Death Himself and the Sinner Earl Scruggs

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East Dane Designer Men's Fashion. Shopbop Designer Fashion Brands. Withoutabox Submit to Film Festivals. Amazon Renewed Refurbished products with a warranty. Critics would call him the Segovia of the five-string banjo, the Paganini of bluegrass. But despite Scruggs's innovations, the bluegrass club, under Monroe's beady-eyed presidency, continued to adhere to a strict rulebook, its repertoire in thrall to Victorian sentiment and its lineup restricted to half a dozen acoustic instruments.

Restive within these boundaries, Scruggs parted company with his leader and finally with bluegrass itself, his music now marked by experiments with folk and rock, and collaborations with Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Ravi Shankar and Elton John. The youngest of five, Scruggs was born in rural Cleveland County, North Carolina, and started playing banjo as a child, perhaps absorbing ideas from local banjoists such as Mack Woolbright, Smith Hammett and Snuffy Jenkins. In his mid-teens he played with the then popular Morris Brothers, but soon returned home to be with his long-widowed mother and took a job in a local textile mill.

This was the lineup that shaped the music, and its broadcasts and recordings inspired a generation. The way we had to drive to make dates, it's a wonder we weren't killed. But we made it, and it toughened you up. And the people up in the New England states and some of the northern states started talking about the 'new' sound of Flatt and Scruggs — and we'd been playing it for years. The band routinely tuned its instruments a half-step higher than standard tuning in those days to get more brightness or pop to the sound, returning to standard pitch in the s.

Soon Beatty called back saying that he wanted to use the existing vintage Mercury recording of Foggy Mountain Breakdown, and rejected the argument that it was recorded 18 years prior at a radio station with no modern enhancements. In October , the band recorded "Earl's Breakdown" which featured a technique where Scruggs would manually de-tune certain strings of the banjo during a song using a cam device he had made to attach to the instrument, giving the surprise effect of a downward string bend.

He and his brother Horace had experimented with it when they were growing up. He covered the holes with a piece of metal, which can be seen on the album cover of Foggy Mountain Jamboree. The technique became popular and led to improvement of the design without drilling holes by Bill Keith who then manufactured Scruggs-Keith Tuners. In , Martha White Foods sponsored the band's regular early morning radio shows on WSM in Nashville, where the duo sang the company's catchy bluegrass jingle written by Pat Twitty.

According to Tennessean writer Peter Cooper, Bill Monroe was in opposition and worked behind the scenes to keep Flatt and Scruggs off the Opry to the extent of having petitions made against their membership. Williams intervened by threatening to pull all of his advertising from WSM unless the band appeared on the Opry in the segment sponsored by his company. Sung by Jerry Scoggins , the theme song became an immediate country music hit and was played at the beginning and end of each episode of the series.

Earl Scruggs

The song went to number one on the Billboard country charts, a first for any bluegrass recording. He said it awakened a deeply embedded predisposition that "was just in there" to learn how to play the instrument. In their first appearance season 1 episode 20 , they portray themselves in the show and perform both the theme song and "Pearl, Pearl, Pearl". This song went to number eight on the country charts in By the end of the s, Scruggs was getting bored with repetition of the classic bluegrass fare.

He said, "I love bluegrass music, and still like to play it, but I do like to mix in some other music for my own personal satisfaction, because if I don't, I can get a little bogged down and a little depressed". Columbia has got Bob Dylan, why did they want me? Scruggs made an unannounced visit to the bedside. The two men talked for more than an hour. Even though Flatt's voice was barely above a whisper, he spoke of a reunion.

Scruggs answered yes, but told Flatt they would talk when he was better. Flatt said, "It came as quite a surprise and made me feel good". Historian Barry Willis, speaking of the meeting, said "Earl gave Lester his flowers while he was still living". Scruggs was one of the few bluegrass or country artists to give support to the anti-war movement.

Earl and Louise Scruggs made phone calls to eminent country stars like Roy Acuff and "Mother" Maybelle Carter to get them to participate in this project to bring a unique combination of older players with young ones. Scruggs had to retire from the road in due to back problems, but the Earl Scruggs Revue did not part ways until Hall in , and a compilation album Top of the World in In , 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.

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. The concert was filmed and turned into the documentary film called Banjoman. The pickers formed two groups, one on each side of home plate, and a video tribute to Scruggs' life was shown.

The award was established by The Recording Academy in to honor works at least 25 years old that have lasting qualitative or historical significance.

This was the first time a prominent bluegrass banjo player had played any brand other than a Gibson. McPeake stated, "They were good banjos, they just wasn't what Earl wanted to play". The Vega company was sold to the C.

Martin company in , and the contract was dissolved. Gibson elected to make the replica model nickel-plated as well, to look like Scruggs' own.

Banjo enthusiasts have located the shipping records from Gibson to determine the exact dates the Grenada Mastertone was missing on certain recordings. She went backstage after the performance to meet some of the performers, including Scruggs, who had been with Bill Monroe's band about a year at that time.

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Scruggs and Certain began dating and fell in love. They were married about a year and a half later in April Louise had a business aptitude and began helping by doing the phone work. She turned the band into TV personalities, and helped propel them into what today would be called rock stars, touring with Joan Baez and performing at the prestigious Newport Folk Festival. Allen , who had done covers for The New Yorker and Sports Illustrated to create cover illustrations for 17 of the group's albums.

Earl Scruggs said, "What talent I had never would have peaked without her.

She helped shape music up as a business, instead of just people out picking and grinning". In , Scruggs received word that his mother, Lula, had suffered a stroke and heart attack in North Carolina. The only flight available from Nashville involved such a series of connecting cities that it was not feasible to fly. Scruggs and his wife, with sons Gary and Randy, decided to drive all night from Nashville to see her when they were involved in an automobile accident just east of Knoxville about 3 a.

He received thousands of letters from well-wishers. While still in the recovery room after this hip operation, Scruggs suffered a heart attack; he was returned to the operating room later the same day for quintuple coronary bypass surgery. Scruggs was involved in a solo plane crash in October On his landing approach he was enveloped in dense fog and overshot the runway at Cornelia Fort Airpark in Nashville and the plane flipped over.

The automatic crash alert system in the plane did not function, and Scruggs remained without help for five hours. He crawled about feet from the wreckage with a broken ankle, broken nose, and facial lacerations, afraid that the plane might catch fire.

His family was driving home from the same concert and was unaware of the crash, but his niece became worried when he did not arrive. She called police at about 4 a. He died in September of a self-inflicted gun shot after killing his wife, according to prosecutor Dent Moriss. Every January for many years, Scruggs' birthday was celebrated by a party at his home on Franklin Road in Nashville. After a buffet dinner, guests would gather in the living room for an informal "pickin' party" where some of country music's best known stars would sing and play with no one around but family and close friends.

At Scruggs 80th birthday party in , country singer Porter Wagoner said, "Earl is to the five-string banjo what Babe Ruth was to baseball.

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