Legendary banjo picker Earl Scruggs, one of the pioneering figures of bluegrass music, has died of natural causes in a Nashville hospital at 88.

Thanks in large part to his ongoing activity on the concert circuit as an octogenarian, Scruggs had hardly been forgotten in the years and months leading up to his death. Just two months ago, writing in the New Yorker, Steve Martin said, "A grand part of American music owes a debt to Earl Scruggs. Few players have changed the way we hear an instrument the way Earl has, putting him in a category with Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, Chet Atkins, and Jimi Hendrix."

Scruggs reached his highest level of fame in the 1960s when he and partner Lester Flatt recording the theme song for The Beverly Hillbillies, which became a beloved weekly staple in living rooms that wouldn't think of ever putting on a bluegrass record, as well as a No. 1 smash on the not usually so rootsy Billboard country chart.

But his stardom continued to give him a healthy touring career to the very end, especially at roots-music gatherings like the Newport Folk Festival, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass or Stagecoach, on top of well-attended shows at performing arts centers. In recent years, Scruggs had toured with a band packed with family members and let his sons and grandson do all the talking as he sat impassively between solos. Fans would sometimes worry whether he was up to the task as he slowly made his way to center stage, only to gape in awe when his fingers would come to life, as spry as the rest of his body was not.

Scruggs had played in Los Angeles as recently as November, when he headlined UCLA's Royce Hall. "Picking his instrument in the fleet three-finger style he's thought to have perfected, Scruggs calmly reaffirmed the basis of his fans' worship," the Los Angeles Times wrote in a review of the show four months ago... Scruggs' playing arrived in short, sharp bursts overflowing with notes."

Flatt & Scruggs founded the Foggy Mountain Boys (whose name was parodied in O Brother Where Art Thou? as "the Soggy Bottom Boys") after leaving Bill Monroe's band in the late 1940s. They were inducted into the Grand Ole Opry in 1955. But mainstream success was unexpectedly in the cards when they not only told the musical story of The Beverly Hillbillies on a weekly basis over the credits in the 1960s but even appeared on the sit-com as potential romantic suitors for Granny Clampett.

After the "Ballad of Jed Clampett" breakthrough, they entered the mainstream zeitgeist once again with the unlikely popularity of "Foggy Mountain Breakdown," a Scruggs instrumental that was used to accentuate the violent action in the film Bonnie and Clyde. Today, the tune is such a staple in the bluegrass canon that it's practically a running joke to break into a few bars, at least for the instrumentalists who can handle it (and, indeed, it was part of Steve Martin's standup act back in the 1970s).

The duo didn't capitalize on that newfound popular notoriety for long though, as Flatt and Scruggs split in 1969, in a breakup believed to be largely due to musical differences, as Scruggs was more interested than his partner in covering contemporary acts like Dylan and the Byrds. Scruggs had been recording and touring with his own band and/or family ever since.

Flatt & Scruggs were named to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1985, and, on his own, Scruggs received the National Medal of the Arts in 1992. In 2003, he got his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. That same year, CMT named Flatt & Scruggs as among the "40 Greatest Men of Country Music."

In 2001, an all-star cast joined the legend for a tribute album, Earl Scruggs and Friends, which featured contributions from performers as disparate as Elton John, Don Henley, Dwight Yoakam, Sting, John Fogerty, Johnny Cash, and Melissa Etheridge.