pickin" reception, where some of country music's top entertainers will perform and play with no one around but family and close friends. Tom T. Hall, Béla Fleck, Travis Tritt, Vince Gill, Tim O'Brien, Emmylou Harris, Mac Wiseman, Matthew Stuart, Porter Wagoner, Jerry Douglas, Josh Graves, and many others were among the attendees over the years. "Earl is to the five-string banjo what Babe Ruth was to baseball," Porter Wagoner said at Scruggs' 80th birthday party in 2004. He was the best there has been and the highest there ever was.

Earl Scruggs died of natural causes in a Nashville hospital on March 28, 2012. His funeral took place on Sunday, April 1, 2012, at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee, and was free to the public. In a private service at Spring Hill Cemetery, he was buried.

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Awards and honors

• In 1989, Scruggs was awarded a National Heritage Fellowship given by the National Endowment for the Arts, the highest honor in the folk and traditional arts in the United States.
• Flatt and Scruggs were inducted together into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1985.
• Scruggs was an inaugural inductee into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame in 1991 and into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame in 2009.
• In 1992, he was one of 13 recipients to be awarded the National Medal of Arts. The award is authorized by Congress for outstanding contributions to the arts in the United States and presented by the President of the United States.
• Flatt and Scruggs won a Grammy Award in 1968 for Scruggs' instrumental "Foggy Mountain Breakdown". Scruggs won a second Grammy in 2001 for the same song featuring artists Steve Martin, Vince Gill, Albert Lee, Paul Shaffer, Leon Russell, Marty Stuart, Jerry Douglas, Glen Duncan and Scruggs' two oldest sons, Randy and Gary. He totaled four Grammy awards over his career and in 2008 received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 50th Annual Grammy Awards.
• On February 13, 2003, Scruggs received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
• That same year, he and Flatt were ranked No. 24 on CMT's 40 Greatest Men of Country Music.
• In 2005, Scruggs was awarded an honorary doctorate from Boston's Berklee College of Music.
• In January 1973, a tribute concert honoring Scruggs was held in Manhattan, Kansas featuring artists Joan Baez, David Bromberg, The Byrds, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and Doc and Merle Watson. The concert was filmed and turned into the 1975 documentary film called Banjoman. It premiered at the John F. Kennedy Center, attended by Tennessee senators Bill Brock and Howard Baker, Ethel Kennedy, and Maria Shriver. Scruggs attended the event in a wheelchair, recuperating from a crash of his private plane.
• The Coen brothers made a reference to The Foggy Mountain Boys in the 2000 film, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, by naming the movie band "The Soggy Bottom Boys"
• On September 13, 2006, Scruggs was honored at Turner Field in Atlanta as part of the pre-game show for an Atlanta Braves home game. Organizers won a listing in "The Guinness Book of World Records" for the most banjo players (239) playing one tune together (Scruggs's "Foggy Mountain Breakdown"). The pickers formed two groups, one on each side of home plate, and a video tribute to Scruggs's life was shown.
• Four works by Scruggs have been placed in the Grammy Hall of Fame: "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" (single, inducted 1999); Foggy Mountain Jamboree, (album, inducted 2012); Foggy Mountain Banjo, (album, inducted 2013); and Bill Monroe's "Blue Moon of Kentucky" (single, inducted 1998) on which Scruggs performed. The award was established by The Recording Academy in 1973 to honor works at least 25 years old that have lasting qualitative or historical significance.
• The Google Doodle of January 11, 2019 paid homage to Scruggs by featuring a "close-up" animated demonstration of the "Scruggs style".