Complete Mercury Recordings [Original recording remastered]

Flatt & Scruggs | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (April 22, 2003)
• Original Release Date: 1948
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Original recording remastered
• Label: Mercury Nashville
• ASIN: B00008WI8G
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #33,588 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #84 in Music > Country > Bluegrass > Traditional

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Fresh off their pioneering stint with Bill Monroe, guitarist-vocalist Lester Flatt and banjo master Earl Scruggs waxed these 28 seminal cuts for the tiny Mercury label between 1948 and 1950. The duo and their Foggy Mountain Boys attack the music with an urgency that even Monroe's Blue Grass Boys were hard-pressed to equal. Scruggs's rolling three-fingered banjo technique is as important to bluegrass as any other innovation; without competition from Monroe's mandolin, his banjo became the music's primary driving force and the engine that propels most of these songs. "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" and "Farewell Blues" are banjo tour de forces that will never be matched. Original gospel numbers find Scruggs applying his fingerpicking technique to guitar, à la Merle Travis, and feature sharp group harmonies. Most of these original secular songs have become bluegrass standards, even though the pair refused to call their refined mountain music bluegrass. --Marc Greilsamer

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ur Music Everyone must have this, June 21, 2004

By 

Tony Thomas (SUNNY ISLES BEACH, FL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Complete Mercury Recordings (Audio CD)

I have had part or all of these recordings on combinations of Vinyl and tape since around 1963. Having it all together on CD is a blessing.

This is just as fundamental to bluegrass music, to general musical culture, as the original sides Lester and Earl cut with Bill Monroe. The new band, without Bill Monroe, cuts loose more musically, builds more openly on the devastingly powerful banjo of Earl Scruggs, the great bluesy, jazz, Western swing educated fiddling of Chubby Wise, and the elegant vocals of Lester Flatt.
Lester Flatt's guitar playing that came through on these records and the sides with Monroe, are the foundation of all modern bluegrass guitar and much that people now use for old timey music and contradance music.

Even though I have had some of these cuts for more than 40 years, I am still devasted every time I play this. The last time I played this, I just had to call a friend of mine who is a champion fiddler out in California just to talk to her about how brilliant Chubby Wise's work is here.

If you came to Lester and Earl from the great records they put out in the 1960s in response to the folk revival, you will find that these and other recordings of the 1940s and 1950s have more of a normal country repertoire with fewer traditional folk songs thrown in. There are more of Earl's original instrumentals, his various "Specials."

I also love the way Earl plays guitar on many of the spiritual tunes like Aren't Going to Go to Heaven Some time.
In the old days the banjo, the fiddle, and the mandolin were thought dangerous satanic and certainly Negroid, and not played on "sacred songs." Bill Monroe would put down his mandolin and pick up a guitar for a sacred song, as Earl here picks up his guitar and Chubby's fiddle is silent.

This is just plain good music that anyone likes. I think someone who seriously enjoys band music of any kind, and enjoys the good interplay between rhythm and lead, will lead much from listening to these records. Anyone who grooves on a great solist improvizing/composing will learn a lot from what Earl and Chubby Wise do here.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Flatt & Scruggs: 28 Gems, January 12, 2007

By 

Bomojaz (South Central PA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Complete Mercury Recordings (Audio CD)

This CD is absolute pure delight - the earliest and best recordings of Flatt & Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys. They recorded 28 sides for the Mercury label between 1948-49, and all of them thankfully are included here. For decades Bill Monroe never forgave Lester Flatt for leaving his group to team up with Earl Scruggs, and after listening to the beauty and intensity of these "mountain" classics, who could blame him. FOGGY MOUNTAIN BREAKDOWN, ROLLING IN MY SWEET BABY'S ARMS, and OLD SALTY DOG BLUES are all here, and so are DOWN THE ROAD, DOIN' MY TIME, and PAIN IN MY HEART - lesser known, perhaps, but gems just the same. Quite a number of religious songs - I'LL BE GOING TO HEAVEN SOMETIME, GOD LOVES HIS CHILDREN, and PREACHIN', PRAYIN', SINGIN' - were recorded by the group, and they are classics of their kind. These are landmark recordings and helped to define (and set the bar at) what bluegrass music (though Flatt & Scruggs never used that term to identify the music they played: to them it was just "mountain music") is all about. This CD should be in everyone's collection.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars LAY AROUND THE SHACK 'TIL THE MAIL TRAIN COMES BACK!, July 7, 2008

By 

Philly Gal (Philadelphia, PA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Complete Mercury Recordings (Audio CD)

ASTOUNDING 28 TRACKS COVERING 1948-1950 WITH THE MERCURY STUDIO IN NASHVILLE - YOU WILL LOVE THIS ALBUM - IT JUST CAN'T GET ANY MORE GRAND OL OPRY THAN THIS. THIS IS WHAT THE OPRY USED TO BE. THE SOUND IS CLEAR & BRIGHT, A GREAT REMASTERING OF THE OLD MASTERS! YOU WILL NOT WANT TO DO ANYTHING BUT LAY AROUND YOUR SHACK WHEN YOU HEAR THIS CD.