Bluegrass Bluesman: A Memoir

3 1955-1969, Part 1, Foggy Mountain Boy

22 1955–1 969, Part 1, Foggy Mountain Boy 3 When Josh Graves took a job with Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs in 1955, he was stepping into a vortex of change in the bluegrass universe. Flatt, the great singer, songwriter, and front man, and Scruggs, revolutionary of the five-string banjo, had sought from the beginning to create a sound distinctive from that of Bill Monroe, in whose Blue Grass Boys they met and created some immortal music. The duo left Monroe separately but soon formed their own band, which came to include such strong performers as singer-guitarist Mac Wiseman, fiddler Benny Martin, and mandolinist-tenor singer Curly Seckler. But as long as they retained the same basic instrumentation as the Blue Grass Boys, it was hard to make the distinction clear. When Josh Graves started playing Dobro in the Foggy Mountain Boys in 1955, it immediately sent the band into a new direction, one that no one could mistake for Monroe’s. This chapter offers Graves’s striking account of Scruggs’s musical, professional , and personal intensity: “I can still feel them eyes on me if I did it wrong.” Graves also presents a side of bluegrass that sometimes gets forgotten: its preservation of old-time comedy routines as part of an all-around family show. Along with bass player and tenor singer E. P. (“Jake”) Tullock, he created a duo, “Uncle Josh and Cousin Jake,” in which both sang and performed comedy. That offered the leaders an occasional break from carrying the show and the audience yet another entertaining aspect to an evening with the Foggy Mountain Boys. The team had many strong selling points: banjo-driven music that Graves thought was more powerful than Monroe’s, Flatt’s peerless skills as master of ceremonies, and a broad-based show that ranged from hymns to comedy to lowdown blues. They managed not only to survive, but also to thrive during the rock-and-roll years that drove many other country and bluegrass acts out of business. 1955–1969, Part 1, Foggy Mountain Boy 23 V Joining Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs, and the Foggy Mountain Boys I had met Flatt and Scruggs while I was working with Esco Hankins down in Kentucky. So when we got to Nashville, I got a call from Earl Scruggs. Earl said, “We’re needing a man, and I wonder if you’d be interested.” I went ahead and worked my notice with Mac Wiseman. We stopped at the old Tulane Hotel. There was a place there called the Pepper Pot; all the musicians hung out there. Stoney Cooper tried to hire me to come back, and I said, “No, I got another job.” I called Earl and nobody knew where I was going or nothing until that big Lincoln pulled up there with Scruggs. Anyway, I went to work with Lester and Earl and them. I went in to play bass, you know, and that was in May of ’55.They told me to bring the ol’ Dobro guitar along. They wanted to change their sound, make it a little different , but I didn’t know what was going on. I came in to try out, and after two weeks nobody had said anything, whether they liked it or if they didn’t like it. I told the boys in the band, “Well, I guess I’ll be going home next week,” because they hadn’t told me nothing and the two weeks was up. They called me where I was staying and wanted to meet with me down at the old Clarkston Hotel, down at the coffee shop, and I thought, “Well, this is it.” So they come in, and they sat there for ten minutes and said nothing. Finally Flatt asked me which I would rather play, the Dobro or the bass. I said, “Well, that’s silly. That’s like throwing Br’er Rabbit into the briar patch.1 I’d rather play the Dobro.” He said, “Well, we was hoping you’d say that, because we want to try and get away from Monroe’s sound.” I said, “Well, I’m willing to try it.” Then, there was no such thing as a Dobro in bluegrass music. A lot of people didn’t like it at first, but, especially on the old hymns that Flatt did, that’s where it shined. The first record we did with the Dobro took off: “Randy Lynn Rag” and “On My...