Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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This is Fresh Air. I'm David B. Kuhle.
Chapter 2: What is the significance of the Grand Ole Opry's 100th anniversary?
One hundred years ago today, the Grand Ole Opry began with a performance on the Alabama radio station WSM. We're going to mark that anniversary with performances by two country artists who were members of the Opry. We begin with the great bluegrass musician Earl Scruggs, who perfected the three-finger style of banjo picking that became standard in bluegrass.
Along with guitarist Lester Flatt, he was half of the duo responsible for such bluegrass standards as Foggy Mountain Breakdown and the theme to the Beverly Hillbillies. In 1945, Scruggs joined Bill Monroe's band, the Bluegrass Boys, the band that virtually invented bluegrass. He made his first appearance on the Grand Ole Opry that same year with Monroe's band, which included Lester Flatt.
In 1948, Flatt and Scruggs left Monroe to form their own group and became one of the most popular acts in country music. Their hit, Foggy Mountain Breakdown, became even more famous when it was used on the soundtrack of the 1967 movie Bonnie and Clyde. In 1969, Earl Scruggs formed his own band, the Earl Scruggs Review, with his sons Gary and Randy. Earl Scruggs died in 2012.
Terry Gross spoke with him in 2003. He had just released a CD called The Three Pickers, which featured Doc Watson and Ricky Skaggs. Here's a song from that album, Feast Here Tonight.
All right, Earl.
Earl Scruggs, welcome to Fresh Air. Thank you. Now, you grew up during the Depression. Your father died when you were four. How did your family make a living when he died?
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.
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Chapter 3: How did Earl Scruggs develop his unique banjo picking style?
Right. Who did you hear play banjo before you started playing yourself? I mean, I've read that there was no radio in your house when you were growing up. No. So who did you hear? How did you hear them?
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.
So could you put into words what your style of picking is, the three-finger style?
Well, it's just what you hear.
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Chapter 4: What was Earl Scruggs' experience like with Bill Monroe's Bluegrass Boys?
It involves... It's a little misleading, say, three fingers. It's actually two fingers, middle and index finger, and your thumb. Some of the rolls will go, if you number your thumb one, index two, and your middle finger three, it's like a one, two, three roll over and over. But to do a tune, it's like trying to say every word with the exact same amount of syllables in the word.
You've got to alternate the role some to make the tune flow better.
Since you didn't have a radio when you were very young and you didn't have a record player, so you were just like hearing musicians who may have been living where you were. How did you come up with your style of playing, with your style of picking?
I guess the old days, you have one main room you take company to when they come. that you don't use every day. So I was in what we call the front room with a banjo one day, and I was in a mode where if somebody had asked me what was I thinking about, and I bet you've been in that mode yourself, you couldn't tell them what you was thinking about. You were just kind of sitting there.
And I was picking the banjo, and I was playing a tune that's still played today called Reuben. And when I realized what I was doing, I was playing the way that I play now. It was like having a dream and wake up, you're actually playing the tune. So that was the motive then and what I was doing when I learned exactly what I'm doing today.
Now you joined Bill Monroe's Bluegrass Boys in 1945. This was the group that basically created the sound that's become known as bluegrass. When you joined the band, could you hear that something different was happening there?
Oh yeah.
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Chapter 5: What made 'Foggy Mountain Breakdown' a significant song in music history?
Nobody had had this style banjo in the group, and he just did the type tunes that would make the banjo sound good. So it was a good shot to start with because he had Grand Ole Opry exposure, and that gave me a lot of exposure when I went to work with him. And it got immediate attention because nobody had heard that kind of a banjo picking. it caught on real fast with the public.
Why don't we hear one of your recordings with Bill Monroe from 1947? This is one of the famous ones, Bluegrass Breakdown, with Bill Monroe and mandolin, Lester Flatt, guitar, my guest Earl Scruggs, banjo, recorded in 1947. ¦
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Bill Monroe and his Bluegrass Boys recorded in 1947 with my guest Earl Scruggs on banjo. What was life on the road like with Bill Monroe?
