Béla Fleck
I first heard Earl Scruggs’s banjo in The Beverly Hillbillies theme song in Queens, New York, when I was about five years old. My big brother, Louie, and I were enjoying the rare privilege of watching Grandpa’s TV during the day, unsupervised. When that theme came on, I couldn’t breathe or think; I was completely transfixed. As it finished, I turned to my brother and said, “Did you just hear that?” He replied, “Hear what?” I said, “Wait, it will come back at the end of the show,” and it did, for a short reprise under the credits. “Isn’t that amazing?” I asked, and he responded without enthusiasm, “I guess.” It had no impact on him whatsoever, but my life had just been changed irrevocably and forever.
Over the many years since my first exposure to “that sound,” I’ve found that nearly every serious banjoist has had his or her Earl Scruggs “come hither” moment. Some were behind the wheel listening to the radio and had to pull over because they simply couldn’t drive anymore. For some it was “Foggy Mountain Breakdown,” for some The Beverly Hillbillies theme, for others the Grand Ole Opry or the Flatt and Scruggs TV shows. But once that sound stopped, they were left with an incredible compulsion to go find a banjo and learn to play it.
One of the most profound things about Earl is that impact. There have been a lot of great banjo players since who have all expanded the language, but no one so far has had the effect of Earl. I believe that there are banjo people and non-banjo people, and it’s not usually based on personal choice. It’s hard to believe, but some folks just don’t like the banjo, while for the true banjo person it’s a deeply embedded predisposition. It’s just in there, and when they hear Earl Scruggs they are awakened and activated.
Once activated, the next step is to learn to play, and once they have spent some time doing that, they find themselves even more blown away by Earl. One of the most fascinating properties of his playing is the apparent effortlessness of it all. But it takes an awful lot of skill to make it look so effortless.
Now the advancing banjoist must dig deep into the Scruggs instruction book. A focused enough disciple will discover every mistake in the tablature. These mistakes appear to have been put in there intentionally, to separate the serious people from the hacks. Even this seems perfect.
Next, one should study all the different live versions of the songs to truly understand how Earl varies the songs in subtle ways with every performance. You’ll start to realize that his banjo parts are not “set pieces” but melodies that he can express in various ways based on how he is feeling that day. It’s his own personal language, and naturally he does not choose to say things the same way every time.
And finally, the highest level a banjo player used to be able to aspire toward was to actually meet the man.
I want to tell you how I got to meet Earl Scruggs. When I came onto the scene, he didn’t seem to be out playing, so hearing him in person wasn’t possible. Folks figured it was a low-ebb period for him healthwise, and sure enough a few years later he had a quintuple bypass that left him feeling much better and ready to get out and play some music again.
When I moved to Nashville to join New Grass Revival in 1981, I was hoping I’d eventually get to meet him, but it wasn’t happening. Over the course of several years, I did meet and become warm friends with John Hartford, who was very close to Earl. One day John told me that he was getting together with Earl regularly and encouraging him to get out his banjo, which was exciting for me to hear. He asked me if I’d ever met Earl, and I confessed that sadly I had not. He scratched his head or his chin, and said, “Let me think about that.”
Sometime later, I got a call from John and he said, “I’m going to pick with Earl; grab your guitar and come to my house.” He didn’t want me to overcome Earl with a bunch of modern banjo antics, so I played rhythm guitar with Earl while John played fiddle and Randy Howard played mandolin. Earl kept nodding at me to play guitar solos, and I tried with limited success, but what was amazing was getting to play rhythm for him.
As we finished our jam, John said, “Earl, Béla plays a little banjo too.” Earl said, “Well, pick us one!” The pressure was on! I remember bravely playing a Charlie Parker jazz tune for him. He responded, “And they said it couldn’t be done!” in that understated drawl he had. Far from being intimidated or put off by this fancy-pants New York kid, he was curious and encouraging.
From then on we were friends. We had various jams, usually instigated by John. A few times Earl, John, and I went to Bobby Thompson’s house to jam. Bobby was laid low by MS and couldn’t play anymore, but he sure loved having us over there playing for him, and we loved it too.
It was there that Earl grabbed my late-1930s Style 75 flathead Gibson banjo with the loose head and big arched fingerboard, and he wouldn’t give it back to me all night. I was perfectly thrilled to be playing his amazing Gibson Granada for the evening, and I do believe we played “Foggy Mountain Special” for twenty minutes. That night, he played a bunch of stuff I had never heard him do, on my banjo!
It was exciting to find that the Scruggs language was far from completely documented, and that there was plenty of fresh stuff happening all the time in his playing, just like there always had been. Perhaps it’s the egotism of youth to think that after a certain age the story is pretty much told, and that was certainly the rap on Earl at the time, especially among people who didn’t have personal contact with his playing. The conventional line was that you had to hear Earl in the fifties to hear the real stuff. It was great to understand that none of that essence had gone away. He just didn’t play as much as he did back then.
An important thing to understand about those amazing early periods was just how much he was playing his instrument. The banjo was in Earl’s hands all the time. From my own experience, I have learned that when I am out on tour, playing nearly every night for weeks, with the added lengthy sound-checks in the afternoon, my playing becomes super solid. I can play with very little effort, and the language I use becomes a flow. In other words, I can direct the proceedings in my playing with gentle, mental nudges the way you would if you were communicating with words. When I’m not playing, I have a lot of fresh ideas, but less of that super solidness.
I noticed when I jammed with Earl that he was turning his lack of playing time into a strength. He wasn’t playing much those days, but when he did, he was super fresh and relaxed, enjoying the fluidity of his language but not attempting to drive it or play in the way that we all like to imitate from the old days.
I learned a lot of lessons while sitting with him about what it means to be a musician for your whole life, that other people’s ideas about how you should play should not be your guide. He was blowing me away with his sheer natural talent just as much in those years. My practice, practice, practice mantra was irrelevant for someone like him; especially at the stage of life he was in when we became even better friends.
Some years later, his wife, Louise, had passed away, and Earl was not playing out very much. He deadpanned to me, “I played one show last year but I’m thinking about cutting back a bit.” At this point I had become pretty good friends with the Scruggs family, and I could come over and visit him when I was home off the road, a development I treasured and took advantage of often.
During this period, I found myself strangely afraid to play my own language in the fear that it would put him off somehow, but he kept encouraging me to go for it. Gradually I let the cat out of the bag, and he would get so excited. My role changed, and now when I came to visit I would try to entertain Earl by playing the most far-out things I could imagine. He loved it and responded in kind, often playing something I had never heard him do before in response. While John Hartford (now long gone) used to always pull out a recorder when he jammed with Earl, I never felt that it was appropriate to even ask to do so, and these precious experiences reside in my memory alone now, undocumented.
Earl honored me near the end of his life by coming to my home and allowing me to play my banjo concerto The Impostor for him. He also came to the premiere concert with the Nashville Symphony Orchestra. I had the opportunity at the end of the performance to dedicate the piece to Earl in person from the stage, and the standing ovation that ensued was deafening and lasted for several minutes. Gary Scruggs tells me that this was the last concert Earl went to see, and six months later, he was gone.
With Earl gone, I can feel his impact on me and the entire banjo community even more strongly. There is a beginning and an ending to his story now, but his legacy continues, carried on by the many thousands of banjo people, like myself, who would never have been activated were it not for hearing “that sound,” finding themselves a banjo, and trying to play just like Earl, which of course was impossible for anyone but him.