Four albums by the legendary Earl Scruggs – all recorded in the years after he'd split with famous partner Lester Flatt, and moved on to work with a younger array of partners in the Earl Scruggs Revue! Given the way that Scruggs revolutionized the sound of American banjo in the postwar years, he'd always found strong interest from a younger audience – but with these records, he almost seems to give back directly to that group – by working with sons Randy and Gary, the younger of whol sings a lot of lead vocals – and almost brings a roots rock approach to the music.
Here's the conclusion of our complete Flatt & Scruggs retrospective. It takes us through the period of their greatest success in the 1960s, leading to the break-up. They were taking bluegrass music into places it had never been, and cutting some brilliant and innovative music along the way. The core of this set is 12 albums including the 'Strictly Instrumental' set with Doc Watson, the live Vanderbilt Concert, and 'The Story Of Bonnie & Clyde.' This set is rounded out with a Gordon Terry square-dance album on which Flatt & Scruggs are the back-up musicians, and on which the calls have been omitted.
While the first Flatt & Scruggs box on Bear Family documented the band's development over its first 11 years – 1948-1959 – this set captures the band at the height of its meteoric rise to fame into the stuff of legend. First and foremost, Flatt & Scruggs eclipsed the fame of their mentor, Bill Monroe by having six charting singles in Billboard between the mid-'50s and 1960. They also got reviewed in Playboy and Downbeat magazines and began to play the Newport Folk Festival and appear on stages with Joan Baez, Cisco Houston, the Kingston Trio, New Christy Minstrels, Woody Guthrie, John Jacob Niles, and many others.
The first of four box sets documenting the complete recordings of Flatt & Scruggs as a working band, this one detailing the group's first 11 years is generally considered the most essential. These 113 tracks represent the duo's complete Mercury recordings on disc one and the beginning of their Columbia sides on discs two through four. There is one completely unissued cut, and the entire package has been remastered and contains copious liner notes.
One-half of the legendary banjo duo Flatt & Scruggs, Earl Scruggs formed his eponymous Revue upon the demise of his longtime partnership with Lester Flatt in early 1969, and promptly began unleashing a stream of excellent albums. Anniversary Special arrived in 1975, marking the banjo man's 25th anniversary of signing with Columbia/CBS Records. It was a guest star-laden affair, with Scruggs and his two sons, the core of the Revue, joined in the studio by a host of country, folk, and other far-flung luminaries.