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5 1969-1994, King of the Dobro
- University of Illinois Press
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45 5 1969–1 994, King of the Dobro After Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs split in 1969,Josh Graves went on to play with both men in their new bands. Flatt maintained a traditional sound, including several Foggy Mountain Boys in his Nashville Grass and playing many of the former band’s classic hits. Flatt stuck with another longtime bluegrass practice: paying his sidemen very little. Graves, one of the most prominent players in the field, was earning $1 65a week with Flatt in 1972and paying his own hotel expenses. MeanwhileScruggs,afterabreak,startedworkingwithsonsGaryandRandy on new directions that took bluegrass as a starting point but also included rock and pop influences. As a result, Scruggs was operating in a higher-stakes world and paid his men accordingly. They were living the high life, literally, flying to gigs across the country because Scruggs’s packed schedule didn’t allow for bus travel. Graves’s accounts of flying with Scruggs in the pilot seat show a driven side of the man that few saw as clearly as Graves: “I tell you, anything Scruggs started, he’d finish it; if it’s picking that banjo or flying that plane.” We get an account of one of the best-known breakups in bluegrass lore: the day Kenny Baker, the longest-lasting Blue Grass Boy, finally left Bill Monroe. Graves also recalls a string of bluegrass feuds involving major stars, such as Flatt and Monroe snubbing former friends for years at a time because of real or perceived slights. Graves was there when behind-the-scenes efforts to get Monroe and Flatt together finally paid off backstage at Bean Blossom in 1971. Teaming up with Kenny Baker in a long-lasting duo starting in the 1980s, Graves joined another of the most influential and most admired sidemen in the field. Baker’s fiddling owed debts to pop and Western swing as well as to bluegrass , a perfect counterpoint to Graves’s orientation to bluegrass and the blues. 46 Chapter 5 V Lester Flatt and the Nashville Grass Earl quit for a time after the breakup. Flatt told me he was going to keep working and asked me if I wanted to. I said, “Yes.” So he told me, “Get me a couple of pickers.” I contacted Vic Jordan and told him I’d heard he and Roland White were leaving Bill Monroe. If Flatt had known that, he wouldn’t have took them. Vic said they were going to Germany for three or four days, but they’d give their notice when they got back. So I just brought them on before Flatt knew what was happening. There was Jake Tullock and Paul Warren from the Foggy Mountain Boys, and later we brought back Johnny Johnson on rhythm guitar. I stayed for about two years before I took out on my own. Roland and Vic were still there when I left. And Flatt hired Haskel McCormick. He helped drive, and Lester featured him on the Opry. He liked him, you know. There he was with two banjo pickers . . . that’s the way he’d do things. Vic left, then Flatt fired Haskel and got Kenny Ingram. But Flatt wouldn’t do anything himself. Lester Flatt had his babyish ways and everything had to be his way, but I could get along with him. I worked for him, and I had another phone put in here. I took care of his business and kept us working. He wouldn’t or couldn’t go to a guy direct and tell him what he wanted. I’d have to go. With Flatt and Scruggs, Earl was the hatchet man. So that’s what I had to be. I had to fire Vic one time. We’d say, “Wear a blue shirt,” he’d wear a white one—that kind of thing. We went down to make some publicity pictures, and he turned his back. Flatt called the next morning and said, “Fire him.” So I had to. You know, it makes the guys feel bad at you, but what are you going to do? You’re getting paid to do that. It’s not a pretty thing, but I had to do it.1 When I left Lester Flatt, I was making $165 a week, and I was making $25more than the rest of them were making. God, when you’ve got a family and you’re paying for a house, that ain’t no money. He told...