Earl Scruggs

Earl Eugene Scruggs (January 6, 1924 – March 28, 2012) was an American musician noted for perfecting and popularizing a three-finger banjo-picking style (now called “Scruggs style”) that is a defining characteristic of bluegrass music. Although other musicians had played in three-finger style before him, Scruggs shot to prominence when he was hired by Bill Monroe to fill the banjo slot in his group, The Blue Grass Boys. He later reached a mainstream audience through his performance of “The Ballad of Jed Clampett”, the theme for the network television hit The Beverly Hillbillies, in the early 1960s.

Bookmark the permalink.

Comments are closed.