page_title: Earl Scruggs
section_title: Personal life
hierarchical_section_title: Earl Scruggs / Personal life
caption_attribution_description: Randy, Earl &amp; Gary Scruggs
context_page_description: Earl Eugene Scruggs was an American musician noted for popularizing a three-finger banjo picking style, now called "Scruggs style", which is a defining characteristic of bluegrass music. His three-finger style of playing was radically different from the traditional way the five-string banjo had previously been played. This new style of playing became popular and elevated the banjo from its previous role as a background rhythm instrument to featured solo status. He popularized the instrument across several genres of music.
  Scruggs' career began at age 21 when he was hired to play in Bill Monroe's band, the Blue Grass Boys. The name "bluegrass" eventually became the eponym for the entire genre of country music now known by that title. Despite considerable success with Monroe, performing on the Grand Ole Opry and recording classic hits such as "Blue Moon of Kentucky", Scruggs resigned from the group in 1946 due to their exhausting touring schedule. Fellow band member Lester Flatt resigned as well, and he and Scruggs later paired up in a new group they called Flatt and Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys.
context_section_description: In 1955, Scruggs received word that his mother, Lula, had suffered a stroke and heart attack in North Carolina. The only flight available from Nashville involved such a series of connecting cities that it was not feasible to fly. Scruggs and his wife, with sons Gary and Randy, decided to drive all night from Nashville to see her when they were involved in an automobile accident just east of Knoxville about 3 a.m. October 2. Their car was hit by a drunk driver, a Fort Campbell soldier who had pulled out from a side road into their path, then fled the scene after the collision. The children were not hurt, but Earl suffered a fractured pelvis and dislocations of both hips, which would plague him for years, and Louise had been thrown into the windshield, receiving multiple lacerations. They were flown to a Nashville Hospital where Scruggs remained hospitalized for about two months. He received thousands of letters from well-wishers. He returned to music in January 1956, about four months after the injury, but after working a week or so, one of the hips collapsed, and he returned to the hospital for a metal hip to be implanted. Seven years later, the other hip required similar surgery. The first metal hip lasted for some 40 years, but eventually failed, requiring a total hip replacement in October 1996, when he was age 72. While still in the recovery room after this hip operation, Scruggs suffered a heart attack; he was returned to the operating room later the same day for quintuple coronary bypass surgery. Despite the dire circumstances, he recovered and returned to his musical career.
  Scruggs was involved in a solo plane crash in October 1975. He was flying his 1974 Cessna Skyhawk II aircraft home to Nashville around midnight from a performance of the Earl Scruggs Revue in Murray, Kentucky. On his landing approach he was enveloped in dense fog and overshot the runway at Cornelia Fort Airpark in Nashville and the plane flipped over. The automatic crash alert system in the plane did not function, and Scruggs remained without help for five hours. He crawled about 150 feet from the wreckage with a broken ankle, broken nose, and facial lacerations, afraid that the plane might catch fire. His family was driving home from the same concert and was unaware of the crash, but his niece became worried when he did not arrive. She called police at about 4 a.m., and they went to the airport, where they heard Scruggs' cries for help from a field near the runway. He recovered, but was in a wheelchair for a few weeks, including for the premiere of the Scruggs documentary Banjoman at the Kennedy Center.
  Steve Scruggs, Earl's youngest son, was the drummer for the Earl Scruggs Revue at one point. He died in September 1992 of a self-inflicted gun shot after killing his wife, according to prosecutor Dent Moriss. Middle son Randy Scruggs, guitarist and music producer, died after a short illness on April 17, 2018 at the age of 64.
  Every January for many years, Scruggs' birthday was celebrated by a party at his home on Franklin Road in Nashville. After a buffet dinner, guests would gather in the living room for an informal "pickin' party" where some of country music's best known stars would sing and play with no one around but family and close friends. The attendees over the years included Tom T. Hall, Béla Fleck, Travis Tritt, Vince Gill, Tim O'Brien, Emmylou Harris, Mac Wiseman, Marty Stuart, Porter Wagoner, Bill Anderson, Jerry Douglas, Josh Graves and many others. At Scruggs' 80th birthday party in 2004, country singer Porter Wagoner said, "Earl is to the five-string banjo what Babe Ruth was to baseball. He is the best there ever was and the best there ever will be."
  At age 88, Earl Scruggs died from natural causes on the morning of March 28, 2012, in a Nashville hospital. His funeral was held on Sunday, April 1, 2012, at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee, and was open to the public. He was buried at Spring Hill Cemetery in a private service.
caption: Scruggs performing with his sons Randy and Gary at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, 2009
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