Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs with Doc Watson
Biographie Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs with Doc Watson
Lester Flatt
Singer-guitarist Lester Flatt is widely considered one of the founding fathers of bluegrass music. As a member of the legendary Flatt and Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys, Flatt did more to popularize bluegrass than almost any other musician; his group transformed the genre from a regional to a national favorite and assured it audiences for generations to come. At a time when country music in general struggled to compete with rock and roll, the Foggy Mountain Boys won fame with a strictly traditional sound, unhampered by drums, synthesizers, or electronic enhancements. This is not to suggest, however, that the Flatt and Scruggs sound lacked innovation. It actually helped create the distinction between country on one hand and bluegrass on the other.
One of nine children of a poor sharecropper, Lester Raymond Flatt was born in rural Overton County, Tennessee, in 1914. “Like all farm children in those difficult times,” writes Neil V. Rosenberg in Stars of Country Music, “Lester grew up knowing about hard work, for everyone in the family pitched in to do the chores.” In what little free time the Flatt family found, the members would gather for songfests; both of Lester’s parents played banjo in the old clawhammer, or “trailing,” style, and his father also played the fiddle. Lester gravitated to the guitar and began picking before he turned ten. He learned to sing in local church choirs and perfected his techniques by comparing them with songs he heard on the radio.
In 1931, at the age of seventeen, Flatt went to work in the textile mills. He felt lucky to have work during the Depression, and he stayed with mill work full-time throughout the decade. Music was a sideline, but one that he was devoted to; he and his wife liked to imitate their favorite duo, Charlie and Bill Monroe. By 1939 Flatt was playing radio gigs in Roanoke, Virginia, as a member of the Harmonizers. Then he met Clyde Moody, a former member of Bill Monroe’s band, and they formed the Happy-Go-Lucky Boys, a regional favorite.
Flatt was highly honored when he was invited to become a member of Charlie Monroe’s Kentucky Pardners in 1943. The Monroe brothers had split, each forming his own band, and Flatt moved into Charlie’s act as a tenor and mandolin player (the role Bill Monroe had previously taken). The following year Flatt quit the music business, but only briefly. He was given an offer too good to refuse: the chance to perform with Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys. Bill Monroe had become a regular on the Grand Ole Opry—the pinnacle of success for a country band—and Flatt eagerly accepted the offer to sing lead and play guitar with the group. He soon made friends with another newcomer to the act, banjo player Earl Scruggs.
Earl Scruggs
was born and grew up near Shelby, North Carolina in Cleveland County. Located in the Piedmont section of the state, it is an area known for its strongholds of banjo enthusiasm. Earl's father, George Elam Scruggs, was a farmer and a bookkeeper. He also played fiddle and banjo. Earl's older brothers, Junie and Horace, and his two older sisters, Eula Mae and Ruby, played the banjo and guitar. His mother, Lula Ruppe Scruggs played the organ.
George Elam Scruggs died when Earl was only four years old. 'Due to his eight month illness prior to his death, I never remembered his picking although I do remember him,' Earl says.
Earl began playing the banjo at the age of four using a two finger style picking. 'The only way I could pick Junie's banjo, or the old one my father played, was to sit on the floor with the body part of the banjo to my right and slide it around quite a bit, depending on what position on the neck I was attempting to play.'
When Earl was growing up, he spent most of his spare time playing the banjo. Since his father was not around, and he was deprived of fatherly companionship, his emotional outlet was in the music he loved. Then, too, there was nothing much for a young boy on a farm to do except work in those depression ravaged days. Whatever enjoyment he had, he found it playing the banjo. The family did not have a radio until he was in his teens. What he learned was self taught.
At the age of ten, he developed a style utilizing three fingers that was to become known world-wide as 'Scruggs-Style Picking.' The banjo was, for all practical purposes, 'reborn' as a musical instrument due to the talent and prominence Earl Scruggs gave to the instrument.
Earl lived on a farm and helped tend it after his father died. As a teenager, he attended high school in Boiling Springs, North Carolina. With his school, farm work and other chores, his past time became the five-string banjo and he spent every spare moment playing it. He was fascinated with the instrument. He played his father's banjo and one his older brother owned until he was around eleven or twelve years old. The first banjo he owned was purchased from Montgomery-Ward mail order company and cost $10.95. He later bought a Gibson RB-11 that he owned when he began playing professionally. The one he has played over the years is a Gibson Granada. It was once owned by Snuffy Jenkins who purchased it for $37.50 in a pawn shop in South Carolina. Visit: www.earlscruggs.com
