Scruggs style

Scruggs style is a three-finger picking technique for the five-string banjo, named after Earl Scruggs. In it, the thumb, index and middle fingers are fitted with picks and pluck the strings upward.^[1:1] It is built on rolling, arpeggiated patterns. Scruggs used them to project a melody within a variety of rolls and fills over a steady rhythmic foundation.^[2:1][2:2] After Scruggs joined Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys in 1945, the style quickly became one of the defining sounds of bluegrass.^[3:1]

Scruggs popularized three-finger picking, but he did not originate it. The style grew out of a regional tradition in western North Carolina, and earlier players shaped it.^[1:2][2:1]

Technique

The shared element of three-finger styles is an arpeggiated pattern played with the thumb, index and middle fingers.^[2:1] Pete Seeger's 1954 instruction record presented the style through an eight-note exercise. The middle finger, thumb and index finger pluck single strings in turn, and the thumb returns again and again to the short fifth string. Seeger singled out the "syncopated brilliance" of the style heard on Scruggs's records as ideal for driving square-dance rhythm.^[4:1]

Such patterns are known as "rolls". Within them, a player either chords or picks out a melody.^[2:1] In Ralph Rinzler and Mike Seeger's account, Scruggs combined two approaches: the strong rhythmic drive of some earlier players and the melodic emphasis of others. He projected the melody clearly within a variety of rolls and fills over a rock-solid rhythmic foundation. His characteristic right- and left-hand patterns became an "instantly identifiable language" learned by thousands of banjo players.^[2:2]

On Mike Seeger's 1956 field recordings of three-finger pickers the banjos were tuned in G, but players also used other tunings. Smiley Hobbs played one piece in a D tuning (ADF♯AD), retuning in the middle of the performance with "Scruggs tuners", which were then a new development.^[2:3]

In a band, the banjo is one of bluegrass's principal lead instruments. It alternates between taking melodic solos and backing other parts with contrasting figures.^[5:1] The Stanley Brothers' 1948 recording of "Molly and Tenbrooks" assigned the vocal to the mandolinist. Neil Rosenberg concludes this was almost certainly so that the banjoist could play a complex melodic backing like Scruggs's.^[6:1]

Origins

Rinzler and Seeger trace the style to the late 19th century. At that time, virtuoso banjoists played concert music, ragtime and minstrel songs in finger-picking styles. In the early 1900s these fed back into rural southern tradition, producing folk styles of chording or picking melodies within a two- or three-finger roll. The technique developed in a distinctive way in Scruggs's home area of southwestern North Carolina, and this regional style was the basis of his own.^[2:1]

Earlier three-finger pickers included Charlie Poole of North Carolina, an influential recording artist of the 1920s. Junie Scruggs (Earl's older brother), Snuffy Jenkins and Earl Scruggs himself modelled their playing on Smith Hammett and Rex Brooks, two locally famous banjo pickers.^[2:2] Jenkins was, as far as Mike Seeger knew, the first to record, broadcast and perform regularly in the three-finger style. His contributions included the use of picks, which Hammett and Brooks did not use at first.^[2:3] Ralph Stanley and Don Reno also named Jenkins as their source for three-finger playing.^[1:2]

Monroe's earliest Blue Grass Boys (1939–1940) had no banjo, and his first banjo player was used mainly for rhythm. Scruggs joined in 1945, and his "electrifying" three-finger style soon threatened to become the music's prime characteristic.^[3:1]

Spread

Other banjoists began adopting the style once Scruggs's playing became widely heard. In 1948 Ralph Stanley recorded "Little Maggie" in a traditional two-finger style. By the Stanley Brothers' next session he had learned the smooth three-finger style used by Scruggs. Some musicians said he learned it from Scruggs directly; Stanley said he learned it from the playing of Snuffy Jenkins.^[6:1]

Mike Seeger's 1956 Folkways album American Banjo Tunes and Songs in Scruggs Style documented the style as played by Scruggs's predecessors and followers, and was the first bluegrass LP.^[1:2] The folk revival of the late 1950s embraced bluegrass partly because revivalists saw Scruggs's banjo as an exciting innovation based on folk styles.^[6:2] Scruggs-style banjo also became a film and television soundtrack convention. "The Ballad of Jed Clampett" (1962) and "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" in Bonnie and Clyde (1967) were among bluegrass's best-selling records.^[7:1]

Later developments

Players soon extended or departed from Scruggs's model:

• Sonny Osborne: decided in 1957 that he could no longer simply copy Scruggs. He began improvising solos modelled on horn and piano lines, and added a sixth string to his banjo.^[3:2]
• Bill Keith: a Boston-area player from the urban folk revival who joined Monroe's band in 1963. He developed a technique for playing fiddle tunes note for note on the banjo.^[8:1] His "Keith style" kept many elements of Scruggs's playing but was more melodic, following the contours of fiddle lines, and sounded more improvised.^[1:3]

Three-finger picking contrasts with the older downstroke clawhammer or "rapping" style. Some players of Scruggs's generation knew both, but Mike Seeger noted in 1990 that the ability to play both well had become rare among younger players.^[2:3]

Wikidata: Q7439337