Artist: Earl Scruggs
Record Review from web archive January 6, 2009
Earl Scruggs
There’s always been a certain forward-looking, open-minded quality about the music of Earl Scruggs. He forever changed the direction of bluegrass music in 1945 when his three-finger banjo roll came to the attention of Bill Monroe. And his accomplishments in the past six decades would rival those of anyone performing today. But, for all the [...]
Film at 11 - DVD review from Issue #68 Mar-Apr 2007
Do Look Back at Flatt & Scruggs
If you’ve ever seen any of the charged, lovable Flatt & Scruggs TV shows of the mid-1950s and ’60s any time since they aired, it must have been in occasional screenings at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, which holds 36 of them in its archives. Or maybe in much-degraded and truncated pass-around [...]
Farther Along - Obituary from Issue #62 Mar-Apr 2006
Louise Scruggs: 1927 to 2006
She was born Louise Certain, near Lebanon, Tennessee, not far from Nashville — and certain and focused she would be. The first woman to be a full-time manager of a major act in the history of country music, she was so forceful, creative and effective in her behind-the-scenes job that Flatt & Scruggs became the [...]
Not Fade Away - Reissue Review from Issue #59 Sept-Oct 2005
Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs – Foggy Mountain Jamboree
Originally released in 1957, Foggy Mountain Jamboree catches Flatt & Scruggs’ Foggy Mountain Boys in their prime. The personnel includes some of the most important first-generation bluegrass pickers: Josh Graves, Benny Martin, Paul Warren, Howdy Forrester, Everett Lilly, Curly Seckler, and Howard Watts. Earl Scruggs’ banjo, naturally, is front and center. And, in combination with [...]
Not Fade Away - Reissue Review from Issue #51 May-June 2004
Earl Scruggs – The Essential
The cover photo on The Essential Earl Scruggs shows the world’s most famous and influential banjo player seated, holding his instrument with both hands. He’s not quite impassive — the corners of his mouth are turned up ever so slightly — but he gazes calmly at the camera with a characteristic look compounded of modesty [...]
Waxed - Record Review from Issue #46 July-Aug 2003
Earl Scruggs / Doc Watson / Ricky Skaggs – The Three Pickers
Count this recording of a December 2002 North Carolina concert as one of the dividends of O Brother, Where Art Thou? Without that soundtrack’s reach into the PBS audience — the show is being broadcast on the network’s “Great Performances” series, and there’s a DVD with bonus tracks coming, too — it’s unlikely this collaboration [...]
Miked - Live Reviews from Issue #40 July-Aug 2002
Earl Scruggs: Family & Friends – Nutter Center (Fairborn, OH)
Bluegrassers love their music’s legendary figures, but they also want to see them working; as Ralph Stanley’s grueling show schedule suggests, “retirement” just isn’t in their vocabulary. On the one hand, this means that opportunities to hear them in person are unusually frequent, but on the other, it sometimes diminishes their stature, dissolving their historical [...]
Waxed - Record Review from Issue #36 Nov-Dec 2001
Earl Scruggs & Friends – Self-Titled
Many artists on this disc deserve respect for music made in their careers — Marty Stuart, Vince Gill, Dwight Yoakam, Johnny Cash, and Sting among them. The art of making fine recorded music, however, is not the sum of the talent involved, and that is never clearer than when this type of all-star project is [...]
Not Fade Away - Reissue Review from Issue #17 Sept-Oct 1998
Earl Scruggs Revue – Artist’s Choice: The Best Tracks, 1970–1980
Can this import really be the first CD retrospective of the Earl Scruggs Revue? Given the availability of virtually every note Earl Scruggs recorded as one-half of Flatt & Scruggs, it seems odd that it has taken eighteen years since the band’s breakup for a compilation of this kind to appear. The Revue was a [...]
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