RIP Guitarist/Producer Randy Scruggs dead at 64

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Randy Scruggs, a Grammy-winning musician, songwriter, producer and the son of banjo innovator Earl Scruggs, died Tuesday after an illness. He was 64 years old.

"Randy was a quiet man with an encyclopedia of music as his guide," said friend and collaborator Jerry Douglas. "Blessed to be one of the sons of musical giant Earl Scruggs and ground- and glass-ceiling-breaking business manager Louise Scruggs, he was a wise and generous producer and a brilliant session guitarist. His catalog of successes will boggle those who are willing to follow the long and impressive line he accomplished. I will miss his calm and grace as a man of the studios of our town."

He began making music professionally when he was just 13, and worked with everyone from Waylon Jennings to Miranda Lambert. Over the course of his career, he played on hundreds of recordings, including two of country and roots music's landmark albums: the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" and John Hartford's "Aereo-Plain." He also produced the Dirt Band's subsequent two "Circle" volumes as well as recordings by Emmylou Harris, Loretta Lynn, Iris DeMent and many more.

More than 100 of his songs were recorded over the years. Deana Carter took "We Danced Anyway," a song he wrote with Matraca Berg, to the top of the country charts in the mid-1990s. He also wrote several songs with Earl Thomas Conley, including the No. 1 singles "Don't Make It Easy for Me" and "Angel in Disguise."

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