In The Turning Road Gallery, guests will learn about both continuity and change throughout the region. This gallery focuses on the changing times in the area, from the destruction of the boll weevil to the decline of the textile mills. The Civil Rights Movement ushered a new social awareness for the equality of all Americans, and the new electric music style brought diversity to numerous musical genres. Musicians such as harmonica legend Sonny Terry learned the blues in Shelby and in the 1930s became a foundational part of the Durham blues scene.
While the world was changing around him, Earl’s musical tastes also began to change, leading to the break-up of his twenty-year partnership with Lester Flatt and the formation of a band with his sons called the Earl Scruggs Revue. The Revue proved to be a forerunner to the Southern Rock movement of the 1970s.
This gallery also features the ground-breaking interactive experience “Pickin’ Story” that takes a look at the community built around bluegrass music and the ways in which each instrument in a band plays its own unique roll.
