Earl Scruggs' Banjo Heading to Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum

Earl Scruggs' Gibson RB-Granada Mastertone banjo will become part of the Precious Jewels display at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville. The five-string banjo, the late Hall of Fame member's primary instrument, has never been exhibited. It goes on display July 12. Scruggs acquired the instrument in a trade with banjo legend Don Reno in the late 1940s and used it on the 1949 recording of his signature composition "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" with Lester Flatt and the Foggy Mountain Boys. He continued to use the instrument on the road and in the studio with Flatt & Scruggs and the Earl Scruggs Revue. The Precious Jewels display, part of the museum's Sing Me Back Home: A Journey Through Country Music exhibit, also features Mother Maybelle Carter's Gibson L-5 guitar, Lester Flatt's Martin D-28 guitar, Bill Monroe's Gibson F-5 mandolin, Jimmie Rodgers' Martin 00-18 guitar and Hank Williams' Martin D-28 guitar.

Rare Josh Graves Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UXphD7Zd7M

Curl Seckler recovering from a stroke.

Bluegrass legend Curly Seckler, 93, is recovering at home after suffering a mini stroke on May 19. Seckler suffered some loss of his ability to speak, but fortunately did not experience any paralysis. He was transported to the hospital and underwent multiple tests, but was not admitted. He is working with a speech therapist and is making progress in his recovery.
Seckler celebrated 77 years in bluegrass music last year. Seckler is renowned as one of the pioneering tenor singers in bluegrass, including 12 years with Flatt & Scruggs' Foggy Mountain Boys and 21 years with the Nashville Grass. He celebrated his 75th anniversary in bluegrass music in 2010 and his 92nd birthday in 2011! He was inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame in 2004, the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame in 2010, and the Bill Monroe Bluegrass Hall of Fame in 2011.

Earl with Del McCoury

Great Photo of two of the greats!

Saddest day in Bluegrass History!

Earl Scruggs, right, with wife Louise, looked away as Lester Flatt walked away outside the courtroom after their attorneys worked out agreements to breaking up the famous singing team after 21 years

Earl Scruggs Milestones

Earl Scruggs milestones

Jan 6, 1924: Earl Eugene Scruggs is born in Shelby, N.C.

1928: Father George Elam Scruggs, a farmer, bookkeeper and musician, dies following an eight-month illness. Earl begins playing his banjo later that year, practicing in a two-finger style and using instruments belonging to his older brother and his father.

1934: Begins developing a three-finger style that would become known as “Scruggs-style” banjo and would also become a central element in bluegrass music.

1935: Purchases a banjo from the Montgomery-Ward mail order company.

1945: Begins playing banjo with “Lost John” Miller and His Allied Kentuckians, which performed in Knoxville and Nashville.

Dec. 8, 1945: Makes first appearance with Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys, a group that already featured Monroe on mandolin, Lester Flatt on guitar, Chubby Wise on fiddle and Howart Watts (known professionally as “Cedric Rainwater”) on bass. This group would become the prototypical bluegrass ensemble and is often referred to as “The Original Bluegrass Band.”

Sept. 16, 1946: First records with Bill Monroe, adding jazzy banjo to “Heavy Traffic Ahead.”

Dec. 14, 1946: Louise Certain attends the Grand Ole Opry and meets Scruggs after the show. The two began dating.

Early 1948: Departs the Blue Grass Boys, along with Flatt. Monroe would not speak to either man for 23 years.

March 1948: Flatt & Scruggs begin working on WDVA in Danville, Va., with a band that included Jim Eanes on guitar, Cedric Rainwater on bass and Jim Shumate on fiddle. Eanes soon departed, and his place was taken by Mac Wiseman, who helped them find a job at WCYB in the Virginia-Tennessee border town of Bristol.

April 18, 1948: Earl Scruggs and Certain marry.

Fall 1948: First Flatt & Scruggs recording session for Mercury Records. The session yielded four songs: “God Loves His Children,” “I’m Going To Make Heaven My Home,” “We’ll Meet Again Sweetheart” and “My Cabin In Caroline.”

March 1949: Wiseman leaves the band and is replaced by mandolin player Curly Seckler.

Nov. 21, 1950: Flatt & Scruggs begin recording for Columbia Records.

Oct. 24, 1951: A Nashville recording session yields “Earl’s Breakdown,” in which Scruggs introduces his technique of adjusting his banjo strings’ tuning in the middle of a song. Reception to this song led Scruggs to create a mechanism for raising and lowering his strings’ pitch without adjusting the tuning pegs.

June 1953: Earl and Louise Scruggs move to Nashville and begin playing a morning radio program on WSM.

