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    Frank Wakefield, Who Expanded the Mandolin’s Range, Dies at 89

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    A bluegrass innovator, he recorded numerous albums as a leader, and his list of collaborators included both Leonard Bernstein and Jerry Garcia.Frank Wakefield, an innovative bluegrass mandolinist whose sweeping musicality led to collaborations with the New York Philharmonic and Jerry Garcia, and whose unique voicings and technique expanded the parameters of his instrument, died on Friday at his home in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. He was 89.Marsha Sprintz, his companion of 47 years, said the cause was complications of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.In a career that spanned seven decades, Mr. Wakefield played with a host of bluegrass luminaries, including Jimmy Martin and the Stanley Brothers.He first made his mark in the early 1950s after joining a band led by the singer and guitarist Red Allen as a vocalist and mandolin player. Working in Ohio and the Upper Midwest and, by 1960, the Baltimore-Washington area, the band developed a hard-driving, harmony-rich brand of bluegrass that inspired not only other musicians in the genre, but also bluegrass-inclined rock bands like New Riders of the Purple Sage.While still a teenager, Mr. Wakefield mastered the heavily syncopated “chop” chord of the bluegrass pioneer Bill Monroe, whom he met in 1961 and who immediately recognized Mr. Wakefield’s prowess as a mandolinist.Mr. Wakefield in 2010. Despite suffering from emphysema for years, he toured and recorded well into the 2000s.Michael G. Stewart“You can play like me as good — or near as good — as I can,” Mr. Wakefield, in a 2022 interview with the Hudson Valley Bluegrass Association, recalled Mr. Monroe saying at their initial meeting. “Now you’ve got to go out and find your own style.”Heeding Mr. Monroe’s advice, Mr. Wakefield did exactly that. He devised his own sound by alternating up and down strokes on his instrument with equal force to produce a clear, ringing tone and sustained rhythm, which he likened to a sledgehammer striking a steel rail in a 1998 interview with the bluegrass website Candlewater.com.At other times, plucking the strings with multiple fingers, he produced a richly textured effect suggestive of two or three mandolins playing together.David Grisman, a student of Mr. Wakefield’s and a mandolin virtuoso in his own right, said in an often quoted passage from Frets magazine that Mr. Wakefield had “split the bluegrass mandolin atom” by taking the instrument beyond where Mr. Monroe had.The 1964 album “Bluegrass,” which Mr. Wakefield recorded with the singer and guitarist Red Allen, pushed the boundaries of the genre.Folkways Records“Bluegrass,” the album that Mr. Wakefield made with Mr. Allen for Folkways Records in 1964 (and that a 19-year-old Mr. Grisman produced), proved ample confirmation of that claim: It featured versions of two of Mr. Wakefield’s most enduring originals, “New Camptown Races” and “Catnip,” both of which, with their developments in melody, tunings and chord changes, pushed the limits of what then constituted bluegrass.Mr. Wakefield’s innovations didn’t stop there, though. By the mid-1960s he had begun composing sonatas for the mandolin and arranging classical pieces for traditional bluegrass ensembles. He performed with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall in 1967 and made a guest appearance with the Boston Pops orchestra the next year.The Greenbriar Boys (from left, Bob Yellin, Mr. Wakefield and John Herald) in performance at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival. David Gahr/Getty ImagesMr. Wakefield’s forays outside bluegrass extended into pop territory as well, including a mid-1960s stint with the Greenbriar Boys, an urban folk revivalist group. During this period, he also performed with country bluesmen like Lightnin’ Hopkins and Son House and, later, rock acts like the Grateful Dead.Franklin Delano Roosevelt Wakefield was born on June 26, 1934, in the Emory Gap enclave of Harriman, Tenn., the 10th of 12 children of Simpson and Bertie (Isham) Wakefield. Growing up poor, he was forced to leave school after second grade to help work on the family farm.Enthralled by DeFord Bailey’s performances on “The Grand Ole Opry,” young Frank took up the harmonica at an early age and soon also became adept at playing the guitar.His father, who worked as a brakeman to supplement the family income, froze to death in a local railyard when Frank was 13. Several of his sisters moved 300 miles north to Dayton, Ohio, as part of a Depression-era migration. Frank and his brother, Ralph, were left to move between orphanages until Frank finally ran away to join his sisters in Dayton, where a brother-in-law introduced him to the mandolin.Billing themselves as the Wakefield Brothers, Frank and Ralph, who played guitar, made their first public appearances at house parties and on local radio in 1960. Two years later, Frank joined Red Allen’s band, and his path as a musician was set.However, his tenure with Mr. Allen was fraught with conflict, much of it brought on by Mr. Allen’s abusive behavior, especially when he was drinking. Nevertheless, apart from a period with the Detroit-based Chain Mountain Boys in the mid-1950s, Mr. Wakefield persevered with him until 1965, when he joined the Greenbriar Boys to replace Ralph Rinzler, who had left the band to become Bill Monroe’s manager.Mr. Wakefield in a New York recording studio in 1966, at around the time he embarked on a solo career.David Gahr/Getty ImagesAfter recovering from a near-fatal automobile accident in the late 1960s, Mr. Wakefield moved to Saratoga Springs and embarked on a solo career. Over the next five decades, he released albums for a variety of bluegrass-aligned record labels, including Takoma, Flying Fish and Patuxent Music. His 1972 Rounder album, called simply “Frank Wakefield” and featuring the New York bluegrass band Country Cooking, is widely regarded as a touchstone of the movement known as newgrass, which incorporated elements of rock, jazz and classical music into traditional bluegrass.Despite suffering from emphysema for years, Mr. Wakefield continued to tour nationally and to record well into the 2000s.Besides Ms. Sprintz, Mr. Wakefield’s survivors include a sister, Susie Norton; a son, Greg Wakefield; and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren.Despite his musically omnivorous appetites, Mr. Wakefield was unfamiliar with Mr. Garcia, who would later produce the 1976 album “Pistol Packin’ Mama,” a string-band collaboration between Mr. Wakefield and others, when they started playing shows together.“Whenever Garcia played with me and David,” Mr. Wakefield explained, referring to David Nelson of New Riders of the Purple Sage in a 2006 interview with candlewater.com, “we would always have a full house. I thought it was because of me.”“It took me a while,” he added, “to realize that people were coming to the shows because Jerry was playing with us.” More

