Award Recipient

Widely considered bluegrass music’s premier singer, Lester Flatt was born and lived his early childhood in a clapboard cabin overlooking a spectacular mountain valley atop Tennessee’s Cumberland Plateau. With Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys in the mid ’40s, Lester Flatt was a member of what many refer to as the “Original Blue Grass Band.” With Earl Scruggs, Flatt organized the “Foggy Mountain Boys” in 1948 and went on to achieve long standing success and prestige unprecedented in bluegrass music. “Lester and Earl” became a way of life to countless fans through their own syndicated TV show, several hundred recordings and on WSM’s Grand Ole Opry. Often appearing before a nationwide television audience, Flatt preferred to perform his music in front of his own kind of people in rural hamlets and small towns. Parting with Earl in 1969, Lester continued successfully with his own “Nashville Grass” until shortly before his death in 1979.