Earl Scruggs

Who was Earl Scruggs?

Earl Eugene Scruggs was an American musician noted for perfecting and popularizing a three-finger banjo-picking style that is a defining characteristic of bluegrass music.

Although other musicians had played in three-finger style before him, Scruggs shot to prominence when he was hired by Bill Monroe to fill the banjo slot in his group, The Blue Grass Boys. He later reached a mainstream audience through his performance of "The Ballad of Jed Clampett", the theme for the network television hit The Beverly Hillbillies, in the early 1960s.