Country Music

Earl Scruggs took a form of music that doesn't play scales, a form that he created Scrugg style. He's not playing a lot of scales. He's playing around the chord changes in a way that puts exciting notes in that people have been looking for for years. Earl Scruggs' banjo playing is a lot like Elvis Presley impersonators. All the Elvis impersonators sound like each other, but they don't sound like Elvis. All those who try to play like Earl sound like each other, but guess what, there may be two that sound like Earl. (laughing) And his confidence of delivery, his personal stature, he looked like an authority. You know? And if the sound was off, he looked like he knew what he was doing, and you'd want to turn it up. Before there was a Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, I wanted to see Earl Scruggs live. My brother and I worked it out, so we could get to Nashville on a business trip for my father. We got here on a Saturday night. The Opry was sold out. We couldn't get in. I'm a 19-year-old banjo player, looking for the god of the banjo. I looked in the north window on that hot summer day with the windows open right when Lester said, "Earl and I would like to bring out Mama Maybelle Carter to do the Wildwood Flower," and I almost passed out. They did Wildwood Flower, and they followed with some quick banjo instrumental, and the place just went nuts. And it was a magic moment. And I just said, "Someday I hope to meet that guy." When the banjo came over from Africa, it was kind of a three or four-string instrument, and it's said that around the middle 1800's, somebody put a fifth string on. It was played in a style that had rhythm and melody. This is kind of like some of that. Let's take one of the 1800's melodies, Redwing. (banjo playing) Now what that accomplishes, (banjo playing) you have some kind of rhythm thing going on while the melody's going on, and the guy could be singing. You can dance. It's loud. That was a pretty popular style. (banjo playing) Then along came Bluegrass. When Bluegrass started coming into popularity, the banjo was put in the G tuning more often. (banjo playing) But it allowed new things to happen note-wise. Can't do this on other instruments. Some of the intervals between strings and how fast you could do them and how loud they could be heard. And the thing about slamming eighth notes together, (banjo playing) that happens to excite people. Foggy Mountain Breakdown. (banjo playing) The Devil's Dream. (banjo playing) Bach would do that a lot in his music, and it would have that kind of, (banjo playing) but there'd be other things going on. But with Bluegrass, you had the mandolin, (banjo playing) you had a guitar, (banjo playing) and we had that banjo. (banjo playing) Use the last part. (laughing)