Flatt, Lester

Flatt, Lester (Raymond)

(born June 19, 1914, Duncan's Chapel, near Sparta, Tenn., U.S.—died May 11, 1979, Nashville, Tenn.) U.S. bluegrass and country music guitarist and singer. He worked in textile mills until the late 1930s, when he and his wife, Gladys, began performing as a duo. In 1945 he joined Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys. There he met Earl Scruggs (b. 1924), a native of Flint Hill, N.C., who had played banjo since age 5 and had begun playing on radio by the age of 15. Scruggs eventually perfected a picking technique involving the thumb and first two fingers of the right hand that came to be called the “Scruggs style.” In 1948 the two men left Monroe's band to form Flatt and Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys. They made dozens of records in the 1950s and '60s and hosted their own syndicated radio and TV shows. Scruggs's original instrumental compositions, including “Foggy Mountain Breakdown,” were especially popular. They parted ways in 1969 when Scruggs joined his sons Gary and Randy (and later Steve) in the Earl Scruggs Revue.