“Foggy Mountain Breakdown” was the first tune credited to Earl Scruggs as a writer. He had toured with Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys before he and Lester Flatt left in the spring of 1948 to lead their own band, the Foggy Mountain Boys. On 11 December 1949, at the Herzog Studio in Cincinnati, Scruggs recorded the tune on banjo. Flatt played guitar, Benny Sims fiddle, Curly Seckler mandolin and Howard Watts bass. Mercury released it on 15 March 1950 as the B side of “No Mother or Dad” (Mercury 6247).
The tune uses three chords, G, E minor and D. Scruggs plays the main theme and two further variations higher up the neck, and Sims takes the fiddle breaks. Flatt often played an E major chord against the banjo’s E minor. Scruggs later said he had tried to get Flatt to play the minor chord, then grew used to the clash and even came to like it. Someone later pointed out to Scruggs that one strain unconsciously quotes the patriotic song “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean.” The record did not make Billboard’s country chart in 1950.
Flatt and Scruggs, by then Columbia artists, re-recorded it in Nashville in September 1965. Its wider fame came from the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde, which used it as a recurring theme. Mercury reissued the 1949 master as “Theme From Bonnie And Clyde (Foggy Mountain Breakdown).” Columbia issued a third version, recorded on 20 October 1967, on the B side of “Down in the Flood.” The Mercury and Columbia records were counted together on the Billboard Hot 100 and reached No. 55 in 1968. At the 1969 Grammy Awards the tune won Flatt & Scruggs the award for Best Country Performance, Duo or Group.
The 1950 Mercury single entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999. In 2004 the Library of Congress added the 1949 recording to the National Recording Registry. Scruggs recorded the tune again with Steve Martin, Vince Gill, Albert Lee, Marty Stuart, Jerry Douglas, Leon Russell, Paul Shaffer, Glen Duncan and his sons Randy and Gary Scruggs. That version won Best Country Instrumental Performance at the 44th Grammy Awards in 2002. BMI has counted more than a million public performances of the tune, making it one of its “Millionaire” titles.
