#i could TOTES aerg;oaeirjg talk a while about Steve Martin too

[thatbanjobusiness]

Ok so i was stuck in a rut for music to listen to while working (working form home man...busy season just gets to ya quicker) and as a follower of this account i thought “lets try out bluegrass! Haddock says its cool, and ive heard a banjo before, see what that does” so i find a version of foggy mountain breakdown and about keeled over when steve martin was in it (Fun fact for the uninformed such as mysef, steve martin plays the banjo lol) and i’m like oh that was fun! So youtube took me to one of those hour long compilations of flatt and scruggs songs and i was like oh that was fun! So i’ve been interspersing some bluegrass into my work playlist (thank you much for the introduction!)

Now the real reason i’m sending this message is because i finally got around to watching a video of the supposed original 1949 recording of Foggy Mountain Breakdown and

DUDE.

WTF.

ITS GLORIOUS.

Earl Scruggs in his prime is absolutely wild, i see why you keep yacking about him, ITS AMAZING🤩🤩🤩 like just, the energy and just like, idk man its simultaneously relaxing and energizing. How does that even work?? I dont know lol but yeah, thanks for sharing this corner of the music world with us, its been fun😁 lol

Hgnghgngngngngh oh m;y gosh. Oh my gosh. I’m sorry for taking this long to respond, but I want to say, from Day One when I received your message, I was STOKED. Thanks for making my day! I took so long to respond because I was trying to make sure I DIDN’T write too long an essay of excited babbling in return (but at least I should start our conversation, so here we go!).

The original Foggy Mountain Breakdown is so freaktastically good and I would love to write an analysis on why every musical element combines to a perfect finish. For instance, one thing I find perfect about Foggy Mountain Breakdown’s 1949 recording is that this arrangement is like a tense duel: the bass driving forward with repeated notes to add drama, while the banjo and fiddle square off against each other, and the banjo wins the fight (great fiddling by Benny Sims here, of course, too, but the banjo won the fight). That banjo sparkles, man. I want to emphasize all the more that Earl Scruggs in his prime in the late 1940s and early 50s was playing bounds ahead of most others, so just imagine how that would’ve sounded in context where people weren’t used to hearing a three-string banjo like that at all! The fact that seventy years later, after everyone’s figured out tons more techniques for the banjo, after we’ve gotten hundreds of new skilled professional musicians and better recording equipment... we’re still blown away by THIS MUSIC... speaks to how timeless the music is and how alluring Earl’s banjo playing truly is.

Now. I looove what you said about “simultaneously relaxing and energizing.” I feel that too when I listen to Flatt & Scruggs! For the high majority of their repertoire! And for that matter that goes for many first generation bluegrass artists. The reason I draw to first gen is that I find it the perfect combination of down-home heart and technical skill.

They’re performing music with simple lyrics, basic chord progressions, and easy-to-sing-along-with melodies. It’s simple, homey, and familiar there: these are songs we might sing at church, or old folk song recitations, or are just good everyday man songs about everyday human things. So it makes the music relaxing. But at the same time, these are musicians who brought a heightened caliber of technical skill, improvisation, and intensity to the string band format. They understand drive. I forgot where it was I read this, but someone said first gen bluegrass performers didn’t have to do anything more than stand onstage with a serious face and play their music, because their music alone was enough to excite audiences. And there’s truth in that. The music isn’t so rhythmically complicated it takes a music degree or a heavy-concentrating arts lover to parse what’s being played... it’s not inaccessible like that. But it’s SKILLED. The music is improvised with gripping skill, speed, technicality, musicality, heart, and genuine homegrown talent. 

And ergo, hearing a man tear through his banjo at eleven notes per second while hitting every note with machine-gun precision, separating melody from background, and adding a whole ton of gripping melodic motion, can’t help but be exciting. For me, a band like Flatt & Scruggs, of which extraordinarily talented instrumentalists like Earl Scruggs, Josh Graves, Benny Martin, and Paul Warren existed, has that perfect match of “whoa” talent and comforting homeliness.

ANYWAY.

If you are still checking out Flatt & Scruggs intermittently as you go about your listening life, but you’re not sure what to hone in on, the first album by Flatt & Scruggs I’d throw at anyone would be Foggy Mountain Jamboree. There’s an extended edition of it released in 2005, I believe, that makes it even better. This album is Flatt & Scruggs from their mid-50s period, and it alternates between some of their best and most well-known instrumentals, with a variety of damn solid and memorable sung tunes, too. It is the perfect representation of what F&S is as a band. For people wanting just instrumental, Foggy Mountain Banjo from 1961 is a godsend album for banjo pickers.

As for my personal favorite period? I’ve got two. For recorded audio, Flatt & Scruggs’s vintage years are my favorite listens. All their Mercury Record releases are spectacular, their early Columbia stuff is GREAT. I listen to it constantly. But I have a huge heart for a specific band lineup that was consistent between the mid 50s to early 60s, I’ve seen a ton of videos of them (DON’T GET ME STARTED ON WHY I LOVE THE VIDEOS), and when I think of Flatt & Scruggs, I think of those six men. Those boys are my quintessential Foggy Mountain Boys. If you want to watch videos, seeing the black and white videos of them are going to be that period, and there’s a ton of personality and charm there because you can tell they all love each other and have a hoot playing with each other.

ANYWAY THAT IS ENOUGH BABBLING FOR NOW. Feel free to chat right back at me! I’ll be here, as you know. XD