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From: squidlett
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  • No problem

  • Wow Ricky Skaggs said this was here at his concert last night in Calgary, Alberta ---- Awesome !!! So glad he told us about it :)

    

  • This is incredible! Rare footage and rare talent.

  • "WHO"S GONNA FILL THEIR SHOES "

  • I just saw Ricky Skaggs TODAY (Sept. 4, 2011) at a concert in Copper Mountain, Colorado. Still goin' strong, and sounded GREAT! He mentioned in his show that he performed on stage with Flatt & Skruggs at age 7.

  • That's about how old I was when I started... but I wasn't half that good then!

  • that was fantastic!!

  • Oh, wow! I love it! I've only seen him as an adult as well. I was lucky enough to see him in concert both at the Luther Burbank Center in Santa Rosa Ca., and some years later in Petaluma at the county fair. I loved him the first time I saw him and I was SO excited to get to see him again. As I recall he had a mighty cute guitarist there with him that time. ;-) My mother and I have several of his albums (tapes, now) and still play them regularly. Beautiful picking! We Love You Ricky! Keep playing

  • Oh, wow! I love it! I've only seen him as an adult as well. I was lucky enough to see him in concert both at the Luther Burbank Center in Santa Rosa Ca., and some years later in Petaluma at the county fair. I loved him the first time I saw him and I was SO excited to get to see him again. As I recall he had a mighty cute guitarist there with him that time. ;-) My mother and I have several of his albums (tapes, now) and still play them regularly. Beautiful picking! We Love You Ricky!

  • Who are the 14 people who don't like this? Rap fans I guess....

  • DARLING!

  • Golden stuff! Little Ricky Skraggs! I gotta say big Ricky would look a helluva lot better if he went back to little Ricky's hairstyle. What is that all about?

  • This video is so appealing mainly because this little boy is so cute and so talented. I have only seen him as an adult. What a delight. Thanks for posting this!

  • Ricky played the original across the road from my Uncle Chuck Gartin's (RIP) and he is my father's (RIP) Brother In Law Glare Mullins (Aunt Stella (RIP) nephew. I was born in Louisa KY ans damned proud of it. Like everyone else went to Ohio or some of us to Memphis. enjoyed the Video Ricky. Your Cousin Johnny is here with me.  We are officially home sick after hearing this. Maybe we will all get together (hopefully in Louisa soon.

    Thinking of you ..

    Susan Gartin (Howard's Daughter)

  • @sbetts1234 my dad and ricky went to school together. my dad was born outside of blaine, ky. my dad and ricky went to school together in high school. I have some yearbooks that have ricky in them and would love to find a way to share them.

  • Ricky Skaggs tell a story on one of these YouTube videos about attending a Bill Monroe concert when he was this age. Several people in the audience kept yelling for Mr. Monroe to get Ricky up on stage. Finally he says yes and Ricky finds himself on stage with Bill Monroe. Bill took his own mandolin off his shoulder shortens the strap and hands it to Ricky. What a story!

  • REAKON ITS BETTER THAN MA FIBER THE AGE IS WORNG HES WAS 6

  • REAKON ITS BETTER THAN MA FIBER

  • Great video. Thanks for posting. I'm gonna see Ricky Skaggs And Kentucky Thunder at The Watseka Theatre Watseka IL on Friday August 26, 2011.

  • he and keith whitley played with the stanley bros. when they were teenagers

  • Pretty damn cool 7-years old and being backed by one of the greatest blugrass groups ever. Awesome!

  • Gotta' love Ricky's accent and Lester's laugh!

  • wow..cool

  • was Ricky born playing a mandolin.lucky enough to see him in UK a couple of times. A lovely man A Great performer.This video is a treasure.Thankyou very much for posting.

  • Hes actually from brussy creek in Blaine,Ky .

  • this makes me smile :)

  • Lester Flatt supposedly found this kid, and I remember seeing Ricky in color I think on Grand Ole Opry at age 8 or 9 standing on his tip toes trying to reach the mic. He and Flatt were very close, but Lester died in 1977 if I am not mistaken. Ricky still puts out some great music, but everyone is a lot older now, and alas some have gone away, but its a treat to still hear them play. Thanks to whomever found this and posted it.

  • all i gotta say is.......WOW

  • and he was only 6 at the time ! WOW

  • Man, that's amazing! And he's not even a mongoloid!

  • @AWTD Why would he be?

  • @AWTD Idiot savant, not "mongoloid". I played music with an autistic kid that was very skilled at music, and he later has been a famous picker after he outgrew it. But Ricky Skaggs was a special kid, no doubt.

