Alongside Bill Monroe, for whom he began serving apprenticeship as a Bluegrass Boy in 1944, Scruggs’ pioneering three-finger banjo style, and subsequent career with Lester Flatt, guaranteed him immortality within the genre. Dylan, Baez and The Byrds all borrowed a snifter of DNA, ensuring him cult status with Newport disciples. These recordings?partly with Hylo Brown’s Timber-liners, partly reunited with Flatt?make for classic hee-haw hootenanny, not least hoary old Beverly Hillbillies theme, “The Ballad Of Jed Clampett”.
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