Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs – ‘Tis Sweet To Be Remembered: The Essential Flatt & Scruggs

If it’s true that Bill Monroe invented bluegrass, it’s equally true that it wouldn’t have happened the way it did without guitarist/lead singer Lester Flatt and banjo player/baritone singer Earl Scruggs. As members of Monroe’s 1946-48 Blue Grass Boys, they were indispensable to the creation of the original bluegrass sound; Scruggs, especially, was so important that George D. Hay frequently introduced the act on the Opry as “Bill and Earl, with that fancy banjo picking.” By the time the two left to form their own Foggy Mountain Boys, they had established themselves as creative talents of the first order, and in the view of many, the repertoire they created over the next two decades was unsurpassed by any other artist.

Though the Flatt & Scruggs sound changed over the years, two things remained constant: Scruggs’ groundbreaking banjo picking and Flatt’s genial, anything-but-high-lonesome lead singing. On this foundation, the Foggy Mountain Boys built a sound that largely defined bluegrass through the 1950s and early 1960s. While peers like Monroe and the Stanley Brothers struggled to get by when the rock ‘n’ roll boom hit, Lester and Earl enjoyed steady work (underwritten by the Martha White Flour company), as well as early attention from and popularity in the burgeoning folk music revival. By the end of 1962, they were able both to fill Carnegie Hall with folk music fans and to land atop the country charts with “The Ballad Of Jed Clampett”.

In the end, though, the formula that brought them to such heights also doomed them, first as a creative force and then as an act. Balancing the demands (even then!) of country radio with folk music sensibilities was no easy job. The band’s singles became increasingly orchestrated, while albums chased the rapidly changing folk audience, culminating in projects filled with material by the likes of Dylan, Donovan and Buffy St. Marie. By 1969, creative differences between Flatt, who wanted to stick to the country side of the road, and Scruggs, who was bored with it, broke up the duo and the Foggy Mountain Boys.

Given the richness of the Flatt & Scruggs catalog, it is almost impossible to put together a less than excellent collection of their material — yet that is exactly what Sony Legacy has managed to do. Though it’s true that some of the best Columbia material has already been mined for single CDs by labels like Rounder and County (not to mention Sony itself, which has reissued several albums from the mid-’60s), those sessions were of such high quality that a two-CD set could easily have been put together without duplicating anything on those compilations; on the other hand, the label could have included some of the many gems hidden amid the failures of the band’s last few years.

Instead, ‘Tis Sweet To Be Remembered takes the easy — and wrong — way out by duplicating many cuts that have already been reissued, and then simply throwing on every single — good, bad or indifferent — that charted for the band from 1959 on. As one banjo-picking friend said, it’s as if they wanted to prove just how far downhill the band went. Nor does Sony Legacy’s failure end there; they don’t even get the titles right, misidentifying “He Took Your Place” as “I’m Workin’ On A Road”. There is simply no excuse for the shortcomings of this project.

The best introduction on CD to Flatt & Scruggs’ work remains Mercury’s collection of the 28 sides the band cut for that label between 1948 and 1950. If that whets your appetite for more, pick up any of the Rounder or County compilations and Sony’s reissue of Live At Vanderbilt University. Those, not the bogus final quarter of this set, represent the “essential” Flatt & Scruggs.