VALDESE - George Shuffler is the first to admit he doesn't move as fast as he used to. But he still gets around his farm pretty well, even though he has to lean on a cane.

"My hips are just about wore out, from going all over for so many years," Shuffler says, showing a visitor around the farm. He's lived on this Burke County spread 180 miles west of Raleigh for all of his 82 years -- except for the decades he spent on the road playing guitar behind the Stanley Brothers, Don Reno and other legends of bluegrass.

Shuffler pauses beside an old tractor, which still runs despite its rusted-out appearance. Time was he would use the tractor to cultivate corn and soybeans, but now it mostly hauls hay for his horses. A few of them come running as he approaches, hoping for a snack.

"I got my first horse when I was 10 years old," he says. "Swapped my possum dog for it. I've got 18 horses now, and about all I do is spend money on 'em. Can't get a fair trade for anything anymore, so I'm stuck paying $12 a bale."

Standing here in the bright autumn sunshine, lamenting a farmer's hardships, Shuffler could be any other old-timer. For long stretches of his life, that's who he has been. A visitor would likely never guess that Shuffler is one of the most influential bluegrass guitarists to ever hoist a pick.

That will be discussed at some length on Thursday in Raleigh, where Shuffler will be feted with a North Carolina Heritage Award.

He'll attend the ceremony, and he'll probably enjoy it. But like another famous Tar Heel guitarist, Doc Watson, Shuffler isn't entirely comfortable with people making a fuss. It's fitting that he made his name as an accompanist, playing in the background.

"I was told that you have to brag on yourself to get farther up the ladder," Shuffler says, moving to the porch of his modest house. "If that's what it takes, I don't want it."

Inside, Shuffler settles into an easy chair in his den, which has served as a recording studio in the past. Bryan Sutton, a rising young hotshot guitarist, came here a few years back to record "The Nine Pound Hammer" with Shuffler for Sutton's 2006 album "Not Too Far From the Tree: A Collection of Guitar Duets With Heroes & Friends," which also features Watson, Ricky Skaggs and Earl Scruggs.

It's not too hard to persuade Shuffler to pull out his guitar and show off a little. Does he play much anymore?

"Oh, no more than I have to," he deadpans, a twinkle in his eye.

But he still plays more than passably, in a homegrown rhythmic style somewhere between country blues and sea chanteys.

"When I was 12," Shuffler says, pausing to expel some tobacco juice into a cup, "the old fellow across the creek, Jack Smith, showed me how to do three chords -- G, C and D, that might have been all he knew. I took it from there."

He noodles around a bit, falling into the classic crosspicking pattern. It's a syncopated technique that is to bluegrass guitar what the shave-and-a-haircut-two-bits Bo Diddley beat is to rock 'n' roll -- an element so essential, you hardly think of it as something a person still living could have originated.

"I was barefoot, walking home with my dad afterward and playing my old guitar," he continues. "I'd stop and play those three chords, G, C and D, because I was afraid I'd forget them. I'd do that, then run to catch up with my dad, stop and play some more. That evening, Mama was humming 'Birmingham Jail' and I seconded on guitar. She got so hoarse she couldn't talk."

Shuffler plays a bit more, but not much. Five decades after he backed up the Stanley Brothers on "The Flood of '57," his fingers don't move as fast as they used to, either.

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