It was terrible. If I hadn't been 21 years old and full of energy, I just came off on a farm and a thread mill where I thought to do an hour show on the road. was a pushover compared to eight hours in the mill or from sunup to sundown on the farm.
And music was my love, so to get into a group that had good singing and playing, and Bill had that, especially good singing and had a good fiddle player. So I went in, and it just seemed to make a full band, especially for that style of music. That was long before anybody had tagged it as bluegrass. It was just country music.
But why did you hate traveling so much with the band?
Why did I hate it? It was because we did it 24 hours a day, practically. Back then, there was only two-lane highways, and he traveled in a 41 Chevrolet car. And we'd leave after the opera on Saturday night.
and maybe work down in South Georgia, about as far as you could get for a Sunday afternoon show, and on down to Miami someplace for Monday or Tuesday, and work till about Thursday and start working back to Nashville. So it was just, you'd only be in Nashville long enough to do the Grand Ole Opry and to get a change of clothes and pack your suitcase and head out again.
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Chapter 6: How did Loretta Lynn's life experiences shape her music career?
Why don't we hear that original recording of Foggy Mountain Breakdown, and this is Lester Flatt and my guest Earl Scruggs. Now, you mentioned when you got off the road with Bill Monroe, what you wanted to do was a radio show. And first you did one in Bristol. Then in 1953, you ended up doing a radio show in Nashville at a station there.
WSM, yeah.
Yeah, and it was, I think, a 15-minute program every morning at 545, which is pretty darn early to have to perform.
Yeah.
We'd come in at 2 o'clock and go to bed and get up at 4 to try to get awake enough to do a live radio program. But that was your bread and butter in those days. By that, I mean— We made our real, really our living by the road work that we did. We'd go out and do shows and charge admission and get a percentage of that and also some flat rate too.
But that just put us to working in better, bigger auditoriums and bigger crowds.
The show is sponsored by Martha White Flour.
Yeah.
And I understand the jingle for that became pretty well known, and you were even requested to play it at some of your concerts. I've never heard it. How did it go?
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Chapter 7: What challenges did Loretta Lynn face as a female artist in country music?
Get Martha White for self-rising flour. It's got hot rice. Hot rice was actually a baking soda that went into the bread that makes bread rise. You know that, yourself being a lady. But I thought it was pretty cleverly written.
So did you get like a lifetime supply of free Martha White flour?
Oh, no. Oh, no, they would probably have done that, but I got a lifetime of work with Martha White. It was a great company, and they helped us just more than I could total up, I guess.
How long did that show last?
I wish my wife was in here. She could tell you better than me, but it lasted 20— For a lot of years, and we went into television. Television came in in about 1955, so we started transcribing the morning show, radio show, and we'd sleep late, but we'd have to do a live television show at a different city each night. The reason I say a live television, that was before they had
cameras to film you with so we'd have to we'd leave four o'clock Monday morning to go to down in Georgia had two cities in Georgia Atlanta being one and let's see Wednesday was Florence South Carolina and Thursday was Huntington West Virginia and Friday was Jackson Tennessee down West Tennessee and Saturday back at WSM television and do the Grand Ole Opry on Saturday night and for working on Sunday we were
free until four o'clock Monday morning and we started that 2,500 mile tour again.
There is a Gibson banjo that is named for you. It's called the Earl.
Yeah.
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Chapter 8: What impact did Patsy Cline have on Loretta Lynn's career?
They're all basically the same banjo. What runs up the cost is like gold plating and engraving and things of that nature.
Do you play one of those Gibsons or do you play something else?
Well, yeah, I play a Gibson banjo.
Is it an earl?
Well, basically it is. I'm playing a banjo that I've been playing since back in the late 40s, I guess, early 50s. But they're still making basically the same banjo they were making way back there.
When you say you're still playing the same banjo, do you mean it's literally the same instrument or that it's the same model?
Same banjo.
Same banjo. So do you have to get it redone occasionally? No.
Well, the only thing you're going to wear out on the banjo is the head. The head used to be skin, but now it's plastic. They will wear out on you. And the strings outside of that, you can play one for a thousand years unless you got it broken some way.
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