cjwit - Posted - 03/13/2026:  04:21:14

I've been enjoying making my way through the Flatt and Scruggs Martha White shows, especially in the fiddle tunes with Earl's banjo backup [1]. The other day, I came across the album Old Sport with John Hartford and Texas Shorty [2]. Plus, I've always liked the approach Hartford takes to backing his own vocals on banjo [3]. I'm thinking of the somewhat syncopated walking counterpoints that have that easy flow (not technically easy, but well-paced).

Two questions: First, any suggestions for other great takes on this kind of fiddle/three finger backup sound? Second, what's the pre-Scruggs history of this version of contrapuntal three finger accompaniment? Is it a Scruggs innovation or does it grow out of some of the three finger styles that he was hearing locally? Or is it mostly just standard bluegrass backup that sounds different because it's not so fast? Thanks!

[1]: youtu.be/_X1pzObvr9s?si=sXBmOW...mp;t=3425

[2]: youtu.be/nVxNbQdLiCU?si=m6ARTMBFPeUFLKPJ

[3]: youtu.be/-rPME6PcmiQ?si=yWsvlW...&t=12

Bob Buckingham - Posted - 03/13/2026:  04:56:01

I did a recording session where the fiddler told me that the tune we were working on was a "scratch track" so it would change. I though back to when I was just getting into music an old fiddler liked three finger on some tunes instead of clawhammer as it opened it up for him to be more expressive. So I laid down a three finger banjo track for that cut which rhythmically supported the fiddle without getting to the melody. That is what Hartford did. He left the music open behind the fiddle but supportive at the same time. You will notice he strips away many Scruggs licks and lets it flow.

cjwit - Posted - 03/13/2026:  05:42:01

Yeah, I have noticed that. It's a great sound and it's a fun way to play. When I'm the fiddler and playing over that kind of banjo, I love the space and the counterpoint. Is your recording something available to hear?

dpgrant87 - Posted - 03/13/2026:  05:59:59

CJ,

This kind of banjo backup is not unique to Scruggs. In interviews, he recounted hearing Snuffy Jenkins and extended family play three-finger banjo and fiddle duets. The pre-Scruggs history revolves around the old time String Band traditions in southern Appalachia. I recommend listening to duos like Tommy Jarrell and Fred Cockerham or Joe and Odell Thompson. You can hear more of the Piedmont and old-time styles that Scruggs would have heard growing up.

youtube.com/watch?v=mOYgOcih-_M

youtube.com/watch?v=Avo0M1JG6bg

Lots of great Modern examples of this type of backup, and Murphy Henry's Fiddle Backup DVD is an excellent way to start getting into it.

-Dan

Ira Gitlin - Posted - 03/13/2026:  06:27:33

In the North Carolina Ramblers, I think Charlie Poole's banjo was less a lead instrument than a texture/accompaniment instrument, behind both vocals and fiddle. While he was using a three-finger technique, it was squarer less syncopated than that of later players, and more akin to classic banjo in some ways.

youtube.com/watch?v=1Pv0bbytwzg

cjwit - Posted - 03/14/2026:  10:28:15

When I think of Tommy J and Fred Cockerham, I think of a very different kind of fiddle backup. This quasi-Texas thing feels separate (though certainly related and not completely separate).



I hadn’t thought about Charlie Poole, but that’s certainly on the spectrum. I could see a move from there with a “let’s add that guitar run” to “hmm, these rolls sound great.”

I wonder, are there folks understood to be intermediaries in this move from Poole and banjo as an oom-pah machine to the syncopated proto-bluegrass roll sound? Is it folks like Snuffy Jenkins? The end of this one has him playing more of the melody than what I'm thinking of.

youtu.be/HgDYKoOeSOE?t=288&...a2GABWksm

Edited by - cjwit on 03/14/2026 10:35:37

RB3 - Posted - 03/14/2026:  11:13:39

Here's one of my favorites.

I'm sure that J. D. Crowe appreciated the accolades that resulted from his solos, but I know that he got more satisfaction from his accompaniment of other musicians.

Twinkle Little Star - Richard Greene & J. D. Crowe

 

cjwit - Posted - 03/14/2026:  18:31:34

What a great version. I was thinking about learning this tune on fiddle after hearing it a few times recently. I’m going to check this album out tomorrow, thanks for sharing!

writerrad - Posted - 03/14/2026:  18:41:53

The best person to talk to would be Bob Carlin.  He was in Hartford's band, and then he was road manager for Hartford's band.  He got to know Earl Scruggs while he held that position and has written a wonderful book about John Hartford and a wonderful book called "What Earl Heard" assessing the real roots of Earl Scruggs in the music that was being played in his community.  You can find Carlin's work on several web sites that people in Earl's community put  up to document Earl's music and contemporry musicians Earl learned from and the musical action going on. Even though he has a total personal respect and admiration for both Earl and for Hartford,  Bob is a hard hitter, a totally objective,and scientific.  

