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Earl Scruggs posing with the Bluegrass Special while visiting his brother Horace at his home in Florida in 1946. // Photo Courtesy of the Gardner Webb University Special CollectionsEarl Scruggs posing with the Bluegrass Special while visiting his brother Horace at his home in Florida in 1946. // Photo Courtesy of the Gardner Webb University Special Collections

Remembering Earl Scruggs at 100

[Editor’s Note:  In our January, 2024 issue we ran an article about the new Earl Scruggs exhibit at the Earl Scruggs Center in Shelby, North Carolina.  Part of that exhibit includes information from a 17,000 word document that Earl had written about his life.  In our previous article, we included a few excerpts from that…

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Allen Mills // Photo by Phil Straw

A True Gentleman

The 86-year-old didn’t play music as a child, but picked it up a little later in life. In 1959, after a stint in the Navy, he came to Danville, Virginia, and decided to take up music in his spare time.  “Old friends that I went to school with were plunkers. I wanted to be a…

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The barn with its new donated roof. //  Photo by Jack Poston

Bluegrass from a Coffee Can

The 60th Anniversary of Suwanee, Georgia’s Everett’s Music Barn “We had a lot of company” Rena (Everett) McDaniel reflected. “It seemed normal to stay up until four, five, or six o’clock on Sunday morning because there were still people here playing…right outside my bedroom door.” She was relating childhood memories of her life in the…

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Triple Shot

Growing up in Georgia, Reynolds liked rock and roll and performed around her home. While in college she discovered that country and bluegrass were the kinds of music she wanted to sing. In the 2000s, she moved to the Washington, D.C., area, found a home performing with local bluegrass bands and teamed up with banjoist…

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Lead and Iron

Chicago-based Henhouse Prowlers call themselves the Bluegrass Ambassadors, for in the past 16 years or so the band has toured over 25 countries in Europe, Africa, and Asia and has even traveled to Siberia. The Henhouse Prowlers are Jon Goldfine (bass, vocals), Chris Dollar (guitar, vocals), Jake Howard (mandolin, vocals) and Ben Wright (banjo, vocals)….

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Life’s A Gamble

“Banjer” Dan Mazer is originally from the Washington, D.C., area and grew up playing banjo in the manner of Earl Scruggs. He was mostly known as a solo artist, performing and busking around the area at local jams and venues. He relocated to California a number of years ago, and continues as a mostly acoustic…

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