O.k……….. Imagine this, if you will:

It's 1949, and life is good. You're a 29 year old WWII vet., who has returned from the war healthy, and settled down with your wife and two kids. You've managed to make a decent down payment on a home, and you've even managed to buy a slightly used, bright red, 1948 ford convertible.

In short, life is pretty good.

Sundays, you like to take the wife and kids out for drives through the countryside, while your push-button car radio plays the songs of the day. The kids like to sing along to the lastest big hit "Ghost Riders in the Sky", and sometimes, when the latest Perry Como song comes across the airwaves, the wife joins in.

This particular Sunday, is just like the rest, just what you expected it to be, -which is why you do this every weekend. It's relaxing, and you get to spend some time with your family after a hard weeks work in the plant.

The disc-jockey on the radio announces that he's got a new tune that he's gonna spin………. "Now…. here's Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys playing Foggy Mountain Breakdown!."

All of a sudden, practically sprinting out of the 'sonic-o-rama' speakers, comes a blast of high speed intensity. You can't quite figure out what the instrument is in the first few seconds of the song, because you've never heard a banjo being played like that before.

You realize that you've subconsciously accelerated, and that you're now speeding. You can't decide whether to change the station to something more relaxing, or give this strange new music a few seconds more.

A quick glance in the rearview mirror informs you that the kids are dancing in their seats, shaking their arms, and grinning.

You notice a very curious look on your wife's face -a look usually reserved for the most intimate of moments that she shares with you………. 

She's noticed a tingling sensation emanating from her inner thighs every time she hears that soaring fiddle over top of the banjo………. -at least she thinks it's a banjo.

O.K. ……..There's a little scenario for you that I made up to talk about what it must have been like to hear Foggy Mountain Breakdown¹ for the first time.

I'm sure I could create a similar story about some fictitious character(s) hearing Muddy Waters for the first time too.

The point I'm trying to make, is that a lot of the music we now think of as classic, and mainstream, was once 'dangerous', or 'challenging.'

Earl Scruggs used speed in some of his earliest sides, in much the same way that Muddy Waters used his -thinly disguised- sexuality, to create something new and exciting.

Everybody knows that when Muddy sang 'I just want to make love to you', he wasn't talking about sitting on the front porch with a cool glass of lemonade, asking his girlfriend for a kiss.

He was telling her that he wanted to carry her up to the bedroom, and make hot monkey love to her!!!

Earl Scruggs made beautiful music that obliterated the stereotype of the dumb hillbilly², -but more importantly, he made music with such passion and intensity that it sometimes scared people. 

We tend to forget (or maybe we never really knew) the impact that this music had on the general population when it was first released.

Kinda' like punk was to me when I was a kid. The music became more of an IDEA than a 'piece.'

I can't say with any certainty whether bluegrass has had as much of an impact on popular culture as punk rock has (I highly doubt it), but the idea is sound.

"Let 'er fucking rip boys! We're blowing this shit out, hell bent for hell, so fasten your goddamned seatbelts baby, and hang on for a tight ride!!!!!

Ironically enough though, nowadays, we tend to think of 'Foggy Mountain Breakdown' as a cute little melody from the past that reminds us of simpler times. What was once radical and challenging has now been rendered harmless, and it would seem quite natural if played back to back with 'Ghost Riders in the Sky', or maybe even Perry Como…….

¹ The same thing probaby happened to some people when they heard 'That's Alright Mama' by Elvis Presley; 'I Wanna Be Sedated' by The Ramones; the 'Allegro Moderato' section from Tchaikovsky's 'Violin Concerto in D major, Opus #35; or Charlie Parkers 'Famous Alto Break', -to mention but a few.

² I like the statement that Nicholas Dawidoff makes in his brilliant book 'In the Country of Country' about Earl Scruggs: "….but there is an insouciant quality to Scruggs's delivery, a "we're jes' hillbillies messing around with these here syncopations and harmonics"

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