Today is the birthday of bluegrass musician Earl Scruggs, (1924-2012) and British comic actor Rowan Atkinson (born 1955).
Earl Scruggs
Earl Scruggs was an American musician who popularized a three-finger banjo picking style, now called “Scruggs style”. This style is a defining characteristic of bluegrass music. His radically different three-finger style of playing the five-string banjo is radically different. Previously, the banjo was typically played with a frailing or clawhammer technique. He also popularized the instrument in several genres of music and elevated the banjo from its role as a background rhythm instrument, or a comedian’s prop, into featured solo status.
On his 80th birthday, singer Porter Wagoner said “Earl is to the five-string banjo what Babe Ruth was to baseball. He is the best there ever was and the best there ever will be.”
At age 88, Earl Scruggs died from natural causes on the morning of March 28, 2012, in a Nashville hospital
Rowan Atkinson
Rowan Atkinson is an English actor, comedian, and screenwriter best known for his work on the sitcoms Blackadder and Mr. Bean. Additionally, his use of physical comedy in his Mr. Bean persona is famous, but Atkinson’s other characters rely more heavily on language. Atkinson often plays authority figures (especially priests or vicars) speaking absurd lines with a completely deadpan delivery. One of his better-known comic devices is over-articulation of the “B” sound, such as his pronunciation of “Bob”