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his center (along with DCC’s other big renovation project The Don Gibson Theatre which opened in 2009) is a beacon for tourists and music pilgrims who visit the delightful town square in Shelby, about 40 minutes west of Charlotte in North Carolina. When I first saw the 1907 Cleveland County Courthouse in 2009, it was shuttered and being used for storage. The DCC worked with a team of architects and designers managed by Museum Concepts in Arlington, VA, whose delightful Mississippi-raised director Cissy Anklam previously worked on the Newseum in Washington and the B.B. King Museum in Indianola, MS. There were hang-ups in fundraising of course, given that the project launched in the teeth of the great recession, but eventually things came together. I’d never seen a project like this from the inside, where a core team had to coordinate graphic design with panel scripts, case fabrication with multimedia programming, and artifact acquisition with film and photo clearances, films and more. It was all as cool as you might imagine.
The idea was bigger than telling the story of a great native of Cleveland County and the world’s most admired banjo player. Earl was to be put in context of the Carolina Piedmont, which I can’t claim objectivity about because it’s my home region. The rolling hills of central North and South Carolina are called the Piedmont because that translates literally as “foot of the mountains.” And indeed looking west from Shelby, one sees the foothills of the Appalachians rising up. The area, rich in farm land and waterways, proved a great place to grow and process cotton. So in the new museum, we learn about the growth of cotton in the region and its troubles with the boll weevil (including several actual boll weevils). And we see Earl in a group photograph from the Lily Mill of the “Spinning, Twisting, Spooling and Reeling Departments,” which sounds like great preparation for a career in bluegrass to me.
The Center The Earl Scruggs Center features an exhibit on the evolution of the banjo and its unique journey from Africa to the American South, and in popular music. Then the stories merge as Earl moves to Nashville, plays the Grand Ole Opry with Bill Monroe, meets his wife Louise, and splinters off with Lester Flatt to form Flatt & Scruggs: the most consequential bluegrass band of all time. There’s a lot to see, read and hear in a relatively compact space, which is divided into three galleries of exhibits, plus one with seating for the 12-minute biography/ orientation film. They built an eyepopping faux Ryman Auditorium to house one of the films I worked that covers Earl’s debut on the Opry and meeting Louise at a show. At one point, Louise took over as manager of Flatt & Scruggs, helping them take their music to national television, Carnegie Hall, Hollywood and in truth the whole world. Finally, there is a gallery where Earl’s next chapter with his sons in the Earl Scruggs Revue is illustrated with an electric guitar, an amplifier and 1970s stage wear from Randy Scruggs. Earl’s musical genius is clear throughout his career, but here’s where we truly feel his inborn progressive spirit. Few other