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      Roni Stoneman, Country Music’s ‘First Lady of the Banjo,’ Dies at 85

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      A featured player on ‘Hee Haw’ and member of the famed Stoneman Family, she was the first woman to play modern bluegrass banjo on a phonograph record.Roni Stoneman, a virtuoso banjo player, mainstay of the country music television show “Hee Haw” and one of the last surviving members of the Stoneman Family, a renowned Appalachian string band, died on Thursday at her home in Murfreesboro, Tenn. She was 85.Her death was confirmed by Julie Harris, a family friend. No further details were available; a cause was not given.Ms. Stoneman made her mark in 1957 with her driving instrumental version of “Lonesome Road Blues,” which made her the first woman to play modern bluegrass banjo on a phonograph record. Also known as “Going Down the Road Feeling Bad” and often including lyrics, the song was included on a compilation album of three-finger, five-string banjo numbers in the style popularized by Earl Scruggs.Ms. Stoneman’s greatest claim to fame, though, came 16 years later, when she joined the cast of “Hee Haw,” entertaining millions while proving herself to be a rustic comedian on a par with Minnie Pearl and June Carter Cash.From left, Marianne Gordon, Roni Stoneman and Cathy Baker, from the cast of “Hee Haw” in 1978. Ms. Stoneman played the gaptoothed character Ida Lee Nagger on the show for almost two decades.CBS, via Everette CollectionHer most amusing, and enduring, character on the show was the gaptoothed “Ironing Board Lady,” Ida Lee Nagger, a beleaguered housewife whose feckless husband never lifted a finger to help her. A case of art imitating life, she said, the skit drew on a time in Ms. Stoneman’s life when, as a young housewife and mother of four children, she fell on hard times and had to take in washing to feed her family.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

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      Bobby Osborne, Mandolinist Who Flouted Bluegrass Convention, Dies at 91

