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TIME FOR A SECOND HELPING: BEST OF THE FLATT & SCRUGGS TV SHOW, SPONSORED BY MARTHA WHITE, BOWS TWO NEW VOLUMES

Volumes Three and Four to Be Released by Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum and Shanachie Entertainment on October 9

NASHVILLE, Tenn., August 2, 2007 – Music fans who are hungry for more episodes of the seminal Flatt & Scruggs TV Show will be sated on October 9 when the Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum and Shanachie Entertainment release the Best of the Flatt & Scruggs TV Show, Volume Three and Volume Four. Like their critically acclaimed predecessors (volumes one and two), which were released last March, each volume contains two 30-minute episodes of the classic bluegrass TV program. Volumes three and four contain shows from 1961 and 1962, when legends Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs and their Foggy Mountain Boys were at the peak of their prowess and popularity. Volume Three features two performances by seven-year-old prodigy Ricky Skaggs; Volume Four includes the television debut (at age eight) of Earl’s son Randy Scruggs. (Complete song notes for each volume are included below.)

Until the late 1980s, it was believed that no copies of this groundbreaking series had survived. In 1989, however, advertising executive Bill Graham discovered and donated to the Museum 24 intact shows. Soon after, 12 more were acquired from another source. The shows were innovative on several levels: Each show’s mix of uptempo tunes, comedy bits, spotlight instrumentals and occasional guest performances was a template that subsequent country variety shows would follow. Additionally, the Martha White in-show advertising and accompanying cooking demonstrations were precursors to modern product placement.

Titled Flatt & Scruggs Grand Ole Opry, the show ran from 1955 until 1969, when the pair ended their partnership to take separate musical paths. These shows illustrate the band’s greatness as a well-oiled performing unit. "Those were good years," Scruggs said of the era captured on these programs. "Basically, we had a good time with each other…There’s nothing like that on the air now, I don’t reckon."

Volumes five through eight are scheduled for release next year.

If you are interested in receiving a review copy, please contact Tamara Saviano at (615) 400-0388 or Tsaviano@comcast.net.

Accredited by the American Association of Museums, the Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum is operated by the Country Music Foundation, a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) educational organization chartered by the state of Tennessee in 1964. The Museum’s mission is the preservation of the history of country and related vernacular music rooted in southern culture. With the same educational mission, the Foundation also operates CMF Records, the Museum’s Frist Library and Archive, CMF Press, Historic RCA Studio B, and Hatch Show Print.

More information about the Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum is available at www.countrymusichalloffame.com or by calling (615) 416-2001.

Best of the Flatt & Scruggs TV Show: Volume 3

November or December 1961: Recorded in January 1959, "CRYING MY HEART OUT OVER YOU" was a modest hit for Flatt & Scruggs in 1960. When Ricky Skaggs revived it in 1982, however, the song became his first #1 record. "I AIN’T GONNA WORK TOMORROW" and "WILDWOOD FLOWER" come from the Carter Family. Flatt & Scruggs recorded the former on the evening of February 3, 1961, after taping two TV shows during the day. To Earl Scruggs’s sweet guitar work on "Wildwood Flower," Cousin Jake Tullock mischievously and briefly adds a Jew’s harp effect, which he creates using only a finger and his mouth. Uncle Josh Graves joins Scruggs for a banjo-Dobro pairing on "HOME SWEET HOME." Fiddler Paul Warren chooses "TWINKLE LITTLE STAR," and he duets with Scruggs on "SALLY JOHNSON" (to which Jake briefly adds mandolin, prompting Earl to remark, "He’s trying to break up our act"). Tullock and Graves team up on the Cowboy Copas tune "YOU LIVE IN A WORLD ALL YOUR OWN." Lester Flatt takes the lead in five-part harmony treatments of two gospel numbers: the Carter Family’s "I’M ON MY WAY TO CANAAN’S LAND" (recorded by Flatt & Scruggs in August 1959) and "LORD, I’M COMING HOME," a turn-of-the-century hymn, popular in country and bluegrass circles, but never recorded for commercial release by Flatt & Scruggs. Before the show closes out, the band does "IF I SHOULD WANDER BACK TONIGHT," a song Lester performed solo during his tenure with Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys. Flatt & Scruggs recorded the song in 1952, but the version here is the newer, swinging Dobro-driven arrangement they gave the song when they re-cut it in February 1961 at the same session as "I Ain’t Gonna Work Tomorrow."

January 1962: Seven-year-old musical prodigy Ricky Skaggs plays mandolin on the Flatt & Scruggs favorite "FOGGY MOUNTAIN SPECIAL," and he picks and sings the Osborne Brothers bluegrass standard "RUBY." Little Ricky seems both uncannily composed for a seven-year-old and awed by seeing himself on a studio monitor. Flatt sings the Tompall Glaser tune "I DON’T CARE ANYMORE," which the group recorded in 1958. Warren fiddles "CACKLIN’ HEN" early in the show and closes the proceedings, with Scruggs, on a fiddle-banjo duet rendition of "DANCE ALL NIGHT WITH A BOTTLE IN MY HAND." Curly Seckler gets a moment in the limelight on "YOU TOOK MY SUNSHINE," written by Tommy Scott in 1939, when Curly and Tommy worked with Charlie Monroe on WWVA in Wheeling, West Virginia. The traditional tune "CUMBERLAND GAP" was a string-band staple and a longtime favorite in Scruggs’s repertoire. In August 1960, soon after his second appearance at the Newport Folk Festival, the band recorded the song for the album Foggy Mountain Banjo. Scruggs, Seckler, Tullock, and Warren sing harmony with Flatt on "GO HOME," which Lester describes as "one side of our latest Columbia record." Released in fall 1961, "Go Home" reached #10 on the country chart. "I WONDER HOW THE OLD FOLKS ARE AT HOME," appears as "HOMESTEAD ON THE FARM" on the Flatt & Scruggs collection Songs of the Famous Carter Family.