Bob will get you started.    Read his books on both Hartford and Earl.  You might want to familiarize yourself with Patrick Huber's Linthead Stomp as well..

Edited by - writerrad on 03/14/2026 18:43:13

writerrad - Posted - 03/14/2026:  18:49:32

quote:Yeah that is the interesting thing about Poole.  The OTTOW this week s the Baltimore fire song, a tune that I have been playing since around 1964, but either as a guitarist and then as a banjoist in a band.  Poole's stuff was holding together the band, not playing lead what so ever.  So there is almst no idea it gives me with this song I have played since I was a child in my parents house (78 now) as a solo banjo tune.

  However, if you have the two-lp then 2 cd Carolina Banjo recording set that Bob Carlin collected back in the 80s or 90s, you will hear one recording Poole's son put out that is getting mighty close.    ''

There is also Snuffy Jenkins, and so on.  Still Earl had a certain snap and swing to him especially in the early stuff.  Folks who have discussed it with him tell me Earl would tell you as a young blood he was intrigued with what people like Charlie Christian and Blind Boy fuller were doing on their string that Monroe could pick up on.  To me people need to listen to the two live versions of Blue Yodel #4 with Monroe and a Young Earl going up against each other.

It is important to recognize the other finger style players that surrounded Earl, but there is just pure geneious, and a whole lot of musical dedication and good listen, and heart that produced the great music Earl produced. 

---

Originally posted by Ira Gitlin

In the North Carolina Ramblers, I think Charlie Poole's banjo was less a lead instrument than a texture/accompaniment instrument, behind both vocals and fiddle. While he was using a three-finger technique, it was squarer less syncopated than that of later players, and more akin to classic banjo in some ways.



youtube.com/watch?v=1Pv0bbytwzg

---

Edited by - writerrad on 03/14/2026 18:52:12

cjwit - Posted - 03/17/2026:  08:11:38

Thanks writerrad, these books are all on my list. I think you mentioned Carlin's on Earl in another thread and the others are all things in the pile. Sadly, the piles keep getting taller rather than shorter.

> It is important to recognize the other finger style players that surrounded Earl, but there is just pure geneious, and a whole lot of musical dedication and good listen, and heart that produced the great music Earl produced.

This is the core of my question: having not listened to enough of this style from *just before* Earl's playing, it's increasingly sounding like his syncopation is a major part of his innovation, even outside of the fast-paced bluegrass-song-rolling-accompaniment-or-instrumental-burner framework. That sound ("Foggy Mountain Breakdown" and friends) seems to have so much ink/so many bits and bites spilled about it, but this slightly slower-paced fiddle backup sound feels pretty distinct in style and purpose to me as a listener and player. It's great stuff!

writerrad - Posted - 03/17/2026:  10:47:10

Bob Carlin had a collection called Carolina Banjo. I only knew it as an old record album and then CD set. It includes a procession of Carolina players including finger pickers and starting from the mid 1930s you can see a progression that a genius would take to Earl Scruggs. It isnt the finger picking, but matching the finger picking and the band in a kind of synchronized swing that is the basis of real bluegrass.

Even Earl's first recordings with Monroe they are working at it but not all the way there with the swing that is realy the basis of Bluegrass. People who listen to bluegrass more than I do can intelligently disagree with what was the first recorded track that purely expressed the style as something new, It was not just Earl Scruggs' banjo playing, but the way that the rhythm section provided a platform for it, as well as the way that other soloists especially the fiddlers rose to the occaision.

Likewise, the rhythm playing both by Monroe, Lester, and the much neglected Howard Watts makes a progression to provide a platform for both Earl and Monroe and the other singers. How the band does that which it did not originally do and which Monroe's recordings in the 40s did not always do and never did to the complete success they get to by 47 is important. Something crytalized that was not there before in a way that if you listen to Armstrong's Hot Fives, after he has left Oliver, something is there that Bluegrass stands for was created, figured out, hammered out under Monroe's leadership that was not there before. And they got better at it.

A nodal point is also that when Lester and Earl leave the band largely because Monroe could not pay them enough to support their growing families, and the two men find each other and decide instead of leaving music to get their own band and practically the whole other band but Monroe comes with them, they go off and set up the same kind of band trying to perfect the same kind of sound, Monroe eventually did the same. A nodal point is that at first Monroe did hire an electric steel guitar player for a month or two before he got Reno in the band. Monroe could have gone in another direction to.

