Flatt & Scruggs
Bands / Ensembles
Flatt & Scruggs (1948–1969) were a bluegrass band led by guitarist and singer Lester Flatt and banjo player Earl Scruggs, billed with their band as the Foggy Mountain Boys. Both had played in Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys. They left Monroe in early 1948 and formed their own band within months, taking its name from the Carter Family song "Foggy Mountain Top." Their 1949 recording "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" became a bluegrass standard. From 1953 the Martha White flour company sponsored the band on WSM radio in Nashville, and they joined the Grand Ole Opry in January 1955, the same year Dobro player Josh Graves joined. Scruggs's wife, Louise, became the band's manager and booking agent in 1956 and helped bring it to college and folk-revival audiences. The band played Carnegie Hall on December 8, 1962, and Columbia released a live album of the concert. Its recording of "The Ballad of Jed Clampett," the theme of The Beverly Hillbillies, reached No. 1 on the country chart in January 1963, the band's only No. 1. Flatt and Scruggs split in 1969 over musical differences. Flatt formed the traditional Nashville Grass and Scruggs the more progressive Earl Scruggs Revue with his sons. The two were inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame together in 1985.
In the newsletter
- No. 17 Fall 1998