Customer Reviews

The Essential Flatt & Scruggs: 'Tis Sweet To Be Remembered

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Over 30 years after their breakup, Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs remain the most famous band to emerge from bluegrass. Brought together in Bill Monroe's band in 1945, they left three years later to form their own band - the Foggy Mountain Boys - and sign with Mercury Records.

While their Mercury recordings (1948 - 1950) are held in higher esteem critically, Flatt & Scruggs' work for Columbia (1951 - 1968) was far more popular at country radio. Disc one contains their most pure bluegrass offerings, such as "Tis Sweet To Be Remembered," "Cabin In The Hills," and "Crying My Heart Out Over You." Lester's easy going, high tenor voice is the featured "instrument" on these recordings.

Disc two finds Flatt & Scruggs at their commercial peak, led by their 1962 chart-topping theme for The Beverly Hillbillies. This smash led to several appearances on the show (including a performance of "Pearl, Pearl, Pearl," their top-ten ode about Jethro Bodine's mother) as well as the Petticoat Junction theme assignment (a top 20 hit). These recordings featured Earl's extraordinary "three-finger-banjo" accompaniment far more prominently.

Flatt & Scruggs' top 20 toetapper "California Uptight Band" (not included on 16 GREATEST HITS) and the 1967 remake of their "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" (originally cut for Mercury in 1949 and repopularized in the film Bonnie & Clyde) conclude this set on a high note. In 1969, the duo split up due to differences over musical direction. Flatt's death in 1979 would end any chance of a reunion.

This 34-track, double-disc set captures all of Flatt & Scruggs' charting singles and most choice album tracks from the Columbia years and is the best domestic collection available. For a more extensive look at this period, check out the THREE box sets from Germany's Bear Family Records.

Bought this CD a couple of weeks ago and have listened to it at least ten times - not only does this collection represent Earl and Lester's best music, but it has reminded me that Earl is - in my never to be humble opinion - still the best banjo player who ever lived; there are some guys out there that have "taken the banjo to another level", but there's something about Earl's playing that puts him in a league all by himself, way up at the top. I am also a sound engineer, and I'll tell you, the quality of these recordings amazes me - to think that a lot of them were done back in the early 50s; and with all of today's technology, these recordings - done some 50 years ago, are some of the best I've ever heard.

While Bill Monroe is rightly known as the father of bluegrass, the importance of Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs cannot be overstated. Throughout the Sixties the duo put out a string of albums for Columbia and became cultural icons with their appearances on "The Beverly Hillbillies" and contributions to the "Bonnie and Clyde" soundtrack.

While only slightly less significant than their classic Mercury sides, these 34 tracks from the Columbia vaults are essential bluegrass recordings from two pioneers of the genre, including classics like "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" and "I'll Never Shed Another Tear" to more pop oriented fare like the Lovin' Spoonful's "Nashville Cats."

My only complaint is that this two-disc set clocks in at a mere 84:14--it could be almost twice that long. Why not include songs like "Jimmy Brown the Newsboy," or originals like "Dig a Hole in the Meadow," or their covers of Dylan material? HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

The work of Flatt & Scruggs is still the standard by which almost all blugrass music is judged...including the newgrass stuff and this CD contains some of the best old-school style bluegrass available. As a 5 string banjo player, I buy anything with Earl Scrugg's name on it (heck, even my gibson banjo has his name on it), but this CD is a particularily great collection of his work because it spans such a huge chunk of his musical career. Interestingly, the songs do not overlap with their "foggy mountain banjo" CD which I also highly recommend.

It is a real crime that with the resurgence of Bluegrass and Mountain music via the O Brother...etc. movie and tours, that there has been little attention paid to the duo of Flatt and Scruggs and their impact on the genre. I'm 62, grew up listening to it on the radio, and even while in college in the early 60s, I watched them on their Sunday night black and white half hour program on TV. With their tight arrangements, polish and precision, they really took bluegrass to the level it is today. If you cannot afford the Bear Family sets, buy this CD, the Complete Mercury Sessions, and the Carnegie Hall Concert, which has to be the best single bluegrass CD ever made. When I am tired of listening to the rest, I always come back to them.

All I can say is, if this were and old vinyl LP, I would have worn through it by now. These 2 CDs are my most played of the stack of bluegrass CDs lying around my home and car.

This C.D. is excellent. Flatt & Scruggs are truley timeless performers.

Back in the mid-1940s, when Bill Monroe & His Blue Grass Boys were just about the only well-known purveyors of music with deep roots in the traditional music brought over by Irish, Scottish and English immigrants, it was lumped in with "Hillbilly" or "Folk" - terms applied then to what became known as Country & Western and then simply Country.

