Gordon Castelnero (left) and David L. Russell. Photo by Gordon Castelnero.
The idea for this book began with David L. Russell’s long desire to pen a biography of Earl Scruggs. Upon hearing this from David, I suggested he may want to include a different angle. Having previously authored a book, as well as written and produced local television documentaries, I’m well acquainted with the level of commitment it takes to properly execute such a task, and I am also cognizant of the potential competition that may beat you to the marketplace.
In July 2014, I discussed with David the possibility of foregoing a traditionally narrated biography in favor of an oral history from the viewpoints of musicians and entertainers who were inspired by Scruggs. That way, he could collect numerous stories from the vast number of people he knows in bluegrass, plus he’d have a project that’s unlikely to be duplicated by a competing author. David liked the idea and asked for my assistance. After a few months of inactivity, I phoned him the day before Thanksgiving to inquire about the status of the book. He said, “I haven’t done anything yet, but I haven’t forgotten about it either.” At that moment, I suggested we get started immediately.
We got together in early December to map out our strategy and commenced with the preliminaries over the following weeks. After the Christmas holidays, our real work began in January 2015. We conducted a series of interviews for the next several months and began writing in May. This project was truly a labor of love, as both David and I share a mutual admiration for Earl Scruggs, his music, and his legend. Our journeys in discovering the five-string banjo and the magnificence of Scruggs began in our youths. David’s introduction to the banjo is a multilayered combination of family heritage and a simple, inspired love for that wonderful, twangy sound, as he explains in his backstory:
I was introduced to the banjo as a small child on trips from metro Detroit to East Tennessee, visiting my mother’s relatives and vacationing in the Smoky Mountains. My first encounter with the banjo was on the streets of Gatlinburg, Tennessee, at the age of five as I watched an old man with a long beard, dressed like a mountain man, play the banjo and shuffle his feet. I can’t recall how well he played, but as far as I was concerned, it was an amazing sight to behold. As I think about it, however, I do believe he was playing clawhammer style, as opposed to three-finger style. Nonetheless, I still loved the sound.
Over the years I would encounter the banjo via The Beverly Hillbillies and Hee Haw, but it wasn’t until 1975 that I finally decided to get myself a banjo after watching the Smoky Mountain Travelers play a live show in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, at the Riverside Motor Lodge. My father and I saw an advertisement for live bluegrass at the Riverside Motor Lodge, and he said, “Hey, let’s go watch a bluegrass show!” I was more than happy to go, and little did I realize what a life-changing decision that would be for me.
The show started with a bang as the Smoky Mountain Travelers led off with a lightning-fast version of “Fire on the Mountain,” but all I could seem to focus on was the blazing banjo of Bill Chambers, a local Knoxville, Tennessee, legend. Halfway through the show, Chambers played a bluesy banjo break on a fiddle tune called “Stony Lonesome,” and I turned to my father saying, “I really want to play the banjo.” His body language told me that he didn’t really take my statement seriously, yet in the following year his tone changed significantly when I was actually jamming with other bluegrass musicians.
My first banjo instructor, Bill Ryan, introduced me to the Earl Scruggs and the 5-String Banjo book, and that is when I came to realize that the banjo playing on The Beverly Hillbillies theme was Earl Scruggs himself. I soon learned the significance of Earl as the master of the bluegrass banjo, and for the next two years he was all I would study.
I was fortunate to have encountered local Detroit bluegrass musicians like Mitch Manns and Dana Cupp Jr. These guys were (and still are) devout disciples of Earl Scruggs, and I was able to glean a great deal of knowledge and experience from them. Mitch took me under his wing and put me through his Earl Scruggs boot camp. I’ll never forget the first time I went to his home in Dearborn Heights for what I refer to as a banjo wake-up call. After he played a few Scruggs-style tunes on my banjo, he said, “Let me see the picks you’re using.” So I handed him my wimpy set of Ernie Ball picks, and he squished them into oblivion, saying, “These picks are useless!” He then handed me a set of 0.25-gauge National finger picks and a heavy National thumb pick and said, “These are the kind of picks you need to play like Earl.” I came to realize that if I wanted to play Scruggs-style banjo, I needed to have the proper hardware to pull it off. Sadly, Mitch Manns passed away soon after we finished writing this book; he will be greatly missed.
I had been playing the banjo about two years when I landed my first teaching job at the Gitfiddler music shop in Northville, Michigan. I initially got the job after helping the owner, Tom Rice, sell a couple of banjos off his shelf that had been sitting there for quite a while. I remember him saying, “I need a guy like you around here, Dave. You want a job?” I jumped at the chance and eventually accumulated around twenty-five banjo students within a year or two. It was during this time, in late 1979, that I met my coauthor, Gordon Castelnero, an eager fourteen-year-old banjo enthusiast. He was actually one of my better students, and he seemed to clearly grasp Scruggs style and catch on quickly.
The greatest thrill for me over the years has been the opportunities I have had to play with some great bluegrass musicians. I cut my eye teeth in Detroit and other parts of Michigan, having played with local bands like the Sunnysiders, John Hunley and the Kentuckians, Wendy Smith and Blue Velvet, Timberline, Fox River Band, the Mike Adams Band, Run for Cover, Lare Williams and New Direction, and Hardline Drive. I was also honored to play and jam with some bluegrass legends like Bill Monroe, Jimmy Martin, Mac Wiseman, Bobby Hicks, Alan Munde, and Frank Wakefield, with whom I had the chance to tour for a couple of weeks in 2001.
