Cascade Music

Waylon Jennings had the sound. The cascade is a bluegrass technique, though, made famous by Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs. Here's a guy who has the sense of it.



So now that you know what to look for, here are the masters.



Unfortunately, the most famous incarnation is this tune. It was composed by the masters, but ended up in a stereotype that suggested this wasn't a high form of art. It was supposed to be something some simple-minded genetic defect could do without effort.



I met James Dickey once, long ago when I was young. He was a night fighter pilot in the Pacific Theater in World War II. For that cause I will forgive him everything, even this, but bear in mind that it was a significant slander.

Watch Earl Scruggs do "Foggy Mountain," years later, with the young men and children he's taught to follow in his footsteps. He gives about 42 seconds of embarrassed introduction. You can skip it, if you don't want to hear what it meant to him to find students who really cared about his art.