Here is some context on Scruggs' groundbreaking work with Bill Monroe.

Bill Monroe (1911-96), the "Father of Bluegrass," was one of the most important American musicians of the century. The bluegrass he perfected was both emotionally potent - his "high lonesome" tenor keened mournfully of and over the rolling Kentucky hills - and technically dazzling. The breakneck speed and precision of his greatest band, the Bluegrass Boys with Lester Flatt on guitar and Earl Scruggs on banjo, stands up technically and imaginatively to the finest jazz of Armstrong, Parker and Coltrane.

The Monroe Brothers (Charlie and Bill) began playing radio stations around the Carolinas and Georgia in '34 where they were heard by A&R man Eli Oberstein, who then signed them to Victor. After recording sixty songs, including "What Would You Give In Exchange," and enduring about the same number of fist fights, the Brothers broke up in '38. Bill convened the first Blue Grass Boys in '39, which recorded with Frank Walker for Victor's Bluebird imprint, including classics "Mule Skinner Blues" and Jimmie Rodgers' "Blue Yodel No. 7." After the war, Monroe and a new Blue Grass Boys were signed to Columbia by Art Satherley.

After recording "Blue Grass Special" in '45, the first version of "Blue Moon of Kentucky" in '46, the band hit their rip-roaring peak with "Blue Grass Breakdown" in '47, the most important instrumental in bluegrass history. Flatt and Scruggs' more-famous "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" was clearly derived from this: Flatt with his signature bass-G runs at the end of each "verse," Scruggs rolling his magical three-finger banjo style, while Monroe busted out tasty licks on the mandolin, all at a careening pace that cornered on two wheels threatening to tip at any moment. It never tipped and it's never been topped.