1955: Despite opposition from Monroe, Flatt & Scruggs join the Grand Ole Opry. They also begin playing a series of television programs that demand 2,500 miles of travel each week. Louise Scruggs begins managing and booking the band, thus becoming Nashville’s first female manager and booker. She remained a guiding presence in her husband’s career until her death in 2006. The year also brought the addition of Buck “Uncle Josh” Graves on the Dobro — a significant departure from Monroe’s notion of proper bluegrass, which featured only mandolin, fiddle, guitar, bass and banjo.

October 1955: Earl and Louise Scruggs were involved in a serious automobile accident that kept Scruggs from touring for several months.

Mid 1958: Seckler leaves the band.

July 1959: Plays the Newport Folk Festival, accompanied by Hylo Brown rather than by Flatt. The appearance opened folk music fans’ eyes and ears to the possibilities of the banjo and helped secure a spot for Flatt & Scruggs in the 1960s folk boom.

1960: Flatt & Scruggs include drums for the first time in a recording session. And during a rehearsal break for CBS’ Folk Sound USA program, Scruggs plays informally with sax player King Curtis. “It was then that Earl realized the banjo worked well with many forms of music,” Louise Scruggs would later write in liner notes to a Scruggs album.

1961: Flatt & Scruggs begin playing college and university folk shows.

1962: Flatt & Scruggs record a live album at New York City’s Carnegie Hall. “The Ballad of Jed Clampett,” the theme for CBS show The Beverly Hillbillies, is issued on Columbia. The single would become Flatt & Scruggs’ only No. 1 country single and the first bluegrass recording to top country charts.

1963: Louise Scruggs spearheads a live recording at Vanderbilt University, where a school official had told her that Grand Ole Opry-style music wasn’t welcome.

1964: The group records with the addition of Charlie McCoy’s harmonica, a further deviation from Monroe’s classic bluegrass sound.

1967: Columbia brass assign Bob Johnston, known for producing Bob Dylan’s material, to produce Flatt & Scruggs.

1968: The Nashville Airplane album, which features a clearly disinterested Flatt singing Dylan lyrics such as “everybody must get stoned,” is released. It was Flatt & Scruggs’ final studio effort.

1969: Flatt & Scruggs split up early in the same year they were awarded their first Grammy, for the recording of “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” used in the feature film Bonnie and Clyde. In late 1969, Scruggs played the Grand Ole Opry with sons Gary and Randy in the debut performance of the eclectic, genre-bounding group The Earl Scruggs Revue. Son Steve later joined the group. “When the boys came into the group, that’s when I first started realizing real progress, for the first time in years,” he would say in 2007.

1970: Stars in the National Public Television show Earl Scruggs: His Family and Friends with Gary and Randy Scruggs, Doc Watson, The Byrds, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and others.

1972: Scruggs and the Revue (sons Gary, Randy and Steve and fiddler Vassar Clements, pianist Bob Wilson and drummer Jody Maphis) release I Saw The Light With A Little Help From My Friends, with guests including Linda Ronstadt, Arlo Guthrie and The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. The cross-generational musical mix of Scruggs’ recordings and live performances in this time period would be of great influence to The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s guest-star packed Will The Circle Be Unbroken series, and Dirt Band members credit Earl and Louise Scruggs with providing inspiration and helping recruit personnel for the Circle projects. Earl Scruggs would perform on each of the Dirt Band’s three Circle albums.

1982: The Storyteller and the Banjo Man, a duo project with Tom T. Hall, is released.

1985: Flatt & Scruggs are elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame.

1992: Steve Scruggs dies, and a grieving Earl Scruggs ceases playing music for eight months. Back problems would keep him from heavy touring in the ensuing years.

1996: Suffers a near-fatal heart attack during hip surgery.

2001: Releases Earl Scruggs and Friends, a collection of collaborations with Elton John, Sting, Billy Bob Thornton, Johnny Cash, Steve Martin and other admirers. The album’s version of Scruggs’ “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” won a Grammy.

Feb. 13, 2003: Gets a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

2004: Performs a multishow residency at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.

2005: Plays the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival.

2006: Louise Scruggs dies at age 78. A memorial service is held at the Ryman Auditorium, where the couple met.

2007: Flatt & Scruggs are elected to the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.

2008: Receives a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Rounder Records releases Earl Scruggs with Family & Friends: The Ultimate Collection Live At The Ryman.

Sept. 15, 2010: Is hospitalized in Chapel Hill, N.C., after requiring medical attention prior to a concert.

March 28, 2012: Earl Scruggs dies in Nashville at age 88.

2012: Projected opening of the Earl Scruggs Center: Music & Stories from the American South in Shelby, N.C.

Earl Scruggs Center Coming Soon!