  • entirely adorable

  • Gotta love how ole' Lester says "Special" 

  • wow one bluegrass legends and a band of bluegrass legends wow

  • my mom just passed away and she loved ricky.She would have thought this was great.This the good kinda music i was raised on. GOD BLESS I LOVE AWAYS .

  • GREAT!

    And wonderful document!!!

  • Great stuff

  • I heard Ricky talk about playing with Lester and Earl when he was a boy and now I've finally got to see it.SUPER STUFF boys anyway you cut it,

  • I might be young but damn......what happened to the good ol music? This so called ''COUNTRY" you here on the radio these days aint country to me at all!!!

  • wow very impressive!

  • Thank you for who ever discovered this

  • Awesome! ...Y'all need to watch "Jake and Josh. Have a Feast Here Tonight" on YouTube. It is a hot one, with funny lyrics and great singing.

  • Just to correct - should be Skaggs - sorry.

    Ricky also told everyone , regarding his pulling at Lester's coat: "if my mother caught me interrupting an adult - she'd tear me up!!" I think another reason why he hid under the bed while the family was watching the show.

    He was so proud to be making that dedication outside the Ryman that day. And Curly Seckler was in the audience along with Ray Price and other notables.

  • Frm notes made at 2006 Brth of Bluegrass ded. Told by Scaggs.

    Dad took him to Opry . He knew security grd who let them bckstage.He took out his mando and played as Earl walked by.He told him to tell dad to bring him for audition. At rehearsal Lester told him to pull on his jacket & interupt him.

    They rec'd lettr frm show telling whn it wud be aired.

    Family got ready but he was so shy he hid under bed til show was over.

    He never saw the show til he found out a copy was in the Hall Of Fame.

  • What a treasure this video is. Thank you a million for posting. sub'd

  • ROFL when you see those other "seven year old prodigy guitarist" videos compared to this.

  • priceless footage

  • how amazing is ricky skaggs omg

  • Thanks Ricky, God gifted you and you have

    used it well!!!

  • What a treat! Thank you so much for posting.

  • Wow. Great big thanks for these!

  • real talent and he knows that The Good Lord gave it to him!

  • This is precious, priceless footage .. dated January 1962. A Once-In-A Generation Moment here, re young man Ricky in action with the GREAT F & S & The Fabulous Foggy Mtn Boys. Fans can get hold of this clip for themselves in perpetuity .. it's on Episode 2 of 2 in Volume 3 of Shenachie's fabulous 10-Volume DVD Collection of the best of the Flatt & Scruggs Marta White TV Shows, taken variously from the 1950s & 60s.

  • Who would have thought that he would become such a great musician!

  • Sweet!  What a talent even then!! It's a shame true talents like this don't own the radio station anymore :( Keep replaying it at home though :)

  • Absolutely amazing!

  • Comment removed

  • wow... who knew... great to see the past live on...

  • GO RICKY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!­!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • How amazing is that? What a great post!

  • Great Video. Thanks for sharing that. I really enjoy Lestr and Earl.... Seeing Ricky is a bonus.

  • He started earlier than this, at Martha, KY with Bill Monroe.

  • A legend in his own time. Amazing

  • ive always love hearing good picking

  • wow!!!!! i never knew????? you go RICKY!!!

  • Is there a musical term for the quick strum technique at 0:53?

  • that boy came out of his mommas uterus with one of those miniature guitar things attached...

  • @aaronecolyer It's a mandolin.

  • He was born to play mandolin. John Sebastian wrote a song about this kind of musician, he said:

    "Nashville cats been playin' since they's babies

    Nashville cats get work before they're two"

  • hope i can do that when i grow up

  • Amazing!

  • Holy CRAP!?!?!?!?!

  • He was dead serious about it too! He meant business even back then. 5*****

  • Where have all the good musicians gone?

  • @dottiekirby they are still out there but the media pushes the crap on us still

  • @dottiekirby All the good musicians are still out there...you just have to look for them. The music industry these days care only about a pretty face and totally ignore real talent. Me being an amateur musician myself, it makes me sick to think my hard work isn't wanted in the music world. But that doesn't matter to me...seeing the smiles on people's faces after I play my mando is all the reward I need. Bluegrass is about the fans, not the recognition. My Grass is always Blue!

  • god damn he's good. i heard he was 6 when he first played on stage with bill monroe

  • thanks

  • what year was this?

  • @Mr8704 ...I think it was January 1962.

  • that is ok i guess haha

  • what do u expect hes a product of the great bill monroe lol if you had bill 4 a teacher you could pic sing or somthin i guarantee yea

  • @redbulljustice99 he didnt have bill as a teacher.. he played with bill once when he was 6, but he didnt meet him for serious until later... i believe his dad taught him

  • Ricky you little freak goddamn I wish I could have played like you at 7 years of age!

