Foggy Mountain Jamboree to Grammy Hall of Fame

The Recording Academy® has announced the latest additions to its legendary Grammy Hall Of Fame® collection. Included in this select few in the 2012 inductees to the Grammy Hall of Fame® is the Columbia Records’ 1957 album by Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, Foggy Mountain Jamboree.

Released on October 7, 1957, Foggy Mountain Jamboree (Columbia CL 1019) features a dozen cuts from the early to mid-1950s recording sessions. Among them are six great instrumentals; Flint Hill Special, Earl’s Breakdown, Foggy Mountain Special, Shuckin’ The Corn, Randy Lynn Rag and Foggy Mountain Chimes, each displaying facets of Scruggs’ various talents as a banjo player at his supreme best.

In addition are three Lester Flatt/Curly Seckler duets (Some Old Day, Blue Ridge Cabin Home and Your Love Is Like A Flower), the Flatt solo Jimmy Brown The Newsboy, and the quartets It Won’t Be Long and Reunion In Heaven. On the first named Gospel number are Flatt (singing lead), Seckler (tenor), Scruggs (playing guitar and singing the baritone part) and fiddler Paul Warren (bass), while on the latter another fiddler, Benny Martin, is the bass singer.

Over the six year spread encompassing these sessions Flatt and Scruggs had three different bass players in the Foggy Mountain Boys; Jody Rainwater, Jake Tullock and Howard Watts, all featured on one session or other. The fiddle duties are shared with either Chubby Wise or Howdy Forrester playing instead of Warren and Martin.

Everett Lilly plays mandolin during each of the 1951 sessions.

Buck Graves’ Dobro can be heard on five cuts.

Some recordings feature Nashville session players; Chet Atkins, Ray Edenton, Louis T Innis and Jack Shook sit in on guitar on some cuts and Bob Moore and Ernie Newton shoulder the bass playing duties on some cuts.

Outstanding creativity marks many of these cuts whether it be Earl Scruggs’ ‘fancy’ banjo or his finger-picked lead guitar, the uplifting addition of Buck Graves’ Dobro, the striking vocal duets or stellar Gospel quartet singing, this first LP from the trend-setting duo is classic bluegrass of the finest quality and is a wide-ranging influence on aspiring bluegrass musicians of the day.

Foggy Mountain Jamboree deserves to be in everybody’s hall of fame.

Here’s a short sample that displays many of the ingredients that make this LP so highly revered.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apiGwX8Hgvk

 

Through a tradition established nearly 40 years ago, recordings are reviewed annually by a special member committee comprising of eminent and knowledgeable professionals from all branches of the recording arts, with final approval by The Recording Academy’s National Board of Trustees. With 25 new titles, the list currently totals 906 and is displayed at the Grammy Museum.

Other inductees for 2012 range from Bruce Springsteen’s Born In The U.S.A. album, to civil rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have A Dream speech from his historic 1963 address at the march on Washington, and the Anthology Of American Folk Music (Folkways,1952).

“The Recording Academy is dedicated to celebrating a wide variety of great music and sound through the decades”, said Neil Portnow, President/CEO of The Recording Academy. “We are especially honored to welcome this year’s selection of some of the most influential recordings of the last century. Marked by both cultural and historical significance, these works truly have influenced and inspired audiences for generations, and we are thrilled to induct them into our growing catalog of outstanding recordings.”

For more information about the Grammy Hall Of Fame or the 54th Annual Grammy Awards (to be broadcast live on February 12, 2012, at 8 p.m. ET/PT on the CBS Television Network), please visit the Recording Academy website.

 

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About the Author

Richard Thompson

Richard F. Thompson is a long-standing free-lance writer specialising in bluegrass music topics. A two-time Editor of British Bluegrass News, he has been seriously interested in bluegrass music since about 1970. As well as contributing to that magazine, he has, in the past 30 plus years, had articles published by Country Music World, International Country Music News, Country Music People, Bluegrass Unlimited, MoonShiner (the Japanese bluegrass music journal) and Bluegrass Europe. He wrote the annotated series I'm On My Way Back To Old Kentucky, a daily memorial to Bill Monroe that culminated with an acknowledgement of what would have been his 100th birthday, on September 13, 2011.