Best of the Flatt & Scruggs TV Show: Volume 4

Show #18: No date appears on this program, but a show identified as #21 is dated June 1961, and the repertoire on this show suggests that it comes from the same period. "GROUND SPEED" and "CABIN ON THE HILL" were recorded in January and April 1959, respectively. "That’s got ’em, Earl," Lester Flatt proclaims after "Ground Speed." "That’s really laying the thumb to the old five-string." The Flatt favorite "I KNOW WHAT IT MEANS TO BE LONESOME" is an early twentieth century Tin Pan Alley tune cut for Decca by Pete Cassell in 1941 and for King by Clyde Moody in 1947. "NINE POUND HAMMER" was popular with many artists, including the Monroe Brothers, Grayson & Whitter, Ernest V. Stoneman, and Merle Travis. Flatt & Scruggs recorded the traditional tune in March 1962 and released it the same year, on the album Folk Songs of Our Land. "THINKING ABOUT YOU" comes from a 1952 recording session at Nashville’s Castle Studio and here features the three-part harmony of Flatt, Earl Scruggs, and Curly Seckler. Fan favorite "SALTY DOG BLUES" reaches back even further, to 1950, when the group recorded it in Tampa for Mercury Records as "Old Salty Dog Blues." Flatt & Scruggs opened their December 1962 Carnegie Hall concert with the crowd-pleasing number. Uncle Josh Graves and Cousin Jake Tullock duet on the Tommy Collins tune "DOWN, DOWN, DOWN," a song closely associated with Rose Maddox. Paul Warren contributes the lively fiddle workout "CACKLIN’ HEN." "LORD, I’M COMING HOME" is a turn-of-the-century hymn popular in country and bluegrass circles but never recorded for commercial release by Flatt & Scruggs.

March 1962: Eight-year-old Randy Lynn Scruggs, Earl’s second son (for whom he named "Randy Lynn Rag") makes his television debut on this show. Using Mother Maybelle Carter’s autoharp, Randy plays "WILDWOOD FLOWER," prompting Flatt to observe with a smile, "He’s a little Scruggs all right. He don’t believe in missing a note." Randy joins the band again for "HOMESTEAD ON THE FARM" ("I WONDER HOW THE OLD FOLKS ARE AT HOME"). He would go on to have his own successful musical career. Flatt & Scruggs open the show with the traditional tune "SHADY GROVE" (titled "Going Back to Harlan" on the live album recorded at Vanderbilt University in 1963). Seckler would exit the band within days of this taping, and Hylo Brown supplements the talent lineup with performances of the sacred number "TO MY MANSION IN THE SKY," released by Jimmie Davis in 1953 on Decca, and "HOW COULD YOU FORGET SO SOON," one side of Brown’s final Capitol single, released in 1960. "HE WILL SET YOUR FIELDS ON FIRE" is a gospel favorite, recorded by Smith’s Sacred Singers, the Monroe Brothers, the Johnson County Ramblers, the Maddox Brothers & Rose, and Bill Monroe, among others. It was in the band’s set list for the December 1962 Carnegie Hall concert but did not make the cut for the original live album (though the full concert has been issued on CD). Flatt & Scruggs recorded an instrumental version of "LONESOME ROAD BLUES" at the August 11, 1960, session for the album Foggy Mountain Banjo. Graves and Tullock lead into a comedy routine with "RUN LITTLE JOHNNY," featuring more of Warren’s vigorous fiddle interludes. Warren and Scruggs close the show with one of their favorite traditional fiddle tunes, "LEATHER BRITCHES."

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NOW YOU BAKE RIGHT: FLATT & SCRUGGS TELEVISION SHOWS, SPONSORED BY MARTHA WHITE, DEBUT ON DVD

Volumes One and Two to be Released by Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum and Shanachie Entertainment March 27

NASHVILLE, Tenn., January 29, 2007 – The Martha White-sponsored Flatt & Scruggs television show introduced bluegrass legends Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs to millions of homes in the South and throughout the nation in the 1950s and 1960s. On March 27, the Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum and Shanachie Entertainment breathe new life into what had been a fond, shadowy memory with the DVD release of the Best of the Flatt & Scruggs TV Show, Volume One and Volume Two. Each volume contains two 30-minute episodes of the classic bluegrass TV program.

Until the late 1980s, it was believed that no copies of this groundbreaking series had survived. In 1989, however, advertising executive Bill Graham discovered and donated to the Museum 24 intact shows. Soon after, 12 more were acquired from another source. The shows were innovative on several levels: Each show's mix of uptempo tunes, comedy bits, spotlight instrumentals and occasional guest performances was a template that subsequent country variety shows would follow. Additionally, the Martha White in-show advertising and accompanying cooking demonstrations were precursors to modern product placement. Volumes one and two feature episodes from 1961 and 1962, when Flatt & Scruggs were at the peak of their performing powers and enjoying great popularity and touring success. (See notes at end for complete synopsis of each volume.)

