Flatt & Scruggs

The two men had been part of Monroe’s band from 1945, and early in 1948 they left it. That spring they formed a group of their own, naming it the Foggy Mountain Boys after the Carter Family’s “Foggy Mountain Top” and staffing it mostly with other former Blue Grass Boys. Singers and guitarists Jim Eanes and Mac Wiseman, fiddler Jim Shumate and bassist Howard “Cedric Rainwater” Watts were among the early members. For several years the band worked its way from one radio station to the next, in Danville and Roanoke in Virginia, Hickory and Raleigh in North Carolina, Lexington, Knoxville and Tampa, and in Bristol, where they were on WCYB by the end of 1948.

Mercury was the first label to record them, around November 1948 at WROL in Knoxville, with Murray Nash producing. Mandolin player and tenor singer Curly Seckler joined in 1949 and stayed for most of the years to 1962, though Everett Lilly took his place at times. At a Cincinnati session on 11 December 1949, with Benny Sims on fiddle, the band cut “Foggy Mountain Breakdown,” which Mercury put out in March 1950 on the B-side of “No Mother or Dad.” Their last session for the label, at WDAE in Tampa on 20 October 1950, produced “Roll in My Sweet Baby’s Arms.”

By then Columbia had signed them, and it kept them for the rest of the partnership. The first Columbia session took place on 21 November 1950 at Castle Studio in Nashville, and singles such as “Jimmie Brown, the Newsboy” (1951), “Flint Hill Special” (1952) and “I’ll Go Stepping Too” (1953) followed. In 1953 Martha White Flour began sponsoring their early-morning show on WSM in Nashville, a connection that lasted to the end. Bassist E. P. “Cousin Jake” Tullock joined that year and fiddler Paul Warren in 1954, and both stayed until 1969.

The band’s sound took on its own shape in 1955, when Buck “Uncle Josh” Graves brought in his Dobro, an instrument that set it apart from Monroe’s; Scruggs added to the difference by playing finger-picked guitar on gospel and Carter Family songs. Also in 1955, at Martha White’s insistence, Flatt & Scruggs joined the Grand Ole Opry and settled in Nashville. Monroe saw them as direct competition and tried to block the move, and he and Flatt did not speak again until 1973. The radio show, and the television show that followed it two years later, were carried in other Southern markets, but the technology of the day meant the band had to be at each station in person. They traveled in a bus fitted out for the purpose and covered more ground than any other Opry act.

Gospel recordings such as “Cabin on the Hill,” cut in April 1959, began to put them on the country charts. At the same time the folk revival was drawing them to college and festival audiences, among them the Newport Folk Festival in 1960 and again in 1966, and their Carnegie Hall concert of 8 December 1962 became a Columbia live album. An appearance at the Ash Grove in Hollywood led to “The Ballad of Jed Clampett,” the theme of The Beverly Hillbillies. Recorded on 24 September 1962 and issued that October, it became their only single to reach No. 1 on the country charts.

Their 1949 “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” found a new audience in 1967 through the film Bonnie and Clyde, and in 1969 the instrumental won them a Grammy for Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group. The later 1960s also took them to Japan and to San Francisco’s Avalon Ballroom. From September 1967 Bob Johnston produced their Columbia records, which drew on songs by Bob Dylan and other new writers, with Scruggs’s sons Randy and Gary joining the sessions.

Musical and business differences ended the act in 1969. Flatt led the Nashville Grass, a name chosen in a Martha White contest, until 1979, while Scruggs formed the Earl Scruggs Revue with his sons. Flatt & Scruggs were elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1985, and in 1991 both men were inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Honor.