Earl Scruggs

All right, Earl.

He was a farmer also.

So I stayed on the farm until I got old enough to get a job in the factory.

And on the farm, you work from daylight till dark.

And in the factory, you work eight hours.

So I thought that was great.

We had a banjo in our home.

My father played the old style banjo.

So I had a banjo there and my brother Horace had a guitar.

And so we just started playing just old tunes that we'd heard before.

And then a little later, we got a Sears Roebuck radio

and started listening to some, mainly the Grand Ole Opry and some programs like that.

But as far as the style banjo that I played, nobody had played it before me.

And the only thing that is different from my playing, from what I'd heard, is I had a three-fingered role.

It's later been called Scruggs style.

But it seemed to help me to play slow tunes as well as up-tempo tunes.

Most of the bands you're playing in the old days were hoedown-type tunes, up-tempo tunes.

Well, it's just what you hear.

It involves...

It's a little misleading, say, three fingers.