Titled Flatt & Scruggs Grand Ole Opry, the show ran from 1955 until 1969, when the pair ended their partnership to take separate musical paths. These shows illustrate the band's greatness as a well-oiled performing unit. "Those were good years," Scruggs said of the era captured on these shows. "Basically, we had a good time with each other…There's nothing like that on the air now, I don't reckon."

Volumes three and four are scheduled for release in autumn 2007, with additional installments to follow.

If you are interested in receiving a review copy, please contact Tamara Saviano at (615) 664-1167 or tamara@savianomedia.com.

Accredited by the American Association of Museums, the Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum is operated by the Country Music Foundation, a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) educational organization chartered by the state of Tennessee in 1964. The Museum's mission is the preservation of the history of country and related vernacular music rooted in southern culture. With the same educational mission, the Foundation also operates CMF Records, the Museum's Frist Library and Archive, CMF Press, Historic RCA Studio B, and Hatch Show Print.

More information about the Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum is available at www.countrymusichalloffame.com or by calling (615) 416-2001.

Best of the Flatt & Scruggs TV Show: Volume 1

August 1961 #1: A highlight of this episode is "Jimmie Brown the Newsboy," a Carter Family favorite, first recorded by Flatt & Scruggs in 1951. Former Foggy Mountain Boy Mac Wiseman registered his biggest country hit with the song in 1959. Also from 1951 comes the gospel quartet "Brother, I'm Getting Ready to Go." Earl played banjo on the original, but in this TV performance he plays guitar. Earl also plays guitar on a traditional instrumental, "Georgia Buck," which he would record in 1964. Paul Warren takes center stage four times during the show, singing lead on "Pig in the Pen," and playing the fiddle tunes "Shortnin' Bread," "Durham's Bull," and an unidentified selection that fills out the show. Flatt & Scruggs recorded the gospel song "Jesus Savior Pilot Me" as a quartet number in 1958. "Before I Met You," a waltz, comes from the repertoire of Joe "Cannonball" Lewis. Flatt & Scruggs recorded it as a trio number in 1955, and it was a Top Ten country hit for Carl Smith in 1956. "Cousin Jake" Tullock and "Uncle Josh" Graves team up for "Feast Here Tonight," recorded by the Monroe Brothers in 1938 as "Have a Feast Here Tonight."

February 1962: Flatt & Scruggs primed the market for release of their next single, "Just Ain't," by performing it on this show. Recorded in May 1961, the song entered the country chart in April 1962, eventually climbing to #16. Hylo Brown does two songs he released as singles on Capitol: the traditional "John Henry" and an original number, "Lovesick and Sorrow." "Don't Let Your Deal Go Down" and "Earl's Breakdown" are Flatt & Scruggs classics. "Deal" was a mainstay of early country music. Bluegrass historian Neil Rosenberg has pointed out that the band's 1957 recording of the song marks the first time Flatt & Scruggs used gospel-style quartet harmony in a secular song. "Earl's Breakdown" was the first instrumental Scruggs recorded for Columbia Records, and it introduced his popular technique of shifting tuning during a song. Flatt & Scruggs recorded the gospel quartet "I'll Never Be Lonesome Again" in 1959. "Precious Memories," sung a cappella, is an oft-recorded traditional hymn, but notable because Flatt & Scruggs did not record it for commercial release. "A Hundred Years from Now" comes from the same 1957 session as "Don't Let Your Deal Go Down." Josh Graves is featured on "Down in the Valley" (also called "Birmingham Jail"), and Paul Warren and Earl Scruggs close out the show with a fiddle tune, "The Hollow Poplar."

Best of the Flatt & Scruggs TV Show: Volume 2

July 1961: "Polka on a Banjo" climbed to #12 on the country charts in 1960–61. The band recorded "Go Home," an Onie Wheeler tune, on May 23, 1961, only a few weeks before taping this TV show. It was even more successful, rising to #10 after its release in the fall of 1961. "Fire Ball Mail" (which Lester calls "Farewell Blues") comes from the pen of Fred Rose and was a Roy Acuff favorite; Flatt & Scruggs included it on their important 1961 album Foggy Mountain Banjo. "Foggy Mountain Special," first recorded in May 1954, ended up on another influential album, Foggy Mountain Jamboree. "I Won't Be Hanging Around" dates from a session in July 1957. Country singer Skeeter Davis (next week's guest on the show, Lester says) chose it for her 1968 RCA album I Love Flatt & Scruggs. "We'll Meet Again Sweetheart" was one of four songs cut by Flatt & Scruggs at their very first recording session, in 1948, at Knoxville radio station WROL. "Walking in My Sleep" found its way into the repertoires of a number of artists, including Arthur Smith, the Prairie Ramblers, Acuff, and Al Dexter. Flatt & Scruggs never recorded the well-known hymn "Are You Washed in the Blood." For their cameo, "Cousin Jake" Tullock and "Uncle Josh" Graves choose a Cowboy Copas tune, "You Live in a World All Your Own." Paul Warren fills out the show with a fiddle number, "Dance All Night with a Bottle in My Hand."

