Description of Flatt & Scruggs at the Grand Ole' Opry, 1971

Hello Readers.  The following long paragraph came from a book entitled, "Ruby Red," written by William Price Fox which was published by, J. B. Lippincott Company in 1971.  I found the paragraph in the February/March 1979 edition of American Heritage Magazine within an article about the last days of the Grand Ole' Opry at the Ryman Auditorium.  I found Mr. Fox' description to be so strong that I felt I had to share it with you.  Please note that I do not have permission from the author or the publishing company, but hope they both will enjoy seeing these words again in print.  J. B. Lippincott Company is not in business any longer. 

Preceding the paragraph below the author wrote in the American Heritage article the following: "When I was in Nashville the last time, I walked through the old Ryman, trying to remember my favorite performance.  The church pews are still slick from the years of wear since since Captain Tom Ryman had them carved for Reverend Jones, and the sunlight streaming through the high and pointed red, yellow and blue tabernacle windows still washes color over the Confederate Gallery, the front rows and across the big stage.  The watchman's dog was sleeping in the center aisle, and as I moved around him, the old wooden floor creaked.  Thinking back, it wasn't hard to remember one night back in the sixties when Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs were riding together on the Martha White portion of the show.  I was sitting in the orchestra in the middle of the fried chicken, the sausage biscuits, the beer.  I took no notes that night because I needed none.  But later I jotted some down at the Alamo  Plaza and still later they found their way into the novel I was working on.  While this description doesn't catch the music, because I know of no way to do that, it does point to it as it goes winging by, which may be all we can ever do."

Now, please enjoy the paragraph and see if you can't put yourself right there, the excitement, the joy.....

" Flatt and Scruggs and "The Foggy Mountain Boys" came on like race horses, steel sharp and right as railroad spikes.  The high pitched banjo climbed up on top, the low fiddle growl held at the side, while the steady driving dobro underneath pushed it all together and straight out at us.  It curled and skipped, danced and broke and raced forward, ricocheting off sheet metal onto some wilder level where heat lightning flashed and forked and waited.  "The Foggy Mountain Boys" held the frenzied bridge for eight straight bars and Earl Scruggs tipped his white hat and stepped in tight.  The rest backed.  He came on somber-faced, expressionless, placid and picking like a madman.  High, shrill, and quick as a lizard.  His jaw was set and his eyes were riveted to the twin spider hands as his ten fingers with twenty different things to do walked back and forth on the ebony-black and mother-of-pearl five string frets.  He went to the top of where he was going, held it, and then slid down in a machine-gun shower of sharp G, C and A notes that moved like a ribbon and streaked out over the crowd to be heard a country mile away.  He bowed quickly and stepped back as Lester Flatt, his guitar up high with the box to his ear, moved in.  He sang with his eyes closed, his head cocked for range, and threw out his nasal perfect tones in a short sowbelly arc that rose and fell gathering in all the mountain folds, wood smoke and purple twilights of the Cumberlands.  He was unconscious of the crowd and the back-up men, of himself.  He heard only the music which raised him up high on his toes and twisted him around until his jaw was pointing to the top of the long curved ceiling.  No one in the crowd spoke, coughed of shifted.  They strained forward, not wanting to miss a beat, a sound, a flash.  It was an old Carter song,"I Still Think the Good Things Outweigh the Bad."  It wasn't gospel but the words hung in the heat and the hundred year old oak of the Ryman, it was gospel for Lester Flatt.  The back-up men moved in to pick him up.  They were dark-eyed and haunted-looking under their big shadow-throwing hats.  Too many years and nights on the road had ground them down, but it had sharpened them and their music into the close grained group they were.  They heard each other and they listened.  They blocked for one another and dovetailed right, building, breaking, and backing up with tight close counterpoints.  The fiddle player swooped in with wild slides and dips, stops, and double stops and high, close, screech work at the top of the neck.  They peaked and held, and then easing off they stepped aside as Mister Earl Scruggs moved back in.  He cranked the D tuner down, then up on the peg head and slicing into a fresh key brought the house down with his blinding showering finish. . . . . The crowd rose, shouting, whistling, stomping and rebel-yelling and the flash bulbs exploded from every angle and I was screaming louder than any of them."

I hope you've enjoyed reading Mr. Fox' words.  I intend to find a copy of this book and read it avidly from cover to cover. I found this to be a wonderful description of a moment lost in time, but forever remembered in the printed word.

"NUFF SAID!"