Most of us go through life secretly proud of something we
are or we can do. Whether or not anyone else can see how good we are at
whatever it is might be a matter of debate but we tend to think of ourselves as
‘pretty good.’ Not so with Earl Scruggs who died Wednesday at the age of 88
and who lived more in those nearly nine decades than most anyone else you or I
will ever know.
I love all kinds of music, some more than others and some perilously
close to NOT at all (crunk,
I’m talking about you). In the interests of total disclosure I will concede I
am not a big country and western guy which is not very important in this
context because Earl Scruggs transcended the labels so many people try to put
on one another and always managed to not stay in the particular boxes that so
many worked so hard to keep him in.
The obit shows the range of his musical involvement and if
all you know about Bill Monroe is what you read a moment ago,
go wander around the audio and video files online because he was amazing (I
think of him, in his day, as the John Mayall
of Appalachian Americana, in that he created a musical environment towards
which talented musicians gravitated). If the only music Earl Scruggs ever made
and played were with Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys, his passing would still be
noteworthy.
But, he played with, and for, everyone making Music, with a
deliberate capital M for his enjoyment first and foremost and if the rest of us
got something out of it that was fine, too. I met him, as a rock and roll kid
on an early eighties Bob Dylan
in Germany tour, where Dylan was born again and treating his catalog like it
was someone he barely knew.
Scruggs wasn’t playing in Dylan’s band; he was friends with
a pair of musicians who were and he was kibitzing with them backstage at the
Mannheim Eis Stadion an outdoor arena with a cover, not unlike the Garden State
Arts Center, but with concrete seats, as befitted an ice hockey arena.
He joined in an interview Dylan was kind enough to do after
a sound check that had been similar to a cat dropped into a blender (electric
instruments and hard surfaces make for odd bedfellows) and I was overwhelmed at
the catholicity of his knowledge of various musics but also by the brilliance
of his observations on any and every topic that came his way.
The interview was much more Earl than Bob which discomfited
the former and didn’t faze the latter and was a huge success the late night I
unspooled it on a rock radio show referred to in-house as “Diving for Dopers.”
That I wore a snorkel and had Red Cross certification in CPR was, in hindsight,
not the right message to be sending to management. The phones lit up to rave about the musician and the man. It was quite a time.
Earl Scruggs was a genius and a gentleman of the first order
and we are all poorer today for his passing.
-bill kenny
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