August 1961 #2: What "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" is to banjo pickers, "Wildwood Flower" is to acoustic guitar players—the instrument's anthem and proving ground. On this episode Flatt & Scruggs welcome country music pioneer Mother Maybelle Carter, who picks her trademark "Wildwood Flower" and, on autoharp, plays "The Liberty Dance" (the old fiddle tune "Liberty"). Scruggs acknowledged Carter's influence on his music, and within weeks of this performance Flatt & Scruggs released the album Songs of the Famous Carter Family. The album contained the Carter Family song "Homestead on the Farm," performed here by the band with Carter, and introduced by Flatt as "I Wonder How the Old Folks Are at Home." "Have You Come to Say Goodbye" does not show up in the Flatt & Scruggs discography, though Flatt recorded it later as a solo artist. Neither does "I Dreamed about Mama Last Night," recorded by Hank Williams as "Luke the Drifter." "Down, Down, Down" is associated with the great country singer Rose Maddox. Paul Warren's performance of "Durham's Bull" was a Flatt & Scruggs favorite, as was "Down the Road," first recorded by the group in the spring of 1949 in Cincinnati. Warren winds up the show with "Over There."

Download the August 2, 2007 press release as a pdf

Download the January 29, 2007 press release as a pdf

Reviews

Show Notes

Now You Bake Right: Flatt & Scruggs on Regional Television

Television played a key role in bringing Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs and their music to millions of homes in the South and throughout the nation in the 1950s and 1960s—first with the regionally popular, Martha White-sponsored Flatt & Scruggs Grand Ole Opry show; then with special appearances on folk-themed programs such as CBS-TV’s "Spring Festival of Music—Folk Sound U.S.A." or ABC-TV’s Hootenanny; and, finally, with theme music and regular cameo appearances on the CBS sitcom The Beverly Hillbillies. Their recording of the show’s theme, "The Ballad of Jed Clampett," was a #1 country hit for the band.

Where touring required the investment of weeks and months to get Flatt & Scruggs in front of large numbers of people, TV could deliver a massive audience in an instant. "I liked TV," Earl Scruggs has said. "I really did. You’d get tired of the travel sometimes, but I liked TV because it was so on-the-spot effective."

The band’s Martha White-sponsored TV programs began in 1955 and continued until 1969, when Flatt and Scruggs ended their partnership to take separate musical paths. The performances on this DVD and the others in this series come from two-inch videotape transferred to film, shot during the fertile period of the late 1950s and early 1960s, when Flatt & Scruggs had become favorites of folk music enthusiasts, and some of the band’s single releases were registering on Billboard’s country chart.

FLATT & SCRUGGS
The story of Flatt & Scruggs is familiar to their many fans: Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs met in December 1945, when banjo picker Scruggs, a country boy from North Carolina who had worked in a textile mill before taking up music full-time, joined Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys, a unit that included, at the time, rhythm guitarist and singer Flatt, a country boy from Tennessee and a former textile mill worker himself. In 1946, Scruggs and Flatt made their recording debut with Monroe in a lineup that also included bassist Cedric Rainwater (real name Howard Watts) and fiddler Chubby Wise—the Blue Grass Boys unit that would come to be regarded as the seminal bluegrass band.

In early 1948, Flatt and Scruggs left Monroe’s band, and—although apparently not their original plan—within a few weeks formed a band of their own, the Foggy Mountain Boys, while working at radio station WDVA in Danville, Virginia. By fall, they were recording for Mercury Records.

MARTHA WHITE
The band’s relationship with Martha White Mills began in 1953, when Flatt & Scruggs worked out of Knoxville, Tennessee. By that time they were recording for Columbia Records, and their stature in the world of country music had grown considerably. Martha White representative Efford Burke, whose territory included the eastern part of Middle Tennessee, attended one of their shows and urged company president Cohen Williams to hire the band to appear on a daily, fifteen-minute, early morning radio show sponsored by Martha White on WSM. They moved to Nashville and started doing the Martha White show in June 1953. For a while, their association with Martha White and WSM did not include appearances on the Martha White-sponsored segment of WSM’s Grand Ole Opry, but that would change.

In May 1954, after just eleven months in Nashville, the band relocated to Crewe, Virginia, some fifty miles southwest of Richmond, where they played live on radio station WSVS. While in Virginia, Flatt & Scruggs wisely maintained their Martha White affiliation by recording the morning radio shows and shipping them back to Nashville for broadcast on WSM. Also in Virginia, the band made appearances on the Saturday night Old Dominion Barn Dance, which aired over Richmond radio station WRVA.
Their tenure in Crewe lasted only a matter of months, however. As 1955 began, Flatt & Scruggs had returned to Nashville, where they still were morning regulars on WSM radio, and in January the group started appearing at 6 p.m. Saturdays on a thirty-minute television show, also sponsored by Martha White, and carried by WSM-TV. Scruggs recalled that Cohen Williams had some doubt about whether the downhome music and comedy of Flatt & Scruggs would translate well to television. "His philosophy was, about thirteen weeks and we would be dead," Scruggs recalled. But he respectfully disagreed with Williams. "I said, ‘We’ve been playing "Cripple Creek" and "Sally Goodin’" and these old tunes since I was a kid, and people haven’t gotten tired of it. They like the music. If we handle ourselves well, I think it’s going to work.’" And work it did. The television appearances expanded Flatt & Scruggs’s following, generating significant mail from viewers—mail that Martha White’s Cohen Williams used to persuade WSM station manager Jack DeWitt that Flatt & Scruggs should be allowed to be part of Martha White’s half-hour portion of the Grand Ole Opry, and they soon became regulars on the show.