It is really the decision that what both Monroe and Scruggs did creating a sound and a way for a band to function that is important, and brought bluegrass into being as a new genre of music and a new way to do things. I know at least one serious scholar of bluegrass who says it really not until Jimmy Martin's bands that you had a pure Bluegrass band tht was not just a spin off of Monroe's band, although Martin worked for Monroe too, that you have a genre.

The cross polination is pretty important. There are all these stories especially on the banjo of the Stanley Brothers and Flatt and Scruggs figuring out on what small country two lane road their band buses might cross each other at 3am in the morning on the way to gigs, and stopping and Earl sharing his approach with Ralph.

Again, it is also crucial to look at parallels in the music business, especially at the change that went on after WWII away from the big bands, to small groups featuring soloists, or the Bepop of small groups featuring super soloists. It has a lot to do with the shift of the purpose of both jazz and country music from being dance music to it being show music where people go to listen to a band and see a band, rather than to dance to it.

Only in the later 50s and 60s did people marketing Bluegrass emphasize its link with older traditional music, in large part to market Bluegrass to folk music revivalist audiences and hit the mainstream. It was something brand new, launched by new young musicians, to fit into a new working environment for musicians, and a new audience. Understanding it is easier if you look at parallel developments in Black popular music, in jazz, and in the massive changes that took place in this country during and after WWII and into the 1950s.

writerrad - Posted - 03/17/2026:  11:26:39

What has to be clear is this is band music. You could not get to bluegrass music as a solo banjo player, a solo guitar player, a solo fiddler, or a solo bass player. You really cannot get to bluegrass without a band, and without a band with a certain cooperative approach, though I am not sure how much was cooperation and how much was teaching and preaching by Monroe.,

Bluegrass is a highly disciplined creation by advanced musicians. It is NOT folk music. It was not created by amateurs picking in their house because there was nothing good on television that night. It was created by world class musicians at the top of their game when they were young men in their 20s and 30s, and it was created by professional performers who were working on the best possible venue in their genre, the Grand Ole Opry who already had had record contracts for a decade in Monroe's case.

Too much analysis of where bluegrass comes from and how it came together comes from the mistaken approach that it came together as a progression of folk music. It was put together by genius professional musicians who were trying to fight their way to keeping at the top of the professional music genre they were part of in record making, radio broadcasting, and doing live shows in a changing world. The old barn dance or house dance was dead, and playing on the radio, at a place like the Ryman, or on top of the concrete conession building at a drive in theater was where the action was.

Figuring out bluegrass as a whole, really has little to do with folk traditions, but with what leaders who liked to make a payroll, players who were young married men with new children, did to keep roofs over their head, gas in their cars, and not have to play other forms of music they did not like. For banjo players and mandolin players, it was a way to remain employed as a professional musician. Cantwell explains that Bill Monroe seriously considered becoming an electric guitar player and being the singer in what would be called a five piece band., None of what Bluegrass has become or what it was initially had to be. It was the product of the creativity and initiative and genius of Monroe and his abiity to recognize what musicians like Lester and Earl, and Chubby, and Howard Watts had to offer.

Too much about bluegrass tends to be wrapped in hoary unfounded claims of tradition, but its emergence was solely due to the creativity and courage of 4 or 5 guys and their ability to invent something brand new.

Good parallels to understand what Monroe et alia did in creating bluegrass can be found by looking not at folk traditions and such, but looking at the patterns that music makers in Rhythm and Blues, Western Swing, Jazz, and even Polka music, did over the same years that the creative geniuses created bluegrass. The parallels of what these other music genre did int he face of the same social, economic and technological changes over the same years can be a good guide for a scholar who wants to analyze bluegrass. It does not undermine the achievement of heroes like Monroe and Earl Scruggs, but it does help us understand their greatness and courage. It can inspire us to feel gratful and thankful for their achievements, and realize how we all can contribute to the world through music.

writerrad - Posted - 03/17/2026:  11:48:37

Three finger banjo playing was one of the most widely played forms of banjo playing on the Earth in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century.  It was hardly an invention of Earl Scruggs.  Queen Victoria of England was a particular fan of it is in its classic banjo style, and sent her two sons who became Kings and her daughter who did not to take lessons with the Afro-Canadian Bohee brothers to learn in.

