Underneath a fingernail moon and the silhouettes of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina, Oliver Wood stood onstage at the Earl Scruggs Music Festival and declared, “This one goes out to Earl.” The Wood Brothers’ lead singer then delivered a moving version of “Postcards from Hell,” off their …
Read More »Earl Scruggs Would've Turned 100 This Year. Bluegrass Is Still Playing His Songs
Backstage at the Earl Scruggs Music Festival in North Carolina, Marty Stuart has just finished a whirlwind set on the Flint Hill Stage. A blitzkrieg of country, bluegrass, and rock, Stuart & His Fabulous Superlatives are a living bridge between the tones and textures of the past and the evolution …
Read More »Hear Billy Strings Join Banjo Great Tony Trischka on a Fiery Salute to Earl Scruggs
Bluegrass pioneer Earl Scruggs was born 100 years ago this week, and the tributes to the banjo picker have been many. On Friday, Tony Trischka, himself a banjo disciple of Scruggs, released a rollicking version of “Brown’s Ferry Blues,” a song dating back to the Thirties, that features an array …
Read More »Earl Scruggs Shaped Bluegrass — and Jam-Grass Too. A New Festival Aims to Revive His Legacy
When he was three years old, Jerry Douglas heard the groundbreaking banjo licks of Earl Scruggs on the turntable each morning during breakfast at his childhood home in northeastern Ohio. “And we’d hear the Flatt & Scruggs [Grand Ole Opry] radio show on WSM if there was clear weather between …
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