The Earl Scruggs Center will showcase the history, cultural traditions of the American South and the unique musical contributions of Earl Scruggs, the region’s most pre-eminent ambassador of music. Envisioned as a cornerstone for regional, cultural and economic development, the Center will serve as a cultural crossroads for visitors, students and residents.

The Center will explore Mr. Scruggs’ innovative career and the community that gave it shape while celebrating how he crossed musical boundaries and defined the voice of the banjo to the world.

http://www.earlscruggscenter.org/

 

Everett Lilly, Bluegrass Musician, Dies at 87

Everett Lilly, who was largely credited, along with his brother Burt and their band mates Don Stover and Tex Logan, with introducing bluegrass music to New England, died on Tuesday at his home in Clear Creek, W.Va. He was 87.

Mr. Lilly had been found to have an aneurysm and probably died of a heart attack, his son Daniel said.

Mr. Lilly and his brother grew up singing close harmonies in the style of the Monroe Brothers, the Blue Sky Boys and other Depression-era duos. During the 1940s they performed on radio stations and in churches, schoolhouses and theaters in their native Appalachia before moving to Boston in 1952. There, teaming with Mr. Stover and Mr. Logan, they brought bluegrass and old-time music to college campuses, folk festivals and nightclubs throughout the Northeast.

Mr. Lilly played mandolin and sang high tenor in the group, which was known as the Lilly Brothers and Don Stover. (He also occasionally played fiddle, guitar and banjo.) Mr. Lilly’s brother, who died in 2005, sang lead vocals and played acoustic guitar. Mr. Stover, who died in 1996, was the band’s banjoist. Mr. Logan, who is still living, was the fiddle player.

The Lillys’ keening vocal harmonies and hard-driving instrumental sound were well suited to Boston’s rough-and-tumble Hillbilly Ranch, a nightclub where, as the de facto house band for almost two decades, they entertained a mix of blue-collar and university regulars. They also appeared on “The Hayloft Jamboree” on the Boston radio station WCOP and toured widely, exposing urban audiences to traditional rural music.

Before moving to the Northeast, Mr. Lilly spent the better part of two years as the mandolin player and tenor singer in Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs’s band, the Foggy Mountain Boys. He appeared on the Grand Ole Opry with Flatt and Scruggs, as well as on several of their early-’50s recordings for Columbia, including “ ’Tis Sweet to Be Remembered,” “Earl’s Breakdown” and “Don’t Get Above Your Raisin’.”

Charles Everett Lilly was born on July 1, 1924, in Clear Creek, W.Va., the son of a carpenter. He and his brother worked in the coal fields near their home as teenagers but soon abandoned the mines to pursue a career in music, billing themselves early on as the Lonesome Holler Boys.

The brothers moved to Knoxville, Tenn., in 1945 to appear on WNOX with the country star Molly O’Day. In 1948 they began performing on the WWVA Jamboree in Wheeling, W.Va., and made their first recordings for the local Page label. They later recorded for Folkways, Prestige and other independent labels.

In 1970 Mr. Lilly returned to West Virginia after his son Jiles was killed in an automobile accident. He and his brother performed in public less frequently as the years progressed. Their career together was chronicled in the 1979 documentary “True Facts in a Country Song.” The Lilly Brothers and Don Stover were inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Hall of Fame in 2002.

In addition to his son Daniel, Mr. Lilly is survived by his wife of 64 years, JoAnn; two other sons, Mark and Everett Alan; four daughters, Karen Pierangelino, Diana Tomah, Ann Lilly and Laverne Wheeler; a sister, Flossie Williams; and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Mr. Lilly continued to perform, with his sons Daniel and Mark, in a group called the Lilly Mountaineers until his death.

“He played music right up to the end,” Daniel Lilly said. “He was enjoying life and still riding his four-wheeler through the woods at the age of 87. He died at the kitchen table.” 

Earl Eugene Scruggs (1924–2012) The greatest banjo player of all time!

Nuff said..........

Jody Rainwater Passes. 1919-2011

In the fall of 1949, Jody joined Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs in Lexington, Kentucky, as their booking agent. He soon began doing comedy routines with the band, and when Cedric Rainwater left the Foggy Mountain Boys in the summer of 1950, Jody took over as bass player and bass singer. Jody made his first recordings with the Foggy Mountain Boys in October of 1950. Just a month later they were in Nashville for their first Columbia session, which included Jody's original song, "I'm Waiting to Hear You Call Me Darling." Their two sessions in 1951 produced fourteen songs. Jody sang the bass vocal part on the three gospel quartets: "I'm Working on a Road," "Get in Line Brother," and "Brother, I'm Getting Ready to Go."




Jody remained with Flatt & Scruggs until June of 1952.