Blue Ridge  Music Trails of North Carolina

Website Opens Up Doors to Heart of Bluegrass Bluegrass music was basically created in Nashville in 1945 when Kentucky native Bill Monroe asked North Carolina fiddler Jim Shumate if he knew of any powerful banjo players who could keep up with his up-tempo music. That is when Shumate introduced Monroe to the innovative three-finger banjo picker Earl Scruggs, who was also from North Carolina. Scruggs melded quickly with the rest of Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys, which included Tennessee’s Lester Flatt along with fiddler Chubby Wise and bass player and comedian Howard Watts, who were both from Florida.  In other words, Monroe had all of the pieces of his new uptown-derived-from-backwoods style of American roots music in place except for that last crucial piece, which was the Tar Heel State brilliance that was Earl Scruggs.  Then, you can insert into that lineup the Florida roots music scene that produced both Chubby Wise on the fiddle and the bass playing and comedy of