During those same years of the mid-1950s, rock & roll began to challenge country music—especially traditional country music featuring fiddles and banjos—for primacy in the affections of southern audiences. In 1954 and 1955, Elvis Presley’s music was marketed as country, and Presley appeared regularly on the country-oriented Louisiana Hayride, out of Shreveport, Louisiana. Artists such as Hank Snow, Ernest Tubb, and Bill Monroe were competing for record sales and concert tickets with younger entertainers who played rock & roll.

Flatt & Scruggs’s fortunes, however, suffered little with the advent of rock & roll. Martha White—and Earl Scruggs’s banjo—saw to that. Many a young country musician was more excited to hear Flatt & Scruggs and their music than to hear Elvis. "My brother bought a Flatt & Scruggs record in 1950, and I played it over and over," recalled bluegrass great Del McCoury. "That banjo—I’d never heard anything like it. It was rock & roll before there was rock & roll. So that’s what I set out to play. By the time Elvis got popular, I was already a banjo picker. I couldn’t understand what the girls were so fired up about. I probably wasn’t looking for the right thing." The girls may have been squealing for Elvis, but McCoury, and many another male music-enthusiast, found himself drawn to Flatt & Scruggs.

Martha White Mills helped Flatt & Scruggs expand their television reach beyond Nashville, creating a circuit that encompassed six cities: Nashville and Jackson in Tennessee; Atlanta and Columbus in Georgia; Florence, South Carolina; and Huntington, West Virginia. In the days before the widespread use of videotape, the band played each of the shows live, logging 2,500 miles a week over an extended route that took them out of Nashville and back again in time for the Grand Ole Opry on Saturday night. "We’d go to Columbus, Georgia, on Monday; Atlanta Tuesday; Florence, South Carolina, Wednesday; Huntington, West Virginia, Thursday; and Friday was Jackson, Tennessee," Scruggs explained. Usually, the shows were scheduled around suppertime. "Hopefully, people would be out of the fields—we thought about mainly rural people, who watched our program. That’s what Cohen was thinking about, too, because they made biscuits and cornbread instead of light bread." Following TV appearances, Flatt & Scruggs often played a concert somewhere in the surrounding area before moving on to the next TV market.

In April 1960, WSM-TV reported that the half-hour TV show, now titled Flatt & Scruggs Grand Ole Opry,was #1 in the area for its 6 p.m. time slot. When August rolled around, Martha White Mills announced a new co-sponsorship for the shows with Pet Milk. Under the new arrangement, the shows aired in eight cities: Nashville, Bristol, Chattanooga, and Knoxville in Tennessee; Florence, Alabama; Greenville, South Carolina; Huntington, West Virginia; and Roanoke, Virginia. The Pet Milk co-sponsorship lasted only a short time, however, when marketers decided that the audiences for the two products didn’t necessarily coincide.

Scruggs appreciated television’s power to expose the band to new audiences. "With radio, sometimes you had to build up a listening audience," he said. "If you were on every day with a regular program, you’d have a good audience. But, boy, with TV, they not only heard you, but they saw you, too. So you had a double-barrel shot at it."

Lester and Earl made the most of their double-barrel shot. The band at the time these films were made included mandolinist and tenor singer Curly Seckler, who first joined the Foggy Mountain Boys in 1949 and stayed with them, with two interruptions, until March 1962; bassist and high baritone vocalist English P. "Cousin Jake" Tullock, who first joined in 1953 and, with only short hiatuses, continued until the group disbanded (he passed away in 1988); fiddler and bass vocalist Paul Warren, who joined in 1954 and stayed until the band’s dissolution (he died in 1978); and Buck "Uncle Josh" Graves, who added his innovative Dobro in 1955 and also remained until the band’s end, save for a brief interruption (he died in 2006). When Seckler left the band, Kentuckian Hylo Brown began appearing in the shows as a solo vocalist, high tenor singer, and guitarist. The earliest show among those preserved, dated July 30, 1956, has Charles Elza ("Kentucky Slim") on bass.

THE SHOWS
Each Flatt & Scruggs Grand Ole Opry show contained reliably popular programming elements that followed a loose formula from week to week. Though not always presented in the same order, the parts, however arranged, would have been familiar to regular viewers. "Basically, each member did whatever he wanted to do," Scruggs remembered, "as long as it fit in with the rest of the show."

Grand Ole Opry and WSM radio announcer T. Tommy Cutrer (or Judd Collins on the earliest of the shows in the museum’s collection) would begin the program with voice-over banners for sponsors Martha White Mills and, during the months of co-sponsorship, the Pet Milk Company, while the band played the show’s instrumental theme. Then Cutrer would introduce Flatt, often with a corny nickname ("the old tater-eater" in one show) and a little good-natured needling designed to coax Flatt out of his normal facial expression, which could strike viewers as stern. "He liked to put Lester on with a little chuckle, a little grin," Earl explained. Cutrer usually succeeded, and Flatt, smiling, would rib the announcer right back.

