You Tube Gold: Little Ricky Scaggs

Some people are lucky enough to know at a very young age exactly what they’re going to do with their lives.

Take Ricky Scaggs.

He performed with Bill Monroe at the age of six and was on TV with Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs the following year.

He is part of a great American tradition of child musical prodigies like Stevie Wonder and Sugar Chile Robinson, people who were so talented that they performed with masterful musicians decades older. Robinson for instance performed with legends like Duke Ellington and Count Basie and more than held his own before hitting puberty.

Scaggs wasn’t far behind as you’ll see in this video with Flatt and Scruggs.

As one of the commenters says, they probably slowed it down a bit to accommodate the seven-year-old Skaggs. Keep in mind though that this child had been playing for two years and was doing just fine with two legendary blue grass musicians. When you’ve got it, you’ve got it, and little Ricky Skaggs had plenty of it.

He’s gone on to a long and celebrated career, primarily but not exclusively in bluegrass and has taken his place in bluegrass history alongside the legends he played with as a boy.