LUNCHTIME was hoedown time at the Accrington electronics firm of Uttley and Thompson back in the late 1970s.

For instead of pop music blaring out through the radio when the morning’s work was finished, the workers listened instead to the bluegrass style banjo playing of the firm’s chief electronics engineer Jim Bullock.

Jim, of Church Street, Padiham, started taking his banjo to work at Broad Oak to get in some practise.

But when his colleagues heard him play, they persuaded him to give lunchtime concerts.

And he soon had the rafters ringing with his hillbilly sounds.

Jim went to the same banjo tutor as the firm’s chairman David Uttley, who was also a keen player.

One of his favourite players was Earl Scruggs, the American bluegrass star, best known for playing the Beverley Hillbillies – remember them? – theme tune on TV.

n Earl Scruggs, who died in 2012, was noted for perfecting and popularising a three-finger banjo-picking style (now called "Scruggs style") that is a defining characteristic of bluegrass music.

His Ballad of Jed Clampett was released October 12, 1962. The theme song became an immediate country music hit and was played at the beginning and end of each episode.

Although other musicians had played in three-finger style before him, Scruggs shot to prominence when he was hired by Bill Monroe to fill the banjo slot in his group, The Blue Grass Boys.

On February 13, 2003, Scruggs received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and was still actively touring at age 80.