Earl Scruggs is one of the first Generation bluegrass celebrities. Scruggs is most noted for popularizing the 3-finger style of banjo picking (sometimes called "Scruggs-Style Banjo) which is one of the defining characteristics of bluegrass. Scruggs also invented a tuning device for the banjo which allows you to d-tune that string to a precise pitch and then re-tune to the correct pitch. The device is often referred to as Scruggs tuners.
On February 10, 2008, Scruggs was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 50th Annual Grammy Awards.
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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." At the age of ten, he developed a style utilizing three fingers that was to become known world-wide as "Scruggs-Style Picking."
Although other musicians had played in 3-finger style before him, Scruggs shot to prominence when he was hired by Bill Monroe to fill the banjo slot in the "Blue Grass Boys". Scruggs built on earlier styles to develop a truly new and readily identifiable style, involving: unprecedented smoothness, syncopation, and uninterrupted flow; a large vocabulary of unique and original licks; blues and jazz phrases, evident in backup and in solos such as "Foggy Mountain Special;"
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 Led the way
• Introduced “Scruggs-style,’ the model for virtually every subsequent banjo player in bluegrass music
• Co-led the first nationally and internationally prominent bluegrass act
• Grand Ole Opry member, 1955-1969
• Country Music Hall of Fame, 1985
• Bluegrass Hall of Fame, 1991
• National Medal of Artistic Achievement, 1992
• Million-Air Award from BMI celebrating one million broadcasts of “Foggy Mountain Breakdown,” 1994
• Grammy Award for Best Country Instrumental, 2002
• Star on Hollywood Walk of Fame, 2003
“Everybody’s all worried about who invented the style and it’s obvious that three-finger banjo pickers have been around a long time—maybe since 1840. But my feeling about it is that if it wasn’t for Earl Scruggs, you wouldn’t be worried about who invented it.”
-John Hartford, quoted in Willis, Barry, America’s Music: Bluegrass, 1989.
Earl Scruggs Interview Part 1Earl Scruggs Interview Part 2
Earl Scruggs Interview Part 3
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