Earl Scruggs Revue – Artist’s Choice: The Best Tracks, 19701980

Can this import really be the first CD retrospective of the Earl Scruggs Revue? Given the availability of virtually every note Earl Scruggs recorded as one-half of Flatt & Scruggs, it seems odd that it has taken eighteen years since the band’s breakup for a compilation of this kind to appear.

The Revue was a dynamic and successful live act throughout the ’70s who did much to broaden the Nashville perspective of country music and released no less than 17 albums in their decade together. Earl Scruggs, as principal architect of bluegrass-style five-string banjo, remains one of the half-dozen most distinctive instrumentalists ever in country music. His sons, Gary, Randy and Steve (along with drummer Jody Maphis and a handful of other players who came and went during the Revue’s days), were talented musicians and performers.

Nonetheless, the Revue seems to have fallen off history’s radar screen. While this set consists of tracks selected by Gary and Randy Scruggs as their favorites, the result is a balanced depiction of the band, showing both its strengths and weaknesses. For the Earl Scruggs Revue was a band that could dazzle, intrigue and aggravate during even the space of one album.

The CD’s opening notes come off as something of a position statement. We hear a nascent Revue, joined by Byrds Roger McGuinn and Clarence White, running through Bob Dylan’s “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” for a TV documentarian’s camera. The guitar lead-in and first verse closely resemble the opening moments of the Sweetheart Of The Rodeo album two years before. It’s as if Earl and the boys are saying, “We’re with them!” That tendency for familiar contemporary material (especially Bob Dylan songs) and high-profile appearances by guest artists were to be trends throughout, as was a definitely nontraditional look and sound, by Nashville standards.

Whether or not this was a risky approach depends on how you look at it. Granted, in 1970 plenty of traditionalists were bound to be alienated by the Revue’s long hair, electric instruments and banjo straps embroidered with peace symbols. Even today, many bluegrass purists would like to pencil through the 1970-80 lines in Earl Scruggs’ resume. But Scruggs had already reached a much larger audience through visibility in the 1960s urban folk revival and some key media exposure (appearances on “The Beverly Hillbillies”, theme music for Bonnie & Clyde). From this perspective, it would appear that keeping a mainstream audience motivated many of the Revue’s decisions. Indeed, the long list of songs by Dylan and other contemporary writers that Flatt & Scruggs recorded in their last several years together seems to bear this out. It is said that Lester Flatt’s dissatisfaction with this modernization of their sound was a major reason for their breakup.

Ironically, the safety of their approach to repertoire might explain why the Revue has been so ignored in the revival of interest in the ’60s-’70s wave of country-rock. It is all too easy to dismiss them as a “covers band” with a famous frontman and access to a lot of guest stars. The song selections and legion of supporting and occasionally distracting musicians (as on Loudon Wainwright III’s “Swimming Song”) on this compilation do little to dispel this viewpoint. Still, those who choose to ignore the Revue on these grounds will miss some thoroughly enjoyable music.

Wisely, the Scruggs brothers selected a good sampling of material from 1972’s Live At Kansas State (probably their album most deserving of a full reissue). There, the Revue is joined by longtime Flatt & Scruggs sideman Buck “Uncle Josh” Graves on dobro and fiddler Vassar Clements to produce a surprisingly cohesive “bluegrass-rock” blend, the likes of which has seldom been heard since. The drumming is unabashed, the vocals rough and ragged, miles away from the tightness of bluegrass singing — but the acoustic players have plenty of room to strut their stuff.

Far and away, though, the best track on this CD comes a couple years down the road from Kansas State in their surprisingly uptempo reading of Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released”. This one demonstrates just how well the Revue could play together live. Gary Scruggs’ bass and Jody Maphis’ drumming provide a suitably hopping beat for Earl, who contributes boogeying lead and backup banjo happily reminiscent of his playing on “Foggy Mountain Special” some two decades before. Randy Scruggs’ lead guitar is tasty, as is the work of an athletic, but uncredited, steel guitarist. (Mediocre sessionography in the note was inherited from sloppy data on the original jackets; but couldn’t somebody have asked the artists?) Gary, whose singing seems to cross Dylan, McGuinn and Arlo Guthrie, is all over the song. If all the Revue’s work had been so top-drawer, this reissue would be a box set.

Elsewhere, the going is more hit and miss. A problem with much of the Revue’s work, especially in later years, was how marginally Earl’s banjo was incorporated into the band’s sound. The wonderful subtlety of his backup playing was one of the joys of those old Flatt & Scruggs recordings, and it contributed enormously to their overall sound. On “Bleeker Street Rag”, one of two original instrumentals in this set, Earl opens and closes with fine breaks but is completely inaudible in the mix as the star-studded series of guest guitarists and keyboardists in an eleven-piece band contribute their solos. It wasn’t always that way, though: “Some Of Shelly’s Blues” from I Saw The Light With Some Help From My Friends, regrettably omitted from this set, is one of those tracks where his banjo work was punchy and mixed up-front where it belonged.

John Lomax III contributed the notes to this issue, and provides some interesting and enthusiastic background. Although some comments from the participants shed a bit of light, it would have been nice to hear more from Randy and Gary Scruggs about their track selections (like why, oh why, was their cloying rendition of Dolly Parton’s “My Tennessee Mountain Home” picked?). Lomax notes the difficulties of a Nashville band that played unusual music for that town, working with a record company (Columbia) that didn’t always seem to get it when it came to promoting them.

One wonders if they get it even now: The fifteenth track, “I Still Miss Someone”, is listed as a 1976 Revue cut with a guest vocal by the song’s writer, Johnny Cash. Jarringly, the first voice we hear is none other than Lester Flatt; it turns out that this is actually Flatt & Scruggs’ 1964 recording of the same song.

This ludicrous gaffe and the all-too-often patchy session credits mar what should have been better historical coverage in a first-ever retrospective. Still, though it’s far from perfect, this collection’s best moments make a case for a renewal of interest in the work of the Earl Scruggs Revue.