Nashville Lauds Scruggs’ 80th

Banjo virtuoso Earl Scruggs was the toast of Nashville when many of the greatest pickers in the world came together at a party for his 80th birthday on Tuesday at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. Scruggs got his start with Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys in the ’40s where he met his future partner, the late Lester Flatt. Among the bluegrass “standards” connected to Scruggs are his own piece, the classic Foggy Mountain Breakdown, and the theme for The Beverly Hillbillies, which Flatt and Scruggs recorded in 1962. Scruggs latest recording is the Grammy-nominated The Three Pickers with Ricky Skaggs and Doc Watson.