It’s an honor to have played bluegrass music at a professional level a few times in my life and, even more humbling, to know that there are professional musicians at a much higher level than what I have experienced. My encounter with these pros taught me a great deal about what I did not yet know regarding bluegrass music and the banjo, and the journey continues on.
Down through the years, I branched out into other styles of banjo, including melodic and single string (or what is referred to as Reno style), yet I have always come back to Earl Scruggs. There was a time many years ago when I thought there were a number of banjo players that could play just like Earl, but my current opinion is that nobody has even come close to the master. The disciples of Earl will testify to the fact that he still leaves them speechless. His playing had a touch, feel, tone, and sense of timing that the best of the best cannot reproduce to this day.
I was fortunate to have had the opportunity to meet Earl and to talk to him on a few occasions. I played banjo in front of him one time and was never more nervous in all my life as he watched my right and left hands. That was an experience for which I am grateful, and one I will never forget.
Despite the fact that there are some incredible banjo players that followed Earl, there are two things that will never change. Earl will always be, irrefutably, the master of the five-string banjo, and no one is ever going to beat him at his own game.
As for me, growing up in Livonia, Michigan, my fascination with the banjo and Mr. Scruggs began in the spring of 1979 when I was finishing the eighth grade at Ford Junior High. I saw a classmate, Caleb Cook, pick a five-string banjo in our school talent show. Watching the fingers of his right hand move and listening to the crisp sound generated by his instrument made an impression on me. A few weeks later, I was at my uncle’s house listening to a Flatt and Scruggs record on his elaborate stereo system that literally made the floor vibrate from the decibels blaring out of its mammoth speakers. The first cut was “The Ballad of Jed Clampett.” Of course, I had heard the tune on television numerous times, but that was through a small monophonic speaker on my parents’ black-and-white Philco television set. So when I heard the song cranking in stereo at such a high volume, it sounded amazing. It packed a punch that was so overpowering I was hooked. From that day forward, I wanted to play the banjo like Earl Scruggs.
During the summer, I worked two paper routes to save most of my money for a banjo, while spending a few dollars here and there on Flatt and Scruggs records. I was blown away by the second-string hammering in the opening lick of “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” and couldn’t wait to learn it. Just before school started in the fall, I purchased my first banjo, a Hondo II, from Grinnell’s music store for $120.00 (which to me seemed like a step up from the Kay banjo they had for $90.00). When school began, I was fortunate to have Caleb in my first-hour English class. I asked him to teach me the banjo, and he obliged by showing me a few roll patterns along with tablature instruction. Immediately afterward, I bought a copy of Earl Scruggs and the 5-String Banjo from a guitar shop near my house. Caleb and I tried to coordinate a few lessons, but as our school assignments were quickly piling up, he suggested I’d be better off taking professional lessons. One of the places he recommended was the Gitfiddler music shop.
In December 1979, I signed up for lessons and met David L. Russell. I spent every Saturday afternoon for the next few years learning Scruggs style from him. He used my Scruggs instruction book often as a teaching tool, and I was thrilled when I could finally pick “Foggy Mountain Breakdown,” “Flint Hill Special,” “Reuben,” and “Sally Ann”—just a few of the Scruggs tunes I listened to incessantly in the preceding months as Earl had become my musical hero. By the time I reached my sophomore year at Churchill High School in the fall of 1980, I started picking with one of my classmates, Kevin VilleMonte, who played acoustic guitar, and we often called ourselves Lester and Earl. Soon afterward, I was flattered when another friend from school, Tim Spradlin, asked me to aid him in learning Scruggs style on the banjo.
During these years, David L. Russell and I became good friends outside of the lessons. When I was looking for a better banjo, he sold me his Iida Masterclone Model 240 (a clone of Gibson’s RB-5) for $550, on a $50 monthly payment plan, and I still have it today. When he went off to college in 1982, I didn’t see him again until 1991 for a brief moment when I visited the Gitfiddler and was surprised that he had returned there to teach. In 2009, I went to the Livonia Public Library to use their computer for a few minutes when a man I didn’t recognize asked me if I used to take banjo lessons—it was David.
Since then we have corresponded from time to time discussing possible banjo projects, and always at the center of them was Earl Scruggs. I didn’t have the opportunity to become a professional musician, as life took me in a different direction, but I never forgot the ole five-string nor my love for Earl’s music. He’s still my favorite instrumentalist and the one whose recordings are at the top of my playlist. When I had lunch with David that afternoon in July 2014 to give him my thoughts about this book, I was flattered by his invitation to assist. At first, I was thinking of just helping him as a consultant, but the more I listened to Earl’s records in the subsequent months, the more persuaded I was to coauthor with him. Unlike David, I never had the privilege of meeting Mr. Scruggs. However, in chronicling his life through the collective memories of those we’ve interviewed, I feel I’ve come to know him well and with a much higher level of respect than I ever thought was possible.
Researching and writing this book has brought both of us an enormous amount of joy, and we hope that you’ve had an equal (if not greater) amount of gratification in reading about the life and legacy of a true musical icon—Earl Eugene Scruggs.