People I know who knew Tommy Jarrell and Fred Cockerham and others of their set tell the story that their new developments in old time player were more of a response to what Bluegrass was doing in regard to the power but going another direction.   Very much of Creed's innovations were attempts to adapt to open back banjos what Creed saw as innovations in the Gibson Resonator Banjos.  The typical working old time band in the  real Round Peake area always included someone playing a Gibson RB often in the Scruggs style.

The Round Peake style was not really a precursor to the Scruggs Style, but an attempt by musicians to adapt to the same pressures that Monroe created banjo around, who were in strong part influenced by Bluegrass after Bluegrass had become a widespread music.  They hardly saw themselves as being counter posed to bluegrass.  Kenny Baker in particular was a very good friend of Tommy Jarrell.  People I know who frequented the house of Jarrell in the 60s and 70s have told me that Baker would show up for Tommy's music parties, but in the respectful way a true musical genius would, Baker would just listen and not try to steal the show!

writerrad - Posted - 03/17/2026:  12:00:32

quote:

I will send you Carlin's Carolina Banjo set if you send me a straight email.  When you get to Charlie Poole's son (Charlie drank himself to death around 1932/33) and can hear bluegrass coming.  Bluegrass is not about the 3 finger picking or even the rolls, but the rhythm and the way the rhythm is put together by the whole band that the banjo rides.  Bluegrass is sophisticated band music that works when all the components are good, especially the rhythm section.  It can be a good experience if you have the time to listen to the Bluegrass band from the 40s before Earl, and then listen to the band after Earl, and see something new and different crystallizing in 1946 and 1947.  Monroe, Chubby, Earl, Lester, and Howard figured it out in the heat of battle of trying to sound good ont the Opry,  They created it. 

Of course, there were parallel developments in every other form of music.  It is instructive to look at what was happening in parallel to people making Western swing, jazz,  even ethnic music like Polka and Tex Mex.   People often do not do this because of the hoax that Bluegrass is some kind of roots folk music and not the creation of top notch, life-long, professional musicians, performing in a commercial record making and show giving environment.

Edited by - writerrad on 03/17/2026 12:00:56

writerrad - Posted - 03/17/2026:  12:15:10

quote:I would look outside the narrow confines of various local banjo players.  People I know who have talked to Earl Scruggs about this say he might mention listening to Charlie Christian with Goodman on the one side, listening to to Blind Boy Fuller, like everyone else in North Carolina in the 1930s and so on.  The false analogy to bad ideas about how folklore research is done is that in the era of mass communications, radios etc that the issue is interpersonal transmission of musical approaches, rather than  this stuff is now on the radio and on records.

So Monroe is thinking about how can he survive as a creative musician with his particuar feel and taste for such things in a musical and general world that is changing in which a traditional string band that plays dances is not going to make a cent any more.  Earl is part of a generation that is growing upw ith Swing int he air, listening to Goodman and Christian and Blind Boy fuller.  Earl's family is oriented to the reality of banjo as an advanced music, so while he is 14 or 15 his dear mother, a widow, buys Earl a Gibson RB.

We're no longer talking about a world where the personal influences of a "folk community" or of musicians that you can hear directly play live are important.  The best thing again is to read Carlin's  "What Earl Heard" and listen to different banjoists he mentions in that book..  

You have to situate Earl and the Monroe in the worlds they actually lived in which were not world of personal or community folk exchange, but a world of electronic media in records and radio where you could sit in your house in Shelby and hear Benny Goodman play from the Rainbow Room in the Empire State building.

writerrad - Posted - 03/17/2026:  12:28:21

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ira Gitlin

In the North Carolina Ramblers, I think Charlie Poole's banjo was less a lead instrument than a texture/accompaniment instrument, behind both vocals and fiddle. While he was using a three-finger technique, it was squarer less syncopated than that of later players, and more akin to classic banjo in some ways.



youtube.com/watch?v=1Pv0bbytwzg

---

Poole was an explicit player of the guitar style of banjo which Eli started calling classic banjo in the 70s.   Poole wanted the recording companies to record him playing pieces that Van Eps and other players of classic banjo had recorded or written in the 1910s but the record companies told him that his hill billy recordings sold much better.   I believe there is one Van Eps piece that they let him record.  Much of how this was is faithfully recorded in Patrick Huber's LINTHEAD STOMP  a book that belongs in every home.  Again Bob Carlin's "What Earl Heard" book is indispensable to understand how widespread this form of banjo playing was particularly in the cotton mill areas where Earl and Poole--both cotton mill workers--lived.  The corporatist  side of the Mill Villages included music instruction, and if there was banjo instruction it was in the guitar style of banjo people like Joel call classic banjo.

