Lester Flatt
Encyclopedia
Lester Raymond Flatt was a bluegrass music
Bluegrass music
Bluegrass music is a form of American roots music, and a sub-genre of country music. It has mixed roots in Scottish, English, Welsh and Irish traditional music...

ian and guitarist and mandolinist, best known for his membership in the Bluegrass duo The Foggy Mountain Boys, also known as "Flatt and Scruggs," with banjo picker Earl Scruggs
Earl Scruggs
Earl Eugene Scruggs is an American musician noted for perfecting and popularizing a 3-finger banjo-picking style that is a defining characteristic of bluegrass music...

. Flatt's career spanned multiple decades; besides his work with Scruggs, he released multiple solo and collaboration works. Flatt also served as a member of Bill Monroe
Bill Monroe
William Smith Monroe was an American musician who created the style of music known as bluegrass, which takes its name from his band, the "Blue Grass Boys," named for Monroe's home state of Kentucky. Monroe's performing career spanned 60 years as a singer, instrumentalist, composer and bandleader...

's band during the 1940s.

Biography

Flatt was born in Duncan's Chapel, Overton County, Tennessee, to Nannie Mae Haney and Isaac Columbus Flatt. A singer and guitarist, he first came to prominence as a member of Bill Monroe
Bill Monroe
William Smith Monroe was an American musician who created the style of music known as bluegrass, which takes its name from his band, the "Blue Grass Boys," named for Monroe's home state of Kentucky. Monroe's performing career spanned 60 years as a singer, instrumentalist, composer and bandleader...

's Blue Grass Boys in 1945. In 1948 he started a band with fellow Monroe alumnus Earl Scruggs
Earl Scruggs
Earl Eugene Scruggs is an American musician noted for perfecting and popularizing a 3-finger banjo-picking style that is a defining characteristic of bluegrass music...

, and for the next twenty years Flatt and Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys
Foggy Mountain Boys
The Foggy Mountain Boys were an influential bluegrass band founded by Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs in 1948, shortly after leaving Bill Monroe’s band. They recorded and performed together up until 1969.-Biography:...

 were one of the most successful bands in bluegrass. When they parted ways in 1969, Flatt formed a new group, the Nashville Grass
Nashville Grass
The Nashville Grass was a bluegrass band founded by Lester Flatt in 1969, after the end of his partnership with Earl Scruggs. Flatt hired most of the Foggy Mountain Boys for his new band. Over the years, as with most bluegrass bands, there were numerous changes in personnel, including the addition...

, hiring most of the Foggy Mountain Boys. His role as lead singer and rhythm guitar player in each of these seminal ensembles helped define the sound of traditional bluegrass music. He created a role in the Bluegrass Boys later filled by the likes of Jimmy Martin
Jimmy Martin
Jimmy Martin was an American bluegrass musician, known as the "King of Bluegrass".-Early years:Born James H. Martin in Sneedville, Tennessee. Jimmy Martin was born into the hard farming life of rural East Tennessee. He grew up near Sneedville, singing in church and with friends from surrounding...

, Mac Wiseman
Mac Wiseman
Malcolm B. Wiseman , better known as Mac Wiseman, is an American bluegrass singer, nicknamed The Voice with a Heart. The bearded singer is one of the cult figures of bluegrass....

, Peter Rowan and Del McCoury
Del McCoury
Delano Floyd McCoury is an American bluegrass musician. As leader of the Del McCoury Band, he plays guitar and sings lead vocals along with his two sons, Ronnie McCoury and Rob McCoury, who play mandolin and banjo respectively...

. His rich lead voice is unmistakable in hundreds of bluegrass standards.
He is also remembered for his library of compositions. The Flatt songbook looms titanic for any student of American acoustic music. He continued to record and perform with that group until his death in 1979 of heart failure, after a prolonged period of ill health. Flatt was posthumously inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1985 with Scruggs. He was posthumously made an inaugural inductee into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Honor
International Bluegrass Music Hall of Honor
Induction to the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame, called the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Honor from its creation in 1991 through 2006, is managed by the International Bluegrass Music Association, and the Hall itself is maintained at the International Bluegrass Music Museum in...

 in 1991. His hometown of Sparta, Tennessee
Sparta, Tennessee
Sparta is a city in White County, Tennessee, United States. The population was 4,599 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of White County. It was the hometown of Lester Flatt of the bluegrass music legends Flatt and Scruggs.-Geography:...

, held a bluegrass festival in his honor for a number of years, before being discontinued a few years prior to the death of the traditional host, resident Everette Paul England; Lester Flatt Memorial Bluegrass Day is part of the annual Liberty Square Celebration held in Sparta.

Flatt and Scruggs were ranked #24 on CMT
CMT
- Medicine :* California mastitis test* Certified Massage Therapist* Cervical motion tenderness, a sign of pelvic inflammatory disease* Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease* Chemically modified tetracyclines* Circus Movement Tachycardia...

's 40 Greatest Men of Country Music
in 2003. They performed "The Ballad of Jed Clampett
The Ballad of Jed Clampett
"The Ballad of Jed Clampett" was the theme song for The Beverly Hillbillies TV show and movie, providing the back story for the series. The song was written and composed by Paul Henning, and sung by Jerry Scoggins, who was accompanied by bluegrass musicians Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs...

", which was used as the theme for the television show The Beverly Hillbillies
The Beverly Hillbillies
The Beverly Hillbillies is an American situation comedy originally broadcast for nine seasons on CBS from 1962 to 1971, starring Buddy Ebsen, Irene Ryan, Donna Douglas, and Max Baer, Jr....

.

Discography

Year Album US Country Label
1970 Flatt Out Columbia
One and Only Nugget
1971 Flatt On Victor RCA Victor
Lester 'N' Mac (w/ Mac Wiseman
Mac Wiseman
Malcolm B. Wiseman , better known as Mac Wiseman, is an American bluegrass singer, nicknamed The Voice with a Heart. The bearded singer is one of the cult figures of bluegrass....

)
42
1972 Kentucky Ridgerunner
On the Southbound (w/ Mac Wiseman)
Foggy Mountain Breakdown
1973 Country Boy 45
Over the Hills to the Poorhouse (w/ Mac Wiseman)
1974 Before You Go
Live Bluegrass Festival (w/ Bill Monroe
Bill Monroe
William Smith Monroe was an American musician who created the style of music known as bluegrass, which takes its name from his band, the "Blue Grass Boys," named for Monroe's home state of Kentucky. Monroe's performing career spanned 60 years as a singer, instrumentalist, composer and bandleader...

)
The Best

Further reading

  • Rosenberg, Neil V. (1998). "Flatt & Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys". In The Encyclopedia of Country Music. Paul Kingsbury, Editor. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 173–4.
  • Samuelson, Dave. (1998). "Lester Flatt & the Nashville Grass". In The Encyclopedia of Country Music. Paul Kingsbury, Editor. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 173.

External links

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