Earl Scruggs, bluegrass banjo legend, dies at 88

Earl Scruggs, the legendary bluegrass banjo player, died yesterday in Nashville, Tennessee of natural causes. He was 88 years old. 

Scruggs helped pioneer a three-finger picking style that showcased the banjo, and is counted among the musical greats who helped create modern bluegrass music, CNN reported. 

"It's not just bluegrass, it's American music," country star and bluegrass fan Dierks Bentley told the Associated Press. "There's 17- or 18-year-old kids turning on today's country music and hearing that banjo and they have no idea where that came from. That sound has probably always been there for them and they don't realize someone invented that three-finger roll style of playing. You hear it everywhere."

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Scruggs is widely known in popular culture for composing the bluegrass song "The Ballad of Jed Clampett" with his long-time musical partner Lester Flatt for TV's The Beverly Hillbillies, and "Foggy Mountain Breakdown," the chase music in the movie Bonnie and Clyde. Both songs topped the Billboard music charts in the 1960s, People Magazine reported. 

"Even professional players today say, 'How did he do that?'" Steve Martin wrote in a New Yorker piece about Scruggs. "It is not easy to make the melody note land in the right place when rolling three fingers over five strings, but Earl could syncopate, “bend” a string. […] Earl knew when and how to surprise the heck out of the listener." 

Scruggs was born in North Carolina, and everyone in his family played an instrument, according to the AP. By the time he was 4, Scruggs could play the banjo, and started to develop his distinctive three-finger style at 10, the AP. 

"I realize his popularity throughout the world went way beyond just bluegrass and country music," his son, Gary Scruggs, told CNN. "It was more than that."

"I always felt like Earl was to the five-string banjo what Babe Ruth was to baseball," Country great Porter Wagoner told the AP. "He is the best there ever was, and the best there ever will be.