Earl Scruggs 1924-2012

EARL SCRUGGS
1924-2012

Bluegrass legend and banjo pioneer Earl Scruggs, who helped profoundly change country music with Bill Monroe in the 1940s and later with guitarist Lester Flatt, has died. He was 88.

Mr., Scruggs graciously contributed a recipe to my Tennessee cookbook “Country Goodness Recipes of Tennessee Celebrities.” He was best known for “Foggy Mountain Breakdown,” a rollicking number recorded in 1949 with the group the Foggy Mountain Boys. The song was used as the getaway music in the 1967 film “Bonnie and Clyde”; and “The Ballad of Jed Clampett,” the theme song of the 1960s television sitcom “The Beverly Hillbillies,” which he performed with Lester Flatt.

He also helped shape the “high, lonesome sound” of Bill Monroe, often called the father of bluegrass, and pioneered modern banjo playing. His innovative use of three fingers in an up-picking style, rather than the mostly two-fingered claw-hammer down-picking technique,
elevated the five-string banjo to a lead or solo instrument.

His family is in our thoughts and prayers. He will be greatly missed.

The Farewell Drifters Preforming at ROMP

The Farewell Drifters

I promised to do a blog on some of the performers at the Owensboro ROMP Festival, who also contributed a recipe to the cookbook “Country Goodness Recipes of Tennessee Celebrities.” The group I am blogging this week is The Farewell Drifters.

THEY ARE PERFORMING JUNE 23, THURSDAY NIGHT DIRECTLY AFTER STEVE MARTIN AND THE STEEP CANYON RANGERS.

The Farewell Drifters are a band based in Nashville, Tennessee. They began when Zach Bevill and Joshua Britt met in Nashville and played some music together. Britt coming from a family of former touring musicians played in high school garage bands with his brother Clayton in Franklin, Kentucky. Joshua brought brother Clayton along, then they added violinist Christian Sedelmyer and bassist Dean Marold after the move to Nashville.

They sent a recipe one of the band members mother prepares for them when they are in town.

Don’t forget to stop by and pick up a signed copy of the Tennessee cookbook. If you did not get a copy at last years ROMP, I will also have a few copies of the Kentucky cookbook “Favorite Recipes of Kentucky Celebrities” available.

Remember, proceeds

from the Cookbook

Signing go to the

International Bluegrass Museum!

INTERNATIONAL BLUEGRASS MUSEUM-ROMP

INTERNATIONAL

BLUEGRASS MUSEUM-ROMP

This weekend I had the pleasure to do a book signing at ROMP “River Of Music Party” , sponsored by the International Bluegrass Museum. It was so much fun. They had bluegrass bands from as far away as Japan, Hungary, and Sweden. Bill Monroe would have been pleased.

One of the most interesting bands was the Professors of Bluegrass, who are all professors at Yale and their Bass Player is the Provost there.

Bluegrass is the official State Music of Kentucky, and Bill Monroe's "Blue Moon of Kentucky" shares with Stephen Foster's "My Old Kentucky Home" the honorable distinction of being the official Kentucky State Songs. The infectiously energetic style of dance that grew up around bluegrass and old time music is clogging, the official Kentucky State Dance.

The International Bluegrass Museum, established to preserve the history of the music Mr. Monroe created, is located 30 minutes from the little town of Rosine, Kentucky, and Jerusalem Ridge, the homeplace where he was born and grew to manhood, and where he and members of his family now rest in peace.

The International Bluegrass Music Museum is located in the RiverPark Complex in downtown Owensboro, Kentucky. As you draw near, you'll hear the sounds of bluegrass music emanating from the museum's radio station, RBI, with audio speakers taking the music to the streets. Only a few hundred feet from the museum's entrance, the sound of music drifts downstream via the mighty Ohio River, the subject of more than a few memorable bluegrass songs.

For more information on the Museum go to their website at http://www.bluegrass-museum.org/general/home.php