By the time Flatt & Scruggs released Foggy Mountain Banjo in 1961, the band had already been at it for over a decade, shepherding hillbilly music—or bluegrass, as it had come to be called—into something like the mainstream, guesting regularly on nationally syndicated media and joining folk festivals aimed at audiences looking to recover something “real”. Decades later, the music here retains an intensity more germane to punk than anything else, driven by thumping bass, searing fiddle and the breathless picking of banjo player Earl Scruggs, who seems to have been given more fingers than most. Down-home as they were, there are times—“Cumberland Gap”, “Lonesome Road Blues”, “Bugle Call Rag”—when the band appears to wheel up and leave the ground.