August 2006 –

Scruggs-2
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Earl started on banjo as a boy in his family home in Flint Hill, North Carolina. Too young to cradle even a small-size banjo in his lap, he reached the chords by sliding the instrument about on the cabin floor. At age 10, after a tiff with his brother, he found himself alone behind a closed door, head down, sullenly picking away at the strings with unusual resolve. Suddenly his excited voice could be heard throughout the little cabin.

"I got it, I got it!" he was saying. (The quote comes from Earl's own instruction book, "Earl Scruggs and the 5-String Banjo.") What he'd "gotten" was the ability to deploy three digits--thumb, index, and now the middle--not just two. What sprung from that, in years to come, was that joyous rat-a-tat-tat machine gun sound we associate with driving bluegrass instrumentals such as "Foggy Mountain Breakdown." It gives the five-string banjo a character like no other instrument--raw and raucous, yet sparkling and inspired.

Hard to find today--hard even to envision--are road warriors of the grade of men who toured in Bill Monroe's early bands. For weeks on end, they made the rounds between small town radio stations, theatres, schoolhouses. Not for one show a day; often they'd do five or siz, dashing between two theatres, for example, to hit the stages during the intermissions. Crammed into cars bounding over hot, dusty roads, they slept sitting up. "Sometimes we wouldn’t see a bed from one end of the week 'til the other," said Earl, quoted in a 1990 interview with banjoist and writer Tony Trischka, published by the International Bluegrass Music Association.

Things got better as their star ascended. Soon they were riding in tour buses. In 1958, Scruggs took flying lessons and began piloting his own plane to gigs, or flying commercially. Twice in his life, he was involved in violent crashes while traveling. In 1955, a drunk driver plowed in the family car, occupied by Earl, his wife Louise, and their two sons. The boys weren't injured badly, but their parents spent a month in the hospital. Earl's pelvis bone was broken, and both hips were dislocated. In 1975, he crash-landed his plane in Kentucky, sustaining a head injury and several broken bones.

Today, Earl's ambulation is slow and careful. At Rocky Grass, after the Scruggs show, I took my place in line among a couple of hundred autograph seekers. Earl wouldn't be shaking out hands, we were told, by a staff guy expediting the flow. Why? His hand was broken. Was it his right hand--his picking hand? I presume so. Was it true? I guess so. Would that have affected his playing? Seems to me it would have to.

So if Earl's musicianship was marred by a few miscues on this 100-degree day, note that it was by an octogenarian road warrior with busted up hips with a broken hand. I agreed with Sam Bush, who said at one point, "What a beautiful time it is in music when we still get to hear Earl Scruggs play the five-string banjo."

"Foggy Mountain Breakdown," "The Ballad of Jed Clampett"… There was a time when the big hits of Flatt and Scruggs would have had a festival crowd like this screaming for more. But the Rocky Grass crowd was of another generation. The fiddle tunes, "Soldier's Joy" and "Sally Gooden," fell a bit flat, as did "Reuben," a trademark Scruggs banjo piece played as an encore. Why? I'll comment in the next section.

(Continued)
  Show 2 at Chautauqua