  • Ricky played better at 7 than I did at 27 ! Check out STRINGBEAN...Herding Cattle. It is a gas ! and Uncle Josh gets pretty tickled too.

  • Haha.."what's your name? Ricky Scaggs..Ricky Scraggs"..... good just Lester.

  • How nice.

  • Good song, awesome music. Thanks for posting.

  • Comment removed

  • Awesome. makes ya proud to be American

  • This is cute, and impressive as well. I didn't know Ricky was out doing his thing at that age. He's obviously a talented guy, but whoever the poster here was that said he's simply the greatest musical talent alive today----c'mon, let's get real.....lol.

  • Earl Scruggs is stil alive, so...

  • Even at a young age Ricky had an amazing gift. The fact that he got to share the stage with Flatt and Scruggs is great. What an amazing gift to music all of those men are.

  • Talk about a start! Ricky wound up with the right type of guys!

  • Dang! Somebody give that kid a raise!

  • this is not foggy mountain......... is it?......

  • Special, not breakdown

  • At 7-year old playing with Flatt and Scruggs - Damn...... !

  • Thank the Lord for technology and YouTube today...who knew Ricky Skaggs started that early..and with such great company!.

    Great post, thanks a lot. Where does one even find this stuff!

  • @ottawarattlers : this clip is contained in Episode 2 of 2, Volume 3 of 10, in Shenachie's fabulous 10-Volume DVD set of the best of the Flatt & Scruggs Martha White TV Shows from the 1950s & 60s. Just visit the Shenachie website ... these DVDs are worth every penny ...

  • Cute as a button!

  • how awesome is this kid, i want his skill :( :p

  • Pick a little. Picka while. This Kid has Style.

  • now thats music

  • He looks scared to death but if he was it didn't stop him at all!

  • pipe down and enjoy the video.

  • amen brother!!!!!!!

  • wow Ricky Skaggs!

  • kids sure where raised better in the good old days haha

    These days they twittle their thumbs over video game controllers.

  • Skaggs was,is a natural. Love his music.

  • Whew! He was doing everything before he could even walk! The year before when he was six he played with Bill Monroe....ain't that just somethin'....wish my parents had started me out with the banjo earlier...

  • who is the pick

  • That man is the greatest mandolin picker ever! Keep it up!

  • haha

  • Wow! What talent !!

    My son Anthony is 7 years old and if he can go to the bathroom without fracturing a rib.....well, that's a good day for him (lol)

    Thanks for posting!

  • ROTFLMAO!

  • That's a freakin' riot... thanks for the laugh!

  • I love Ricky Scaggs

  • Go Son Go

  • Ricky Skaggs, a true master on the mandolin, back then and now. Amazing.

  • I could only play the radio at that age, or the juke box. Strange, but I'm still no more talented. LOLL!!!

  • aaah heeee heee heeeee... thatsaaa good one

  • TRUE MASTER

  • Hot smokin' fartblossom, didya notice how his fingers never leave his hands? I tell ya fer sure, if I'da been a kid back then, I'd be a man right now, and that ain't no lie. There's been over a billion and one songs written and this is surely one of 'em. I reckon that Ricky's ma and pa musta tied him to a block of ice and made him play all day long to keep from freezin' to death.

  • Show's what you know.................asshole.

  • When I was his age I was burning ants with a magnifying glass. Somehow I managed to set our bathroom on fire! Luckily the flames never got over to the house.

  • What a coincidence...I remember lighting matches in a my driveway when I was his age and for some reason the garage 5 feet away from explodes into flames...hahah,

    good times

  • You must have had an interesting childhood...

    Even I, the commander of the Confederate army wouldn't blow things up at that age. There was no war then.

  • when I'm cleaning windows

  • Wow! Mad skills at 7! I knew Ricky was good early on, but didn't realize he was that good that early!

  • i huffed too much white out and rubber cement by that age i was already a loser LOL

  • He's seven? When i was his age, i was eight.

  • What year is this recording?

  • 1961

  • I was eating paste at that age. He's good. But that paste... yum yum! lol

  • in contrast, when i was 7, i was warned to watch out with those big dull round scissors they had in first grade when cutting construction paper pretty good coordination for a 7 yr old , good post

  • man could he pick even then! awesome!

  • COOL...Love ricky skaggs...He was an amazing player even at 7...

  • 2:05 - 2:10

    good jam

  • Man 5 stars.Thanks for posting.

