Apr. 3, 1964 - The country’s best-known bluegrass band, Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs and The Foggy Mountain Boys, gave a concert tonight at Carnegie Hall. Also on the program was Grandpa Jones, a rural comedian, singer, and instrumentalist.
The Flatt and Scruggs six-member string band has given four major concerts in New York in as many years. The house, which was half full, made up in enthusiasm what it lacked in numbers.
The group is as finely drilled a set of singers and instrumentalists as can be heard today in country music. They are polished showmen as well who had great visual appeal, bobbing back and forth around the microphone in the characteristic movements that might be called “bluegrass choreography.”
In addition to Flatt and Scruggs’ masterful work on the banjo and guitar respectively, other instrumentalists who impressed were the fiddler, Paul Warren, and Uncle Josh (Buck Graves) on the Dobro, a steel guitar.
Grandpa Jones, one of many singer-comics in the tradition of the late Uncle Dave Macon, gave a salty, energetic performance that brought laughter and cheers.
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