Earl Scruggs

And when I started to leave that night, Lester turned in his notice.

And while he was working his notes, he gave me a call over in North Carolina and said, why don't we get on the radio station over close to your home and try it as a group ourselves.

So that's how we got started with the Foggy Mountain Boys.

Uh-huh, yeah.

Well, it's just a simple song that I probably wrote in 10 or 15 minutes.

And I've written...

several other tunes and had some pretty big hits, but nothing like Foggy Mountain Breakdown.

He called and wanted me to write a tune for them.

Warren Beatty, who wrote and starred in the show.

And so he called back

I think I'm quoting this exactly the way it was.

and a few days, and he said he didn't want me to write anything because he'd found a tune that he thought fit what he wanted.

See, we recorded that tune before they got, what I say, good equipment.

I mean, just plain everyday microphones in the radio station and know to start making tunes sound fuller or something.

It was just raw material.

I mean, it didn't have no echo chamber or anything on it.

So that's what Warren Beatty heard in that tune.

So he didn't want to try to record another tune because he thought that the equipment that they had then probably would give it a more modern tune than what we had recorded, which turned out to be Foggy Mountain Breakdown and the sound that we got then.

He took the Mercury recording and that was it.

WSM, yeah.