Foggy Mountain Breakdown is the most famous banjo instrumental in bluegrass, and maybe in American music. Earl Scruggs wrote it in 1949, the year after he left Bill Monroe’s band. It powered the chase scenes in Bonnie and Clyde, won two Grammys, and now sits in the Library of Congress. For banjo players, it is the tune strangers ask for by name.
Where it came from
Scruggs joined Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys in 1945. His three-finger picking helped make that band famous. In spring 1948 he left, along with singer and guitarist Lester Flatt. The two formed their own group with the Foggy Mountain Boys. The next year Scruggs wrote a new banjo piece. He said he did not set out to write a great piece of music. It just fell together as a tune that fit the banjo.
The tune had roots in his Monroe days. NPR reported that Scruggs shaped a tune called Bluegrass Breakdown while with Monroe, got no credit for it, and later reworked it into Foggy Mountain Breakdown. The band cut the new tune on December 11, 1949, at the Herzog studio in Cincinnati, Ohio. Flatt played guitar, Benny Sims played fiddle, Curly Seckler played mandolin, and Howard Watts played bass. Mercury Records released the single on March 15, 1950.
The record never made the country charts. Pickers loved it anyway. Then the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde ran the tune under its getaway scenes. The old record cracked the pop charts in 1968, and a remake cut for Columbia charted beside it. Flatt and Scruggs won a Grammy for the tune in 1969. In 2001 Scruggs cut it again with friends: Steve Martin on second banjo, Vince Gill, Marty Stuart, Albert Lee, Randy Scruggs, Glen Duncan, Gary Scruggs, Jerry Douglas, Leon Russell, and Paul Shaffer. That version won the Grammy for Best Country Instrumental Performance in 2002. The Library of Congress added the 1949 recording to the National Recording Registry in 2004. BMI has counted more than one million public performances.
How it works
The tune lives in G, and banjo players work out of open G shapes. It uses three chords: G, E minor, and D. The E minor is the hook. Most breakdowns in G go up to C. This one sinks to the relative minor instead, and that dark turn gives the tune its edge. The original record holds a strange detail inside that chord. Scruggs rolled on E minor while Flatt strummed E major behind him. Scruggs let the clash stand, and the rub became part of the sound. Some bands still argue about which chord to play. Pick one as a group and commit.
The form is short and it repeats. Each pass starts on G, sinks to E minor, comes home to G, and closes with D pulling back to G. Scruggs built the melody from his rolls, with hammer-ons and pull-offs carrying the lead over a stream of picked notes. John Hartford said this is where the banjo steps out of the band and becomes the lead instrument.
Bands play it fast. Few tunes in the songbook get called at higher speeds. In a jam, the banjo player kicks it off and takes the first break. Fiddle, mandolin, guitar, and dobro take turns after that, and the banjo returns to close. There are no words, so watch the banjo player for the ending signal.
Recordings worth hearing
Start with the 1949 Mercury single by Flatt and Scruggs. It is the source, and every banjo player measures against it. The 1968 Columbia remake is the version that rode the Bonnie and Clyde wave onto the pop charts. The 2001 Earl Scruggs and Friends track is the Grammy winner, with Steve Martin trading banjo breaks and Leon Russell on organ. The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band put it on Will the Circle Be Unbroken in 1972, the platinum album that carried the tune to a rock audience. Glen Campbell cut it in 1981, proof the tune traveled far past bluegrass.
Sources
Facts on this page come from the Library of Congress National Recording Registry essay by Thomas Goldsmith, the Library of Congress 2004 registry announcement, the Grammy Awards page for Earl Scruggs, the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame biography of Earl Scruggs, CityBeat’s history of the Herzog session, and the NPR 100 feature on Earl Scruggs.