Earl Scruggs Archives - chimesfreedom

Musician Doc Watson passed away on May 29, 2012 at the age of 89 following complications from abdominal surgery. Watson, who went blind at the age of one, influenced many musicians with his flatpicking style of playing the guitar.

In this clip from a documentary about Earl Scruggs, Watson and Scruggs play the song “John Hardy” at Watson’s home. “John Hardy” is about a real person who killed a fellow worker at a coal camp and then was hanged in January 1894.

Before Hardy’s hanging, he was remorseful and allegedly composed the ballad in his jail cell and sang it on the scaffold. Woody Guthrie used the music from “John Henry” for one of his own classic songs.

Earl Scruggs passed away earlier in 2012 in March. Unfortunately we will not hear the likes of Watson and Scruggs playing together again. At least in this world.

What is your favorite Doc Watson performance? Leave your two cents in the comments.

RIP Earl Scruggs

Clarence Ashley: “The Cuckoo” & “Little Sadie”

Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)

Steve Earle: “Dublin Blues”

Ned Miller: The Shy Man Behind “From a Jack to a King”

Merle Haggard: “Kern River”

(Some Related Chimesfreedom Posts)

Legendary musician and banjo player Earl Scruggs passed away this morning at the age of 88. Even if you were not listening to bluegrass at the time and were a kid watching television, you still knew Flatt & Scruggs, as I did every week when I watched The Beverly Hillbillies and they played their instruments on “The Ballad of Jed Clampett” to open the show (with Jerry Scoggins singing on the version used on the show).

During his great career, Scruggs played with a number of famous artists, including Bob Dylan, the Byrds, Ravi Shankar, King Curtis, Elton John, and many others. The actor, comedian, and banjo-player Steve Martin wrote about Scruggs in The New Yorker earlier this year, “Few players have changed the way we hear an instrument the way Earl has.” Below is a clip from 2006 where Martin joins Scruggs to play “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” on The Late Show with David Letterman.

Scruggs started with Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys in 1945, but then left with Lester Flatt to form the Foggy Mountain Boys, which later became known just as Flatt & Scruggs through the 1950s and 1960s. Scruggs also was one of the few country or bluegrass artists who spoke out publicly against the war in Viet Nam, appearing at the 1969 US Vietnam Moratorium in Washington, DC. Below is Flatt & Scruggs playing “Roll in My Sweet Baby’s Arms.”