Celebrating with Scruggs in song and tribute will be friends and admirers Bela Fleck, Marty Stuart, Gillian Welch, David Rawlings, and Ricky Skaggs. Berklee vocal professor Donna McElroy and a group of faculty members will also perform at the event.
?Earl Scruggs first re-invented the banjo and then went on to show its range and power as an instrument,? says President Brown. ?An icon of American contemporary music, his rhythmic and melodic ideas have become a permanent part of our musical consciousness. On behalf of the several hundred Berklee College of Music alumni working in Nashville, we are proud to welcome Earl Scruggs to the ranks of our distinguished Honorary Doctorate recipients.?
The 81-year-old Scruggs is being recognized for making enduring contributions to the world of music over his lifetime. This honor puts him in the prestigious company with such fellow recipients as Duke Ellington, Sting, B.B. King, Bonnie Raitt, Billy Joel, Ahmet Ertegun, John Williams, Patti LaBelle, Nancy Wilson, Paul Simon, David Bowie, and Dizzy Gillespie, among others.
Scruggs is a musical pioneer, a revolutionary banjo player, and one of the best-known artists in the history of country music. He has received four Grammy Awards, a National Medal of the Arts, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, among other distinctions. He is an inductee to the Country Music Hall of Fame, and the International Bluegrass Music Association?s Hall of Honor. Scruggs began his career in 1945 with Bill Monroe. While a member of Monroe?s Blue Grass Boys, he met singer/guitarist Lester Flatt, with whom he would start Flatt & Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys in 1948. The group became the most prominent band in bluegrass history and made popular this sound to millions of listeners with their theme to the enduring TV series The Beverly Hillbillies, ?The Ballad of Jed Clampett.? Scruggs also wrote and recorded the instrumental ?Foggy Mountain Breakdown? that was used throughout the movie Bonnie and Clyde. The instrumental won two Grammy Awards.
When he parted ways with Flatt in 1969, Scruggs then formed the Earl Scruggs Revue with his sons, and increased his audience further with a repertoire that included folk-rock and other outside influences with the traditional country genre. Scruggs remains an active performer with concert tours, recordings, and TV appearances.
More than 150 Berklee students – including some from Malaysia, Indonesia, Switzerland, and the U.K. – will be in Nashville for spring break and will join local alumni, members of Berklee?s Boston community, and friends of Scruggs? for the presentation and concert. For the past 18 years, students have come to Nashville to gain an insider?s knowledge of the music industry by meeting and learning from top performers, songwriters, publishers, producers, and engineers.
Berklee professors Pat Pattison and Stephen Webber have organized a stellar lineup of artists this year to meet with students, including Grammy-winning performers and songwriters Ricky Skaggs, Mike Reid, Tim Nichols, Gary Wiseman, and Kathy Mattea. Grammy winning producer Kyle Lehning will present a clinic. Beth Nielsen Chapman and Josh Leo will also talk shop with the students. Berklee?s spring break in Nashville is from March 12 – 16.
Berklee College of Music was founded on the revolutionary principle that the best way to prepare students for careers in music was through the study and practice of contemporary music. For over half a century, the college has evolved constantly to reflect the state of the art of music and the music business. With over a dozen performance and nonperformance majors, a diverse and talented student body representing over 70 countries, and a music industry “who’s who” of alumni, Berklee is the world’s premier learning lab for the music of today — and tomorrow.
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