  • Ricky's so amazing! Wow!!!!! Incredible skills not usually seen in all other gifted children.

  • Yeah man, he can flat play and sing and was a doll baby back then. Very gifted, and his music is awesome, however, unlike back when a little boy, today he is cold, unfriendly and ignores his fans as if they are not there. He didn't care that he inspired a family to sing & ignored them like no one was talking to him. A kid wanted to give him a letter, I witnessed, and he ignored her too. The gift is there but no personality. Fans put him there, right? or was it just Flatt and Scruggs?

  • Ha ha, my thoughts exactly: Great stuff.

  • Great stuff. Ricky Skaggs is wonderful. I wish I had grown up during that era.

  • well that just made my day

  • I wish the Collins kids or Ronnie Dawson was on the show too. maybe they're too rock & roll but I like them.

  • that was so cute

  • I wish all the kids wasting their time trying to be proficient on Guitar Hero would see this. It'd be an inspiration to learn the real deal.

  • Holy cow, I agree, I needed to hear somebody else say that...

  • not really, because before guitar hero existed, the kind of kids who play guitar hero were just doing some other worthless, stupid shit. its not like there are kids who play guitar hero instead of an actual instrument actually have the talent to do so. guitar hero is just another video game that happens to have music playing in it.

  • The best part (besides the picking) is how genuinly they laugh when little Ricky asks to pick. Great video. Thanks. Not too many good bands out there playing this great trad stuff anymore except The Out of Town Boys, Ricky Scaggs and 1946. They all got some good videos y'all ought to check out.

  • Love the way Ricky tugs on Lester's pantleg at the start. Kid doesn't look nervous at all. Great vid.

  • Anybody with half a brain could have seen this and predicted phenomenally great things from little Ricky. Hell, at seven he had half the players in today's country music beat.

  • This is one of the coolest vids' I've seen here. Thanks so much for putting this up. I love Ricky Scaggs's pickin' and did not even know this existed. Wow.

  • Ricky Skaggs is simply the greatest musical talent alive today! He can play ANYTHING and he can sing ANYTHING and he does it ALL perfectly!

  • that was awesome I started playing mandolin at 9 and im 11 now but im not as good as him!

  • Wow I believe he is Playing a Gibson Mandolyn

    Pricess

  • WoW!

  • yeah.

  • i think he must have been verey brave to go up in frount of bill monroe and ask to pick that song he had to be brave lol

  • I believe you mean Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs.

  • no that is ricky skaggs, They performed in the little town, out somewhere, and ricky and his parents went to the school where they were playing and bill monroe pulled him up on stage and began pickin with earl scruggs and lester flatt, the reason that bill monroe isnt around is becaus he gave his mandolin to ricky, and he walked out of the screen since he didnt play nothin durin that song

  • I'm aware that's Ricky Skaggs. Further, I can assure you that Bill Monroe wasn't around. This is a clip from the Martha White Show that featured Flatt & Scruggs. Lester Flatt had already had his major falling out with Monroe by this time. Also, that is NOT Monroe's mandolin. Monroe was famous for playing a Gibson F-5 (Lloyd Loar era) mandolin. Skaggs is playing at A model which I have never seen nor heard of Monroe ever playing on stage.

  • Another clue that Bill Monroe wasn't there was the presence of the dobro (played by "Uncle Josh" Graves.) Monroe was very vocal about how the dobro had no place in bluegrass music (which was pretty selective since the mandolin had only come into popularity shortly before Monroe was born.) Skaggs did play on stage with Monroe when he was six using Monroe's Gibson F-5 mandolin but that was at a Bill Monroe concert so you were partially right.

  • That is quite a story, 100% fiction, but still quite a story. The Flatt & Scruggs Show was on television for many years.

  • i love the Flatt and Scruggs show

  • I think the story went that the crowd kept calling out to Bill to let "Little Ricky Skaggs" play, and finally he did.

    Still, Imagine you're six years old, and you're standing next to the biggest star of the day, and you're playing *his* mandolin on *his* stage.

    It's a feat that Ricky even remembers the particulars of that day.

  • very cool! he looks much the same, LOL! this reminds me of a video of a 14 year old jimmy page in b&w - legends in the making.

  • 7 yrs old being backed by lester and earl, wowzers.

  • Here's a good example of why it's good for people to start young on music! Now where are all the people who post disparaging comments on every unknown kid playing well on an instrument on YouTube? Aren't you all going to complain about how little Ricky's parents must have forced him to practice and how he couldn't have had a normal childhood? Come on, let's hear from you! ;)

  • Wow.... what a talent! Didn't know he started so young... he's one of my favorites