Flatt and the band never let much time pass before launching into an uptempo tune of some kind—one week, perhaps, a banjo / fiddle duet such as "Shortnin’ Bread" by Scruggs and Paul Warren; the next, a romp through "Salty Dog Blues"; followed on the next show, maybe, by a fiddle tune from Warren such as "Katy Hill," "Orange Blossom Special," or "Cacklin’ Hen."

Next on the program might come a soulful vocal from Lester, on a number such as "Jimmie Brown the Newsboy" or "Crying My Heart Out over You." These would be of his choosing. "Lester mainly made out the program," Scruggs confirmed. "I felt like the lead singer should feel at home when he went on the program, rather than do something he had a question about, just to please somebody."

Typically, the first spot for Martha White products followed at this point, with smooth-talking Cutrer and a kitchen demonstration hostess—Alice Jarman chief among them—ready to review a recipe for Martha White delectables such as jelly roll, date nut loaf, dessert biscuits, pastry shells, or pizza pie. "Alice knew the shortcuts to make the food look good for TV," Scruggs recalled. Cutrer would then invite viewers—whom he addressed directly as "Lady"—to write in for recipes to P.O. Box 58 in Nashville, the all-purpose box for the show’s viewer mail. Coming out of the Martha White break, of course, Lester and Earl and the band would launch into the popular "Martha White Theme," sung with lyrics appropriate to the particular product just advertised—flour, corn meal, or cake mix.

In between the show’s two Martha White ads, things could go in one of several directions. Usually, another vocal number would follow, often featuring Lester in the lead. Then Paul, Josh, or Earl, in some combination, might do an instrumental number. Almost always, Uncle Josh—introduced by Lester with a bluesy guitar figure—would read viewer dedications during this segment, mentioning by name fans and friends who had written to the band in care of the show, or who had encountered the band on the road. A sacred number—featuring the Foggy Mountain Quartet harmonies of Earl, Lester, Curly, and Paul, and sometimes Cousin Jake, too—followed the dedications.
Another Martha White ad typically came after the sacred number—T. Tommy pitching hard and winding up with his patented "Goodness gracious, it’s good," before switching back to the band for a reprise of the "Martha White Theme."

At some time during the next segment, Graves and Tullock—Uncle Josh and Cousin Jake—would do a downhome comedy bit, Josh playing the straight man to Jake’s rube. "They had been working together since they were kids in Knoxville," Earl said. "I tell you the truth, I don’t know how they came up with some of the routines they had, but they had some good routines, I thought." After their short bit, Jake and Josh often would do a whimsical number such as "Down, Down, Down," "The Crawdad Song," "They’re Gonna Put a Monkey on the Moon," or "Baby, You’ve Got to Quit That Noise."
After a solo spot from one of the band members—Curly singing Hank Locklin’s "Please Help Me, I’m Falling," perhaps, or Paul fiddling "Durham’s Bull"—the Foggy Mountain Quartet returned for another sacred number, often with Earl accompanying the ensemble on lead and rhythm guitar instead of banjo.

For the short period that Pet Milk co-sponsored the Flatt & Scruggs show with Martha White, the company’s ads usually would fall into a third advertising slot—the last in the show, in which Cutrer would describe a culinary use for Pet Evaporated Milk, which marketers had him tout as having "twice the country cream in every drop."

The shows would wind down with another vocal number—again, usually from Lester—and a fiddle tune played in duet by Warren and Scruggs that could be made to fit whatever length of time remained in the show. Flatt would offer some closing remarks as Cutrer wandered back onto the set to banter with Lester and close the show with another announcement about the show’s sponsorship.

From time to time, Flatt & Scruggs might welcome a special guest to the show. Earl recalled that Grandpa Jones made a popular addition when he appeared, and in the run of shows preserved at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum and featured in this series, guests included Stringbean (David Akeman), who does "Hillbilly Fever" and "Eleven Cent Cotton"; Earl’s eight-year-old son, Randy Lynn Scruggs, who plays autoharp in his lap in several appearances; and Mother Maybelle Carter, who picks "Wildwood Flower" on guitar and "The Liberty Dance" on autoharp. Of special interest is a show from early 1962, in which seven-year-old Ricky Skaggs plays "Foggy Mountain Special" on his mandolin and comes back later in the show to play and sing "Ruby."
The Flatt & Scruggs repertoire, as represented on the preserved films, ranged broadly enough that repetition from week to week was not a problem. Certain songs did emerge as favorites, however. "Cabin on the Hill," a chart hit in 1959 and the band’s most successful release before "The Ballad of Jed Clampett," appears frequently. Scruggs’s showpiece "Cumberland Gap" also gets repeated performances. "Go Home," their chart hit from 1961, is a popular selection, as are "I Ain’t Gonna Work Tomorrow" (recorded in 1961) and the sentimental "The Homestead on the Farm" ("I Wonder How the Old Folks Are at Home.")

Like any good businessman, Flatt routinely used airtime to advance the band’s priorities. Not infrequently, he would announce that Flatt & Scruggs had dates available for bookings on an upcoming swing through North Carolina, say. "People from community organizations like the PTA, Boy Scouts, firemen, who wanted to raise money, they would get in touch with us," Scruggs recalled. Even more often, Flatt would plug the band’s latest songbook, the camera in close-up while a disembodied hand flipped through the book’s pages, Lester promising that there were "twenty-five or thirty pictures, and some of ’em are suitable for framing." Viewers sent their orders to P.O. Box 58, and the songbooks sold well—sometimes as many as a thousand a week when they were newly available, Scruggs remembered. When sales fell off, the band put another book into production.

