Remembering Earl Scruggs
March 30, 2012
FILE - In this July 30, 2011 file photo, Earl Scruggs performs at the Newport Folk Festival in Newport, Rhode Island. Scruggs performed at the original festival 52 years ago.
Earl Scruggs, whose distinctive style of bluegrass banjo picking influenced countless players and helped to shape the sound of modern country music, died in a Nashville hospital Wednesday, March 28. He was 88 years old.
Before Earl Scruggs, most banjo players used a two- fingered picking style. But all that changed after the 21-year-old North Carolina native joined Bill Monroe’s Bluegrass Boys in 1945, and brought his three- fingered rolls to Nashville.
“I used to play with just the finger and thumb, which they call two-fingered style. Then I started playing a tune when I was about 10 or 11 and this third finger started working, which filled in some spaces. And that excited me because I could play some other tunes that I couldn’t play with the two finger style. So I just kept working with what I had.”
Before Earl Scruggs, the banjo was often considered a novelty item in a band. It was usually played by a comic character, not a serious musician. As fellow banjo player Bela Fleck explains, Earl Scruggs changed all that.
“I think it was a combination of an incredible rhythmic approach with a very simple and beautiful harmonic language," he said. "He plays the banjo and it grabs you just like the lead vocal would. An amazing technique. They called him ‘the Paganini of the banjo’ in the
最新
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25