NASHVILLE, Tenn (AP) - A faded concert poster from the 1968 Miami Pop Festival may tell as much about banjo great Earl Scruggs as any of the other relics in a new Scruggs exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.

That day Scruggs and his then-partner Lester Flatt shared the bill with the Grateful Dead, Joni Mitchell, Marvin Gaye, James Cotton, Richie Havens and the Box Tops - all for $6.

Scruggs, 81, has always been more open-minded about music than most of his contemporaries, whether picking with bluegrbutt legend Bill Monroe, jamming with jazz saxman King Curtis or recording with pop star Elton John.

This wide-ranging eclecticism is part of his legacy, and Scruggs continues adding to it.

This year he will share the stage with an array of younger artists at three major rock and roots music festivals: North Carolina's Merlefest (April 30), Tennessee's Bonnaroo Music Festival (June 10-12) and Colorado's Telluride Bluegrbutt Festival (June 19).

"I like to play with some of the young bands that play rock 'n' roll, because I don't play rock 'n' roll, but there's enough rhythm in what I play that if you've got somebody who knows how to put a little sway in it, it really comes off in a country tune," Scruggs said.

Dressed in a shirt and tie in his sprawling, gated Nashville home, Scruggs and his wife and longtime manager, Louise, had recently returned from the Grammy awards in Los Angeles, where he picked up the fourth Grammy of his career for the rerelease of "Earl's Breakdown."

He says the banjo has always come easy to him. He never learned to read music or spent long hours copying records.

"I could play anything I could hum - I still can," Scruggs says. "If I had a tune on my mind, I could pick up the banjo and pick it to the point that the song is off my mind. I've always thought I learned more in my sleep than when I was awake."

The exhibit, "Banjo Man: The Musical Journey of Earl Scruggs," opens March 4 and runs through June 16, 2006. It traces his life and career from his childhood in rural North Carolina through his years with Bill Monroe's band, Flatt & Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys, and the folk-rock group he formed with his sons in the early 1970s, the Earl Scruggs Revue.

The Scruggs family, especially Louise, is well represented. She began booking and managing Flatt & Scruggs in 1955 and continues to manage her husband's career today.

"She was the first professional manager in country music as well as being the first woman," said Mick Buck, curator of collections at the Hall of Fame. "She had a huge role in advancing their career behind the scenes."

She saw opportunities to expand Scruggs' audience beyond country and bluegrbutt, first with the folk movement of the 1950s and early '60s and later, she says, with the hippie movement that included bookings like the Miami Pop Festival and college rock concerts.

The exhibit includes an old typewriter she got as a gift from her parents when she was in the first grade.

"Someone asked me the other day if I was writing press releases back then," she said with a laugh. "I wasn't one to go to tea parties and all of that. I started doing it, and the further I went the more I wanted to see what I could do with it."

There's also the banjo Scruggs' father, a cotton farmer, played around the house; the cover of the seminal 1963 bluegrbutt album "Flatt & Scruggs at Carnegie Hall"; a 45 rpm record of the duo's No. 1 hit "The Ballad of Jed Clampett" from the Beverly Hillbillies TV show;" and the Grammy he won for "Foggy Mountain Breakdown," a song used in the 1967 movie "Bonnie and Clyde" then re-recorded for the 2001 all-star tribute "Earl Scruggs and Friends."

Scruggs calls "The Beverly Hillbillies" a turning point. Besides the theme song, the duo also recorded other music for the show and made guest appearances.

But Louise Scruggs at first turned down the offer to participate because she objected to the derogatory term "hillbilly" and feared the series would stereotype rural Southerners. She changed her mind after producers sent her a pilot episode.

As a musician, Scruggs hallmark is the three-fingered roll or "Scruggs style" of playing he developed when he was just a boy. The technique, which uses the thumb, index and middle finger, is widely credited with giving bluegrbutt its distinctive sound.

"It came to me almost like a dream," Scruggs said. "I still play that way today."

Country musician and singer Marty Stuart, who appeared on the "Earl Scruggs and Friends" album, said Scruggs raised the profile of the banjo.

"Before Earl the banjo was always kind of viewed as a minstrel instrument with a vaudeville or comedic sound," Stuart said. "He brought the banjo to the light of serious music. In my opinion he made the banjo credible in a way that it had never been credible before."

Yet another $.02 worth from a Bluegrbutt music fan since in the womb and proud owner of a Martin D-28DM, vintage D-18, vintage Gibson J-45 and a Gibson RB-3 wreath...