Earl Scruggs Quotations

I don't think you'll ever get enough picking.

You know you can get gaudy with something, and they didn't do that. To me, I think it's very tasteful, well done, with the silver and gold and the engraving. I think it's very tasteful.

I enjoy doing new tunes. It gives me a little bit to perk up, to pay a little bit more attention.

I like drums, really, if they're under control.

I don't like to travel as much as I have in the past, but it's good for my soul to get to pick, especially with these good musicians and these guys that play so well.

I worked with a guy, I can't think of his name, him and his wife, and one of them had a saxophone and the other played drums. It wasn't a regular job but I did a few gigs around home with them.

He used to have a tent show, a little tent show, and I thought I was going to get a job working one year on the tent show, but he closed it down and I never got to go out there, but anyway, he had a sax and played drums.

She was a great lady. We raised three boys, were together as long as she lived, and now she's passed on.

I know she would want me to still do what I'm doing, because she kept me going a lot of times when I'd almost lose interest in getting out on the road.

That was one of the best, exciting things for me to play with them. They were very young and eager to go. I'd been playing with a band that was mostly old folks that had been together so long we couldn't do anything to excite each other.

He [Earl Scruggs] was really cool because he was very quiet, and he wouldn't say much, but then he would come out with a quip that was like so perfect and so brilliant, very smart.

It's made a lot of people richer from hearing Earl Scruggs. And I just think we're all very lucky to have him in the world.

I mean if it wasn't for Earl Scruggs, guys like me wouldn't be doing what we're doing. I mean, he's changed so many people's lives, honestly. I was thinking about all the thousands of people that live in Nashville, like myself, that there's no reason a guy from New York would end up down there if it wasn't for the sound of Earl Scruggs' banjo coming over the airwaves and just changing my life.

I've heard of people stopping their cars, having car wrecks, all kinds of things. But most of the banjo players I know had that moment when they heard Earl Scruggs. So, for me, it transcends the technique. It's the musician in him and his personality, his musical personality, such great taste, such great technique, very, very creative.

Earl Scruggs had this thing that it wasn't just the technique or even the instrument. It was him. There was this soulful quality that came through that made you - if you're somebody like me who was, I guess, supposed to play the banjo, it made you stop in your tracks, and you couldn't do anything until you got done hearing him play, and then immediately you'd have to go try and find a banjo.

Earl Scruggs wears two finger picks and a thumb pick, and by alternating them, he can play about as fast as he wants. So it's this action. You know, you couldn't move one finger that fast, but all three, it's pretty easy, and it's kind of an incredible leap.

Earl Scruggs is the guy who really made that leap with using three fingers in a rotating fashion to create this fast rippling sound that had never been heard before.

Adrienne Rich was one of the most widely-read and influential poets of her time, a leading feminist, known especially for her politically-engaged verse. Her best-known volume, "Diving into the Wreck," won the National Book Award in 1973.

My music came up from the soil of North Carolina,

I think Earl Scruggs playing propelled bluegrass and Bill Monroe's music to the level that - where we're all still talking about it.

If you don't let things develop, it's like keeping something in a bag and not letting it out to fly

You can’t encore the past. If I see a bright light shining out there, I want to go toward it.

Of course, with Lester, that was a good run with him, but the boys growing up, they used to bring their friends out to our house.