The Three Pickers
Documentary (50 min.)

To the delight of bluegrass fans worldwide, music legends Earl Scruggs, Doc Watson and Ricky Skaggs have joined forces to perform together for the very first time. Calling themselves The Three Pickers, the trio played to a sold-out audience, beguiling the crowd with such favorites as "Foggy Mountain Top," "Roll in My Sweet Baby's Arms" and "Feast Here Tonight." That historic evening is captured in all its down-home glory in The Three Pickers: Legends of American Music. Dropping by fiddle in hand, is multi-Grammy winner Alison Krauss, to reprise "Down in the Valley," from O, Brother, Where Art Thou? "I’m humbled to be one of the pickers on this project," says Skaggs, an eight-time Grammy winner, who, like many in his field, began his career as a child performer. By the age of 10, he had already performed on stage with three of the most important bluegrass acts of all time, Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs, Bill Monroe, and the Stanley Brothers. Watson, at 80 the senior member of the trio (Scruggs is 79, Skaggs, 49), is as famous for his rich baritone voice as his virtuoso picking. His haunting vocalizing on the Trio’s "Banks of the Ohio" stands high among the evening’s many highlights. He is the recipient of six Grammys and one of the most beloved figures on the bluegrass circuit. Long a legend in bluegrass since the mid-‘40s, Earl Scruggs invented a three-finger style of banjo playing known worldwide as "Scruggs Picking." In 1948, he and Lester Flatt formed Flatt & Scruggs, perhaps the most famous popular bluegrass band in history. A three-time Grammy winner, a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame, and the recipient of a National Medal of Arts Award, he was honored this year with a star in The Hollywood Walk of Fame.