In 1944 Monroe added guitarist/vocalist Lester Flatt and a banjo player who played that instrument with a three-finger roll developed by Appalachian musicians Rex Brooks, Smith Hammett and Snuffy Jenkins. And, just as the unique brand of music would become split off from mainstream Folk/C&W to become known as Bluegrass, after the name of Monroe's band, so too would the Earl Scruggs brand of picking become labeled the "Scruggs Style." In 1948 Flatt and Scruggs left Monroe to form The Foggy Mountain Boys, and it was this band that really brought Bluegrass, always a very popular but local taste, to new national attention.

A recording contract with one of the giants of the industry, Mercury, failed to produce a national hit, nor did a subsequent deal with another giant, Columbia, pay immediate dividends. But that would change as the decade of the 1950s drew to a close. In this magnificent 2-CD set, the first disc concentrates on some of their earliest releases from 1950 to 1959, only two of which made it into the national charts; `Tis Sweet To Be Remembered, which reached # 9 in February 1952 on what passed then as the Country charts, first introduced in 1944 (the B-side to that first hit, Earl's Breakdown, is also here); and Cabin In The Hills (also # 9 in the summer of 1959 b/w Someone You Have Forgotten (not here). Early in 1960 they followed that with Crying My Heart Out Over You, a # 21 b/w Foggy Mountain Rock (also omitted).

Mixed with these hits are 11 other Columbia singles that, while enjoying local popularity, never made the national charts, along with two previously-unreleased tracks (8 and 14). One of the failed cuts, Shuckin' The Corn (Columbia 40853 in 1957) would later be re-released in late 1960 as the B-side to Polka On A Banjo (# 12 in January 1961 on Columbia 41786). With one exception (track 9 - previously unreleased), every cut on disc 2 was a national hit, with tracks 4 to 13 in stereo:

Go Home - # 10 in late 1961; Just Ain't - # 15 in April/May 1962; The Legend Of The Johnson Boys - # 27 in June 1962; The Ballad Of Jed Clampett - their only # 1 which also crossed over to the Billboard Pop Hot 100 at # 44, the theme from the TV series The Beverly Hillbillies; Pearl, Pearl, Pearl - # 8 and # 113 Hot 100 "Bubble Under" also from that series and inspired by Bea Banaderet's character, Cousin Pearl; New York Town - # 26 in October 1963; You Are My Flower - # 12 in spring 1964, and its B-side, My Saro Jane, # 40. All their hits to this point were billed as Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs & The Foffy Mountain Boys.

With their next hit in late spring of 1964, Petticoat Junction (from the TV series - # 14) the billing changed to simply Kester Flatt & Earl Scruggs, and that would carry over to these following hits: Workin' It Out - # 21 in September 1964; I Still Miss Someone - # 43 early 1965 cover of a 1959 Johnny Cash B-side (to Don't Take Your Guns To Town); Nashville Cats - # 54 in May 1967 and a # 8 Hot 100 that year for The Lovin' Spoonful; and the hilarious California Uptight Band - # 20 in August 1967.

For their last three hit singles, they would be billed as Flatt & Scruggs: Down In The Flood - # 45 in February 1968, and its B-side, Foggy Mountain Breakdown - # 58 Country and a # 55 Hot 100 cross-over from the film Bonnie & Clyde. It's interesting to note here that, when the film's producers used the original December 11, 1949 Mercury release for the movie soundtrack, and it was released as Foggy Mountain Breakdown, Columbia had them re-record it and it came out on Columbia 44380 as The Theme From Bonnie & Clyde. The chart performances apply to both versions.

The sound is excellent, and with the insert are five pages of background notes written by Patrick Carr, columnist for Country Music magazine, and editor of The Illustrated History Of Country Music (another two interesting paragraphs appear on the reverse), as well as a listing of the tracks showing recording dates and label details (but no chart information, which I have provided above).

If only all Sony "Essential" albums were handled this well.

Two legendary pioneers that used to "bluegrass boys". Listening to Lester on the guitar and Earl on the banjo, this cd takes me back to the holler of Tennessee with the kin folks for some old bluegrass the way it is meant to be. This is definitely an essential.

No long review. I am a longtime bluegrass fan and I do a little 5-sting pickin' myself. This is unquestionably the best collection of Flatt & Scruggs songs you can possibly get. A must have for any beginning or seasoned bluegrass fan. If you're a newbie to bluegrass, this is where you should start.