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Earl Scruggs joined Bill Monroe's bluegrass boys in 1945, and there met lead singer Lester Flatt, where they helped to define what we have since come to know as the sound of bluegrass music. Flatt and Scruggs left Monroe's band in 1948, and went on to record some of bluegrass music's best known classics, with a prolific career extending into the late 1960's. Flatt and Scruggs also had a several commercial successes which, for better or worse, established bluegrass stereotypes in the minds of the American public, with songs such as the Beverley Hillbillies theme song and the Bonnie and Clyde movie soundtrack. Lester Flatt died in 1979, and Earl Scruggs continues to play infrequently to this day