Scruggstacular
Nonpareil banjoist Earl Scruggs takes up residence at the Country Music Hall of Fame
When Steve Morse of the Boston Globe asked Melissa Etheridge why she chose to appear as a guest on 2001's Earl Scruggs and Friends, the answer, as he reported it, was swift and simple: "Well, he's Earl Scruggs, that's why."
A lot of reasons can be offered for making attendance at one of the banjo master's artist-in-residence concerts at the Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum this month a high priority, but they all boil down to those six words. At 80, Scruggs can look back on (while still pursuing) a career unlike any other, even in a town that sometimes seems to have seen it all. Others have revolutionized country music in their youth, but all of them were, first and foremost, singers and/or songwriters. While others have been revitalized by new styles and sounds that appeal to new audiences, only Scruggs has consistently taken the initiative not to reinvent, but to recontextualize his groundbreaking but essentially unchanged contributions.
Though his legendary status has been secure since "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" scorched the airwaves a half-century ago, Scruggs' ongoing creativity and contributions have yet to receive the full measure of recognition they deserve. His banjo style—not unprecedented in its technical basis, but rather in its perfect fusion of apparent opposites like raw energy vs. strict discipline, consistency vs. flexibility—played such an indispensable role in summoning bluegrass into existence that most who followed him thought (and still think) that it's permanently welded to the genre. For the banjoist himself, though, it's been another story. From the beginning of the 1970s, when he founded The Earl Scruggs Revue with his sons, he's kept himself fresh not by moving onto new musical ground, but by pulling new scenery (and new artists) onto his musical stage.
The residency concerts at the Country Music Hall of Fame promise to underline that point in a way that combines the best of Scruggs' recording ventures and his growing number of personal appearances. Special guests are promised—and given his admirers, they're bound to be special indeed—but he'll also be supported by the kind of younger musicians who have accompanied him on the road in recent years. Alert to both new and established talent, Scruggs has brought along not just a familial new generation in his sons, but a figurative one in players like bluegrass and country studio veteran Glen Duncan, eclectic guitarist and mandolinist John Jorgenson and up-and-coming Dobro player Andy Hall.
That's the same kind of mixture that gathered on the museum's Ford Theater stage to celebrate Scruggs' birthday earlier this year, an event that testified to the unqualified affection and considerable enjoyment to be had from watching the interaction that results. Still, no matter where the music at these concerts leads, it will have a solid center of gravity: Earl Scruggs, and the banjo that changed the world.
—Jon Weisberger