At some point—no one remembers just when—the band stopped moving from city to city to do the shows live, and instead taped a month’s worth of shows in a single day at the WSM-TV studios in Nashville. They would record two shows in the morning, take a break, and continue with two shows in the evening. The films preserved by the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum and excerpted for presentation here appear to have been shot on two-inch videotape and transferred to film for distribution to affiliate TV stations. Sometime in 1962, the backdrop changes from a mock general store, with country hams hanging in the window, to that of a crudely drawn log cabin interior. An issue of Music Reporter, dated November 10, 1962, states that the show was being produced in Chattanooga at that time. Scruggs remembered that Flatt & Scruggs filmed the show in Chattanooga for a period, though he didn’t recall just when or why the band filmed there instead of at WSM-TV.

Just after the performances on these films, Flatt & Scruggs saw their fame spread nationwide through exposure on The Beverly Hillbillies, which began airing in the fall of 1962 with "The Ballad of Jed Clampett" as its theme song. The band made their historic appearance at Carnegie Hall—captured in a live recording—on December 8, 1962. In 1967, the hit film Bonnie & Clyde used "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" in its score, further adding to Flatt & Scruggs’s national profile. But it was these Martha White television shows that began the groundswell of national interest in the group. As Grand Ole Opry announcer Eddie Stubbs has pointed out, it’s one thing to hear the band’s recordings; it’s quite another to see them in action. These shows illustrate the band’s greatness as a well-oiled performing unit, playing at the peak of their powers. The group disbanded in 1969, and Flatt passed away on May 11, 1979, at sixty-four. "Those were good years," Scruggs said of the era captured on these shows. "Basically, we had a good time with each other." The camaraderie comes through on the small screen, and now the performances can be experienced again. "I’m glad to see them come out if they will be enjoyed a lot," Scruggs stated. "Well, there’s nothing like that on the air now, I don’t reckon."
— Jay Orr

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For research assistance, thanks first and foremost are due to Earl and Gary Scruggs, who answered our many questions about the Martha White shows and kept us on the right track. Thanks also to Neil Rosenberg, upon whose pioneering research we have drawn extensively. His book Bluegrass: A History (University of Illinois Press, 1985) and his annotations and discographical research for the Bear Family box sets Flatt & Scruggs: 1948–1959 and Flatt & Scruggs, 1959–1963 were invaluable. Thanks also go to Lance LeRoy and Les Leverett, who were there when it happened, and to Eddie Stubbs, a passionate Flatt & Scruggs authority.

For help on the home front, these Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum staffers deserve mention: Kyle Young, Carolyn Tate, LeAnn Bennett, John Gouge, Michael Gray, Kelli Hicks, Michael McCall, John Rumble, Lee Rowe, Alan Stoker, and former intern Laura Blankenship, who watched all of the shows and logged their contents.
This series is dedicated to the memory of our friend Louise Scruggs, who set a high standard for accuracy in research, and who continues to be an inspiration to us all.

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Song Notes

Volume 1

THE SONGS

August 1961 #1: A highlight of this episode is "Jimmie Brown the Newsboy," a Carter Family favorite, first recorded by Flatt & Scruggs in 1951. Former Foggy Mountain Boy Mac Wiseman registered his biggest country hit with the song in 1959. Also from 1951 comes the gospel quartet "Brother, I’m Getting Ready to Go." Earl played banjo on the original, but in this TV performance he plays guitar. Earl also plays guitar on a traditional instrumental, "Georgia Buck," which he would record in 1964. Paul Warren takes center stage four times during the show, singing lead on "Pig in the Pen," and playing the fiddle tunes "Shortnin’ Bread," "Durham’s Bull," and an unidentified selection that fills out the show. Flatt & Scruggs recorded the gospel song "Jesus Savior Pilot Me" as a quartet number in 1958. "Before I Met You," a waltz, comes from the repertoire of Joe "Cannonball" Lewis. Flatt & Scruggs recorded it as a trio number in 1955, and it was a Top Ten country hit for Carl Smith in 1956. "Cousin Jake" Tullock and "Uncle Josh" Graves team up for "Feast Here Tonight," recorded by the Monroe Brothers in 1938 as "Have a Feast Here Tonight."

February 1962: Flatt & Scruggs primed the market for release of their next single, "Just Ain’t," by performing it on this show. Recorded in May 1961, the song entered the country chart in April 1962, eventually climbing to #16. Hylo Brown does two songs he released as singles on Capitol: the traditional "John Henry" and an original number, "Lovesick and Sorrow." "Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down" and "Earl’s Breakdown" are Flatt & Scruggs classics. "Deal" was a mainstay of early country music. Bluegrass historian Neil Rosenberg has pointed out that the band’s 1957 recording of the song marks the first time Flatt & Scruggs used gospel-style quartet harmony in a secular song. "Earl’s Breakdown" was the first instrumental Scruggs recorded for Columbia Records, and it introduced his popular technique of shifting tuning during a song. Flatt & Scruggs recorded the gospel quartet "I’ll Never Be Lonesome Again" in 1959. "Precious Memories," sung a cappella, is an oft-recorded traditional hymn, but notable because Flatt & Scruggs did not record it for commercial release. "A Hundred Years from Now" comes from the same 1957 session as "Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down." Josh Graves is featured on "Down in the Valley" (also called "Birmingham Jail"), and Paul Warren and Earl Scruggs close out the show with a fiddle tune, "The Hollow Poplar."

