Father's Table Grace
If Bill Monroe is the Father of Bluegrass Music, then Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs are its uncles.  In 1946, as a part of Monroe’s Bluegrass Boys, singer and guitar picker Lester Flatt and five-string banjo player Earl Scruggs became the very first Bluegrass band to ever make a high lonesome sound.Along with fiddler Chubby Wise and bassist Cedric Rainwater, Flatt and Scruggs pioneered with Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys until 1948.  The pair soon formed the Foggy Mountain Boys and signed with Mercury Records.  To keep working during the difficult post-war years, they stayed close to home – never straying too far from East Tennessee’s Cumberland Plateau or the North Carolina Piedmont.The early 1950’s brought with them much opportunity for Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs.  They signed a new record deal with Columbia, charted their first Top 10 hit with "’Tis So Sweet To Be Remembered," and joined the WSM Grand Ole Opry.In 1955, the duo embarked on a series of television projects based primarily in Appalachia that culminated into syndication in 1959.  To keep the shows vibrant, Flatt & Scruggs continued to chart hits – secular and sacred.1962 was the year that Bluegrass music reached a peak in popularity.  That year, Paul Henning, a television producer from the Ozarks, debuted the vastly popular Beverly Hillbillies.  He wrote the theme song and sought out Flatt & Scruggs to insure the mountain song’s highest quality and best interpretation.  Voilá.  Henning’s vision and the sure-fire duo created the theme for the most popular sitcom of the 1960’s.Flatt & Scruggs re-recorded and re-named the tune so Columbia could release it to radio audiences.  "The Ballad of Jed Clampett" became the first Bluegrass song to hit #1 on Billboard Magazine’s Country & Western Singles chart.The remainder of the decade was filled with ancillary successes from other Paul Henning creations like Petticoat Junction, as well as soaring public attention to the duo’s other creative ventures.The enormous popularity of Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs moved their music, little by little, away from its traditional Bluegrass roots.  This rift caused the duo to part ways in 1969.  Lester Flatt gravitated back to the Bluegrass tradition where his musical path began. However, Earl Scruggs, with his sons, ventured further out toward a more progressive, experimental sound.Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs helped establish the bedrock foundation upon which all Bluegrass music was built.  This foundation, like that of the nation that birthed the music, included a healthy amount of Gospel roots.  The love of Jesus Christ and the want of freedom to worship Him run deep into American culture and history.  That fact is very evident when one listens to these classic recordings of a purely American musical genre.  Through the duo’s recording career, Flatt & Scruggs included sacred tunes on its albums as a matter of course.  One can find them scattered among the group’s vast recorded library.Music Mill Entertainment has taken the best Gospel recordings of Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs and put them together on Father’s Table Grace.