Eddie Adcock, Musician Who Pushed Bluegrass Forward, Dies at 86
A master improviser on banjo, he understood the genre’s roots but was also in the forefront of the later “newgrass” movement.Eddie Adcock, a virtuoso banjo and guitar player who served as a bridge between the formative early years of bluegrass and the innovative “newgrass” movement of the 1970s and beyond, died on March 19 in Lebanon, Tenn. He was 86.His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by Dan Hays, a former executive director of the International Bluegrass Music Association, who said Mr. Adcock had a number of chronic health problems.Mr. Adcock brought his improvisatory fretwork to musical settings ranging from the first-generation traditionalism of Bill Monroe to the newgrass, or “new acoustic,” sounds fashioned by forerunners of modern bluegrass like the Country Gentlemen and II Generation.Mr. Adcock was best known for his tenure in the 1960s with the Country Gentlemen, a group based in Arlington, Va., that, through advances in style and repertoire, all but redefined bluegrass music. Employing a traditional string-band format, they broadened the genre’s appeal with their impromptu arrangements of folk and pop songs and material written by artists, like Hedy West and Gordon Lightfoot, whose work fell outside the bounds of bluegrass.Mr. Adcock’s contributions were consistently among the quartet’s most daring, notably his dazzling string-bending and his use of the thumb-style guitar technique of Merle Travis to create a unique jazz- and blues-inflected approach to playing the banjo.“I released all my insides, all my creativity, into the band,” Mr. Adcock said of his heady early years with the Country Gentlemen in a 2016 interview with Scottsville Monthly, the magazine of his hometown, Scottsville, Va. “I was ready to say something of my own, and that’s where I made my mark.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