Volume 2

THE SONGS

July 1961: "Polka on a Banjo" climbed to #12 on the country charts in 1960–61. The band recorded "Go Home," an Onie Wheeler tune, on May 23, 1961, only a few weeks before taping this TV show. It was even more successful, rising to #10 after its release in the fall of 1961. "Fire Ball Mail" (which Lester calls "Farewell Blues") comes from the pen of Fred Rose and was a Roy Acuff favorite; Flatt & Scruggs included it on their important 1961 album Foggy Mountain Banjo. "Foggy Mountain Special," first recorded in May 1954, ended up on another influential album, Foggy Mountain Jamboree. "I Won’t Be Hanging Around" dates from a session in July 1957. Country singer Skeeter Davis (next week’s guest on the show, Lester says) chose it for her 1968 RCA album I Love Flatt & Scruggs. "We’ll Meet Again Sweetheart" was one of four songs cut by Flatt & Scruggs at their very first recording session, in 1948, at Knoxville radio station WROL. "Walking in My Sleep" found its way into the repertoires of a number of artists, including Arthur Smith, the Prairie Ramblers, Acuff, and Al Dexter. Flatt & Scruggs never recorded the well-known hymn "Are You Washed in the Blood." For their cameo, "Cousin Jake" Tullock and "Uncle Josh" Graves choose a Cowboy Copas tune, "You Live in a World All Your Own." Paul Warren fills out the show with a fiddle number, "Dance All Night with a Bottle in My Hand."

August 1961 #2: What "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" is to banjo pickers, "Wildwood Flower" is to acoustic guitar players—the instrument’s anthem and proving ground. On this episode Flatt & Scruggs welcome country music pioneer Mother Maybelle Carter, who picks her trademark "Wildwood Flower" and, on autoharp, plays "The Liberty Dance" (the old fiddle tune "Liberty"). Scruggs acknowledged Carter’s influence on his music, and within weeks of this performance Flatt & Scruggs released the album Songs of the Famous Carter Family. The album contained the Carter Family song "Homestead on the Farm," performed here by the band with Carter, and introduced by Flatt as "I Wonder How the Old Folks Are at Home." "Have You Come to Say Goodbye" does not show up in the Flatt & Scruggs discography, though Flatt recorded it later as a solo artist. Neither does "I Dreamed about Mama Last Night," recorded by Hank Williams as "Luke the Drifter." "Down, Down, Down" is associated with the great country singer Rose Maddox. Paul Warren’s performance of "Durham’s Bull" was a Flatt & Scruggs favorite, as was "Down the Road," first recorded by the group in the spring of 1949 in Cincinnati. Warren winds up the show with "Over There."

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Film Sources

The release of these DVDs by Shanachie Entertainment and the Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum will give new life to what had been only a fond, shadowy memory. For many years, it was assumed that all of the many television performances by Flatt & Scruggs under Martha White sponsorship, beginning in 1955 and continuing until early 1969, had gone the way of dust.

In May 1989, however, a representative of Willis (Bill) and Katherine Graham contacted the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum on the couple’s behalf. Bill Graham was a prime mover in the Nashville-based Noble-Dury Advertising Agency, the company that for many years represented Martha White Mills. While cleaning out the garage at his house on Tyne Boulevard in Nashville, Graham discovered old film copies and videotapes of vintage country music shows, including twenty-four episodes of the Flatt & Scruggs Grand Ole Opry show, and he donated the shows to the museum. Up until that time, the general belief was that the Flatt & Scruggs shows all had been erased or taped over, and that no copies survived. To find twenty-four shows intact amounted to discovering a treasure-trove for Flatt & Scruggs fans.

Graham died in 1990 at the age of sixty-nine. A Memphis native, he and wife Katherine had moved to Nashville in 1946, when Graham accepted a job at WSM radio. He later joined Noble-Dury, and he eventually bought the company. In the 1960s, Graham established Show Biz Inc., a pioneering TV syndication company.
A versatile writer, Graham created many songs and jingles, including BMI award-winning hits for top country performers Billy Walker and Jim Ed Brown, and crafted the "Grand Ole Opry Tonight" theme. He also managed the careers of country artists through his company Top Billing Inc.

Soon after Graham’s film donation to the museum, another party contacted museum acquisitions chief Bob Pinson offering twelve more Flatt & Scruggs films—completely different installments—and Bob arranged to acquire those shows for the museum’s collection. Within a year, we went from believing none of the Flatt & Scruggs shows existed to having an abundance of episodes.

The preserved shows are films, recorded first on two-inch videotape, then transferred to film for broad distribution. Many were stored in metal cans that carried stickers from a Chicago TV station, WTTW, where the videotape-to-film transfers might have taken place. Other stickers indicated that some of the films might have been processed at MPL (Motion Picture Labs) in Memphis.

In recent months, with grant funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the films have been inspected and re-housed. A few have been transferred to Beta SP and shown in the museum’s Ford Theater, but most have not been seen since their original broadcast.

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