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Shirley Blanton of Shelby was going through boxes of "stuff" recently preparing for a move to a new home when she ran across an article of memorabilia given to her by her Uncle Earl Scruggs. She found a red bowtie and a black bowtie both worn by Scruggs during his appearances with Lester Flatt on the Beverly Hillbillies television show in 1963.
"I have had it in a box all these years," Blanton told longtime family friend Dan X Padgett recently. Knowing how much Padgett loved Scruggs, she wanted Padgett to have the red bowtie.
"I kept the black one," she said.
Padgett received the bowtie from Blanton at his music shop in Boiling Springs.
"I wanted this more than anything else," Padgett said, surrounded by other memorabilia from Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain boys, and memorabilia from his own lifelong music career.
Earl's brother Junie Scruggs taught Dan Padgett to pick the banjo, and Padgett also had opportunity to pick the banjo with Earl.
"I was nine years old the day I walked into the music school for banjo lessons," Dan said.
He's still picking after all these year and is still teaching music at his studio most every day.
Blanton's mother, Ruby Scruggs, was Earl Scruggs' sister and they were very close.
When Scruggs and his wife Louise Scruggs were in a bad car accident in the 1950s, Blanton moved to Nashville, Tennessee where she helped as the couple recuperated from the car wreck injuries. They had young sons at the time.
"They were both in wheelchairs after the wreck," Blanton said. At that time the couple, their children and Blanton shared a home in Nashville, until she would later move to Charlotte where she worked with Rick Hendrick Automotive.
Earl Scruggs was born in Flint Hill, near Padgett's studio today, and where other family members live.
"Ruby and Earl looked a lot alike," Padgett said. "They looked enough alike to be twins."
After the debut of Flatt and Scruggs on the Beverly Hillbillies, Shirley said she had to tease her Aunt Louise about their "movie star" television wives.
"We all got laughs out of that," she said.
As a niece of Earl Scruggs, Blanton said Scruggs was "just Uncle Earl to us. If anyone wanted any of his things, memorabilia, he would give it to them," she said.
He gave her boss Rick Hendrick a signed banjo.
But at the opening of the Earl Scruggs Center in Shelby a few years ago she realized how famous her Uncle Earl really was. She said the center was packed with "hug, big name bluegrass musicians" and others paying tribute to Earl Scruggs. "He really was famous," she said she told her cousin.
Now that he has the red bowtie, Padgett will show it off at the 2022 Ellenboro Fiddlers Convention later this month. Although he has performed at the fiddler's convention many years, this year he's just going for the enjoyment.
