J.D. Crowe, Banjo Virtuoso and Bluegrass Innovator, Dies at 84

J.D. Crowe, a master banjo player and bandleader who expanded the sound of bluegrass while attracting some of the genre’s most prodigiously gifted musicians into his groups, died on Friday at his home in Nicholasville, Ky. He was 84.

The death was confirmed by his friend Frank Godbey, who said Mr. Crowe had recently been hospitalized for pneumonia. Mr. Godbey’s wife, Marty Godbey, who died in 2010, was the author of “Crowe on the Banjo: The Music Life of J.D. Crowe” (2011).

As the leader of the Kentucky Mountain Boys in the 1960s and J.D. Crowe & the New South in the ’70s, Mr. Crowe was among the first musicians to adapt rock and R&B to a bluegrass setting. Built around his impeccable tone and timing as a banjoist, the resulting hybrid was a harbinger of both the freewheeling “newgrass” movement of the ’70s and the bluegrass-aligned alternative country music that came after it.

Mr. Crowe’s bands were renowned for their precision and soulfulness. The classic edition of the New South featured a who’s who of future bluegrass masters: Tony Rice, who died in December 2020, on lead vocals and guitar; Ricky Skaggs on mandolin and tenor vocals (Mr. Crowe sang baritone); and Jerry Douglas on dobro. Rounded out by Bobby Slone on bass guitar and fiddle, this lineup alone could be credited with ushering in a new era of progressive bluegrass with their 1975 album, called just “J.D. Crowe & the New South” but more popularly known by its catalog number, Rounder 0044.

Mr. Crowe’s Kentucky Mountain Boys had covered material by the hippie country-rock band the Flying Burrito Brothers, but J.D. Crowe & the New South’s landmark album gave expression to a broader musical palette. It drew on everything from old-time country music to straight-ahead bluegrass and songs written by Fats Domino and Gordon Lightfoot.

Rounder 0044 changed not only how people thought about bluegrass but also their approach to playing it. Musically intrepid inheritors like Alison Krauss & Union Station and Nickel Creek would scarcely be imaginable without it.

Ms. Krauss grew up listening to the album and kept a framed copy of its cover on the wall in her home, Bill Nowlin, whose Rounder label released the project, wrote in 2016 in the online publication Bluegrass Situation.

Mr. Skaggs talked about the record’s impact in a 1999 interview with No Depression magazine. Referring to Bill Monroe and other bluegrass pioneers, he said that the album “had a lot of influence on kids that grew up during that time because, for a whole new generation, that was their Flatt & Scruggs and Monroe and the Stanley Brothers.”

“Rounder 0044 was the transition,” Mr. Crowe said in a 2012 interview for the liner notes to a reissue of the New South’s 1977 album, “You Can Share My Blanket.” “All we did was we took tunes nobody was doing, and it was like they were new tunes as far as the bluegrass genre was concerned.”

James Dee Crowe was born on Aug. 27, 1937, in Lexington, Ky., one of three children of Orval Dee and Bessie Lee (Nichols) Crowe. His parents were farmers.

He had taken up the guitar as a boy before falling under the spell of Earl Scruggs’s dazzling three-finger banjo playing when, at about 12 or 13, he went to see Flatt and Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys perform in Lexington.

“There was no other sound like that, so I dropped the guitar and got into the banjo,” he told No Depression.

As a teenager Mr. Crowe played in bands led by bluegrass royalty like Mac Wiseman and Jimmy Martin, but he did not begin working in music full time until 1956, after rejoining Mr. Martin’s Sunny Mountain Boys. Mr. Crowe appeared regularly on the “Louisiana Hayride” broadcast with Mr. Martin, the self-proclaimed “King of Bluegrass Music.” He also made numerous recordings with him, including one of his signature songs, “You Don’t Know My Mind,” in 1960.

Weary of touring, Mr. Crowe left Mr. Martin’s employ in 1961. He later formed the Kentucky Mountain Boys with the singer Red Allen and the mandolinist Doyle Lawson. That group, which also featured Mr. Slone, eventually settled into a regular gig at the Red Slipper Lounge at the Holiday Inn North in Lexington, where Mr. Crowe proceeded in earnest to incorporate country-rock into a bluegrass context.

The formation of the New South, though, marked the real watershed of his career, attracting musicians with expansive sensibilities who regularly passed through the band’s ranks before moving on to other projects. Among the more notable of these was the singer Keith Whitley, a late-’70s arrival who, like Mr. Skaggs, would achieve considerable success in mainstream country music.

Mr. Crowe started slowing down professionally in the ’80s, limiting himself to reunion concerts and selected recording projects like the six-album series he did with the Bluegrass Album Band, a bluegrass supergroup he founded with Mr. Rice.

Mr. Crowe won a Grammy in 1983 for best country instrumental performance for his recording “Fireball.” He was inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Association Hall of Fame in 2003. Kentucky Educational Television aired the documentary “A Kentucky Treasure: The James Dee Crowe Story” in 2008.

Mr. Crowe is survived by his wife of 48 years, Sheryl Moore Crowe; a son, David; a daughter, Stacey Crowe; and a granddaughter.

Mr. Crowe’s musical catholicity gave the lie to the belief that bluegrass is only about cleaving to tradition.

“So many groups try to keep the same sound, and that’s all well and good, if you can,” he said in 2012. “But for myself, I mean, how are you going to replace a Tony Rice and a Ricky Skaggs and a Jerry Douglas?

“You’re not going to do that. If you’re trying to do that, you’re forcing somebody to do what they can’t do, really. Although they may try, it don’t come off. So I figured, well, the best thing is, hire people that has good voices, can sing good, pick good, and let them do their deal.”