Earl Scruggs Coming Home Again

Brownie Plaster, Chairman
Destination Cleveland County

We are so excited to have Earl and his sons coming home again for a benefit concert on June 19, 2009. Earl performed here in his home county on October 11, 2007 to a sold-out crowd at Malcolm Brown Auditorium. What a concert! There are no words to describe how Earl electrified and mesmerized his audience with his incredible banjo playing. The concert tickets for this year will go on sale locally and on our website www.destinationclevelandcounty.org on May 7.

As you may know, our group, Destination Cleveland County, is planning the Earl Scruggs Center: Music and Stories of the Carolina Foothills, to be located in Cleveland County’s historic 1907 courthouse on the square in Shelby. The master plan has been completed with input from local citizens led by Cissy Foote Anklam of museumconcepts.com.

The Earl Scruggs Center will be a remarkable showcase for the history and cultural traditions of the Carolina Foothills, as well as the unique musical contributions of Earl Scruggs, the region’s most pre-eminent ambassador of music. Planned as a cultural crossroads, the Earl Scruggs Center stands to become a model for fostering community understanding, cultural tourism and regional pride.

Earl and his sons slip into town from time to time to visit with relatives. They were here as recently as March 18. On that trip, we took the opportunity to have our museum film director, Robert Gordon, fly in from Memphis. With the able assistance of Earl’s nephew, J.T. Scruggs, filming for the future center continued over several days. We all loved hearing Earl tell stories about his childhood and his journeys since leaving here after World War II. His sons chipped in with a story or two-ask them about eating the famed “livermush” or the time Ravi Shankar called their father and asked if he could come to their home and play with Earl. We have heard disks of Earl with artists of many genres and we can just imagine the thrill of the universal language of music that those two created.

We are proud to have Earl Scruggs as a native of our county and feel honored and humbled by his willingness to come here once again for a benefit concert. I’ll be at the concert. Will you?