Remembering Earl Scruggs

I imagine most of my readers are not bluegrass fans. That’s ok. Wander on off and The Wild Hunt will have something for you shortly. For the two of you who are bluegrass fans, I’m sorry to say that Earl Scruggs has died.

I’m listening to Foggy Mountain Breakdown right now, and my heart is breaking a little. Scruggs innovations in banjo playing have practically provided the soundtrack to my life. I’ve spent hours at jam sessions with banjo players who looked to him. I’ve sat mesmerized watching the fingers of pickers who emulate his style.

I can’t really play bluegrass. It’s far too fast and complex for me. I clunk a chord or two of old time music and work on my picking best as I can. My meager efforts at the mandolin have given me enormous respect for musicians in general, but bluegrass pickers particularly.

Few people have been as musically influential as Earl Scruggs. Steve Martin, world-class banjo player who is sometimes a comedian, says it better than I can:

The banjo lends itself to showing off: it’s often played fast and thrillingly, fingers flying up and down the neck, the right hand connecting to the left with seemingly impossible accuracy. But Earl always remembered his mother’s advice when he was a boy: “Play something that has a tune to it.” His first and last priority was to make music, which keeps his sound melodic and accessible. Yet, even professional players today say, “How did he do that?” It is not easy to make the melody note land in the right place when rolling three fingers over five strings, but Earl could syncopate, “bend” a string—which caused one note to move unbroken into another—and he could audibly retune the banjo in the middle of a song, leading to the invention of a mechanical device called “Scruggs’ pegs.” Earl knew when and how to surprise the heck out of the listener.

…

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. His reach extends not only throughout America, but to other countries, including Japan, where bluegrass bands, strangely, abound, as well as Australia, Russia, the U.K., Italy, Germany, and the Czech Republic, which boasts not only bands but banjo makers. Most, if not all, of the banjo players play Scruggs style.

There is something magical about bluegrass music, and something thrilling about Scruggs’style banjo playing. The notes fly like a juggernaut, a runaway train, and the sound carries you. You listen and find yourself compelled to movement, if not in body then in mind. Your toes get to tapping and your mind begins wandering down train tracks, along wagon trails and up rivers. It’s a uniquely American expression of music, and contains all the restless energy of the post-WWII era as easily as it expresses the vigor of a young country trying to make it far across the sea from all it had ever before known. It’s the sound of people emerging from the Great Depression, and enjoying the hell out of life while they have the chance.

I hear Scruggs-style banjo and I am reminded of family car trips, of reunions, church gatherings, country fairs and the vibrance of my own hometown where pickers still gather on the square every Saturday in fine weather to entertain themselves, and a few passerby.

From his music and appearances on the Beverly Hillbillies, to clips of his Grand Ole Opry performances and his touring with music legends, Earl Scruggs has made a considerable impression on my life. Part of my very soul is imprinted with those rolls and runs, 8 notes per second.

If I were to create a musical Hero cultus, Earl Scruggs would be right at the top of my list. He may have come from the backwoods mountains of North Carolina, not very far from where I live now, but he was a world-class talent, and a true musical genius.

I’m going to miss you, Earl, and I ain’t the only one.

Here are some clips of some of my favorite Scruggs tunes: