By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS as seen in The New Tork Times
August 28, 2001
NYTimes.com

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - Bluegrass legend Earl Scruggs had some help on his new CD, "Earl Scruggs and Friends," his first album in a decade.

Elton John, Dwight Yoakam, Travis Tritt, Sting, Melissa Etheridge, Leon Russell, Vince Gill, Rosanne Cash, John Fogerty, Don Henley, Johnny Cash and actor Steve Martin (on banjo) are among the featured artists.

Scruggs took up the banjo as a child, and had forged his own style by the time he was a teen-ager.

Russell said Scruggs "is not only a great player, but an inventor of music, with a quiet power inside his humility that is not unlike the Zen masters of the East."

The 77-year-old Scruggs sees things from a different perspective.

"I don't know what sets it off, but I just get wanting to pick once in a while," he told The Associated Press.

Scruggs developed bluegrass with Bill Monroe and had a long and successful partnership with Lester Flatt, who died in 1979.

The new album is mostly contemporary rock and country music.