Louise Scruggs, 78; Wife of Banjoist Promoted Bluegrass Music

Louise Scruggs, 78, who as the wife and manager of banjo legend Earl Scruggs helped broaden the audience for bluegrass and country music, died Thursday in Nashville. Her family said she had respiratory disease.

Scruggs, who was born in rural Wilson County east of Nashville, met her husband in 1946 after seeing him perform at the Grand Ole Opry with Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys. They married two years later.

She began managing her husband’s career in 1955 when the talent-booking business in Nashville was dominated by men.

By then Earl Scruggs had left Monroe’s band and formed Flatt & Scruggs with guitarist and singer Lester Flatt. By the late 1950s Louise was nudging her husband in new directions. She booked him to play the first Newport Folk Festival in 1959; his three-finger banjo-picking style was a revelation to the audience and helped make bluegrass a part of the folk boom.

She later introduced bluegrass to rock fans when she booked Flatt & Scruggs to appear with such acts as the Byrds, Loggins & Messina and the Grateful Dead.

She also insisted that Flatt & Scruggs be classified as country because many radio stations did not want to play bluegrass.

She also elevated their album covers with paintings by New York artist Thomas Allen.

Earl Scruggs credited his wife as a driving force behind his success.

“I didn’t get where I went just on talent,” he told the Tennessean newspaper last year. “What talent I had would never have peaked without her.”