Earl Scruggs The King Of Banjo (January 6, 1924 – March 28, 2012)

Music legend Earl Scruggs passed away Wednesday morning in Nashville, Tennessee. He was 88 years of age.

Earl Scruggs was a famous musician who helped to make Bluegrass a popular genre; he was influential in making the five-stringed banjo a popular instrument.

Bluegrass fans will always revere the music that the famous group called Flatt and Scruggs created. In 1948, Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs left a band that was led by another Bluegrass giant — Bill Monroe. The Foggy Mountain Boys, with Flatt and Scruggs as the founders, recorded and performed together up until 1969.

The group broke up in 1969 because the two couldn’t settle the direction that the band was going. Lester Flatt died in 1979 at the age of 64. Both are ranked among the most popular men in Country and Bluegrass music.

The two had a very distinctive sound; Lester Flatt played rhythm guitar and sang lead vocals. Earl Scruggs presented a definitive banjo picking style that struck a cord with generations of bluegrass music lovers.

The repertoire of Flatt and Scruggs included: Foggy Mountain Breakdown, Bonnie and Clyde, The Ballad of Jed Clampett, Martha White, Petticoat Junction, I Still Miss Someone, etc.

Several of these pieces became embedded into American culture, as they were used in television themes and movies. Foggy Mountain Breakdown, an instrumental released in 1949, won two Grammy awards and became a standard in the Bluegrass genre.

Foggy Mountain Breakdown was written by Earl Scruggs, recorded by Flatt and Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys, with Earl playing a Gibson Granada banjo. Earl later performed on stage with the famous Hollywood comedian, Steve Martin.

Earl shared his music with many of his friends.