Baltimore fire is the Old Time Tune of the Week on Banjo Hangout and I have tried to get our local old time jam to play it, but to do it in the proper Poole style, you really need people who are disciplined in the roles of each instrument.    Poole's style was not at all the old time string band style we are most familiar with, but a highly arranged approach.  I think Paley once called it old time chamber music!  On the other hand,  I think people who play bluegrass--not only jam bluegrass but in real bluegrass bands with defined roles for each instrument--find what Poole did to be more explainable.  The banjo never takes leads, but is knitting together both rhythm and harmony with rolls .  The guitar stays in its range, the fiddle plays the melody,   It is not spontaneous music but arranged music.

Edited by - writerrad on 03/17/2026 12:31:50

cjwit - Posted - 03/17/2026:  21:56:31

Thanks, Tony, for all of this. I appreciate what you're saying and it aligns with my understanding of the relationships between bluegrass as a moment, bluegrass as a thing that people talk about, and the often underrepresented role of professional musicianship in that process.

Now, bands can certainly do more than one thing and when I hear those banjo/fiddle duets on the Martha White show, they sound distinct from the Monroe/Flatt and Scruggs/Stanley Brothers tree. I have no reason to argue that they are categorically outside, mostly because categories don't serve this discussion much. But as a technique for backing fiddle, that sounds different for various technical and musical reasons—and not just in the banjo, the Texas style fiddle playing that goes so well with that style of banjo is not the same as bluegrass band-style fiddle playing either. Why? Different conversation, I suppose, but it'd be interesting to dig into details (I have some hunches).

It reminds me of how Texas style guitar backup for the fiddle is also fairly distinct from other styles of guitar accompaniment. Of course, that gets pulled into so much: Western swing, then out from there. And that is also clearly related to professionalism and musical cross-pollination, if you will.

I guess I'm saying that I wish backup playing got some more attention. The Crowe comment above about how he was proud of that, despite the focus on his solo playing... that makes sense. That kind of playing is ton of fun, whether I'm on fiddle or banjo.

writerrad - Posted - 03/18/2026:  08:43:28

Not sure exactly what you mean by Texas style, although i think you\ mean more as in Western Swing or in the Texas fiddle tradition, also in other parts  of "the old Southwest as in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Oklahoma, there is much more of a mix in fiddling and other music to popular music of the time.

   People often play in keys like C and F and even B flat.  The tenor banjo and even the piano is sometimes used, Accompaniment by tenor banjo or plectrum banjo is included.  LOL on top th is the East Texas Sereneaders who on some recordings had two cellos along with a tenor banjo and several fiddlers. 

The five string banjo is almost never used,   On guitar you are supposed to play sock rhythm chords  in harmonic progression with passing chords. Tenor and Plectrum banjos are going to be around .  Guitarists are more likely to used archtop "jazz" guitars than flat tops, and make more use of harmonize chord progressions, play spread chords, rather than first position bass runs.  

There was just  higher influence of what passed for popular music, band music, and Mexican music, and a higher level of formal musical knowledge.

cjwit - Posted - 03/30/2026:  04:56:29

writerrad It looks like I lost track of this thread! Sorry 'bout that.

By Texas style, I mean the kind of contest-style fiddling most often associated with folks like Benny Thomasson and the like, but that shows up elsewhere, too. When I hear the Earl/Paul Warren sound in those Martha White shows, that's what I think of. The fiddle is very much in line with that Texas contest style, but you have Earl's syncopated banjo instead of the army of guitarists and/or piano that you'd get at Weiser. (I'm referring to things like this: youtube.com/watch?v=MvOWN46qW7A)

I know that it's not only for contests in Texas, but that's how I hear folks refer to that specific style of fiddle playing. It's not really the same as playing a break in a vocal bluegrass tune, nor is it old time. It's heavily varied solo playing with turns in a jam that don't align with old time jam expectations. And the backup is always great, whether it be guitars playing extended harmonies (moving inversions of 7 and 9 chords) or this kind of fantastic banjo backup that I started the conversation by asking about. The fact that you don't hear these banjo backup styles so much in the Texas tradition (as I'm calling it for ease here) outside of the examples given in this discussion so far and the instances that grew from the influence of these players is interesting to me! It works so well.

mmuussiiccaall - Posted - 03/30/2026:  06:11:20

Accomplished musicians play what they hear in their heads. Earl used the 135 chord tones and for spice,the three blue notes flat third, flat five and flat seven plus the sixth degree of the scale for the country sound. Hartford used all those plus major seven,suspended 4 and major seconds which about covers the whole spectrum of the scale,10 of the 12 possible notes.