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      The band he led with his brother broke new ground with an unusually broad repertoire, unorthodox instrumentation and untraditional vocal harmonies.Bobby Osborne, the singer and mandolin player who with his younger brother, Sonny, led one of the most groundbreaking bands in the history of bluegrass, died on Tuesday at a hospital in Gallatin, Tenn., a suburb of Nashville. He was 91.His death was confirmed by Dan Rogers, the vice president and executive producer of the Grand Ole Opry.Formed in 1953, the Osborne Brothers band habitually flouted bluegrass convention during its first two decades. They were the first bluegrass group of national renown to incorporate drums, electric bass, pedal steel guitar and even, on records, string sections. They were also the first to record with twin banjos, as well as the first to amplify their instruments with electric pickups.Employing a wider repertoire than the Appalachian wellspring from which most of their peers drew, the Osbornes also worked with a more expansive musical palette, embracing country, pop and rock material associated with the likes of Ernest Tubb, Randy Newman and the Everly Brothers.“We caught lots of flack from the die-hard bluegrass fans,” Mr. Osborne said of the group’s sometimes fraught relationship with bluegrass purists in a 2011 interview with the online publication Mandolin Café.Perhaps nothing the Osbornes did rankled the bluegrass orthodoxy more than the three-part vocal harmonies they patented on their 1958 recording of the lovelorn ballad “Once More.”At the time, bluegrass arrangements typically featured one voice singing the melody, with a tenor and a baritone supplying harmonies above and below it. By contrast, the Osbornes positioned Bobby’s voice, singing the melody, above the two other voices. The result was the bright, euphonious blend that became the group’s trademark.Mr. Osborne told NPR in 2017 that the group discovered this sound while rehearsing “Once More” as they drove home from a show one night. “We knew then,” he said, “that we caught onto something that we had never heard before.”“So we got the guitar out of the trunk and found out what key we was in,” he continued. “We sang that song all the way home so we would not forget that type of harmony.”The trio that perfected this new approach consisted of Mr. Osborne, his bold high-pitched lead the focal point; his brother, Sonny, on baritone; and the singer and guitarist Red Allen on another part beneath them both, adding a third layer of harmony.A formative member during the group’s early years, Mr. Allen had previously appeared on the Osbornes’ popular 1956 recording of “Ruby, Are You Mad?,” an unbridled two-banjo romp written by the old-time country singer Cousin Emmy, a.k.a. Cynthia May Carver.To the surprise of some people, the Osbornes were vindicated over the next decade and a half for steadfastly breaking with tradition. Among other accomplishments, they were named vocal group of the year by the Country Music Association in 1971. They were also one of the few bluegrass bands to consistently place records on the country singles chart.Along the way they built a bridge between first-generation bluegrass royalty like Bill Monroe and the duo of Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs and intrepid latter-day inheritors like New Grass Revival and Alison Krauss.Mr. Osborne performing at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville in 2019.Jason Kempin/Getty Images for Country Music Hall Of Fame And MuseumMaybe the best known of the Osbornes’ 18 charting singles was “Rocky Top,” an unabashed celebration of mountain culture that reached the country Top 40 in 1967. Written by the husband-and-wife team of Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, who also wrote hits like “Tennessee Hound Dog” for the Osbornes — and even bigger hits for the Everly Brothers — “Rocky Top” was adopted as one of Tennessee’s official state songs and as the fight song of the University of Tennessee football team, the Volunteers.Robert Van Osborne Jr. was born on Dec. 7, 1931, in Thousandsticks, an unincorporated Appalachian enclave near Hyden, Ky., where he and his brother grew up. Their parents, Robert and Daisy (Dixon) Osborne, were schoolteachers; Robert Sr. supplemented their teaching income by moonlighting in his parents’ general store.Young Bobby took up the electric guitar as a teenager after the family moved to Dayton, Ohio, where he also began playing in local country bands and working as a cabdriver.The Osborne brothers started their own band after Bobby completed two years of service with the Marines in Korea, where he was wounded in combat and earned the Purple Heart. He and Sonny had previously worked for bluegrass luminaries — Bobby with Jimmy Martin and the Stanley Brothers, his brother with Bill Monroe.In 1956 the Osbornes joined the WWVA Jamboree in Wheeling, W.Va. Four years later they became one of the first bluegrass bands to perform on a college campus, appearing at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. They subsequently took their music to universities and clubs in the Northeast and performed at the Newport Folk Festival.In 1963 the brothers signed with the Nashville division of Decca Records, then run by the pre-eminent music producer Owen Bradley. In 1964 they became members of the cast of the Grand Ole Opry.The Osbornes recorded extensively for Decca (which later became MCA Records) before they parted with the label in 1974, disillusioned that their initial success at country radio did not extend into the 1970s.A return to a more time-honored approach to bluegrass revitalized their career, which over the next 30 years found them consolidating their place alongside pioneers of the genre like Mr. Monroe and the Stanleys. They were inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Hall of Fame in 1994.Sonny Osborne retired from performing in 2005, after suffering a shoulder injury, and died in 2021. Bobby, who had previously undergone quintuple bypass heart surgery, formed a new group, Rocky Top X-Press, with his son, Bobby Jr. (known as Boj), and continued to perform and record.Besides Bobby Jr., Mr. Osborne is survived by his wife, Karen Osborne; two other sons, Wynn and Robby; a daughter, Tina Osborne; a sister, Louise Williams; five grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren. He lived in Portland, Tenn., another suburb of Nashville.Much has been made of the innovations in production, arrangements and repertoire that the Osbornes introduced to bluegrass. Less, however, has been said of how Mr. Osborne, whose syncopated, lyrical playing was inspired by the jazz-derived solos of old-time fiddlers, broke new ground as a mandolinist.Speaking to the website Bluegrass Situation in 2017, he explained: “Since I always liked fiddle tunes and the mandolin is tuned like a fiddle — and I was good with a flat pick from guitar — I got completely wrapped up playing fiddle tunes with the mandolin.”In the process Mr. Osborne earned a reputation as one of the first bluegrass mandolin players to expand the instrument’s vocabulary beyond what Mr. Monroe, the father of Bluegrass, had established early on.Alex Traub More

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      Roland White, a Shaper of Bluegrass and Country-Rock, Dies at 83

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      A mandolin player and singer, he made his mark with the Country Boys (later renamed the Kentucky Colonels), and his influence extended into the rock of the ’60s.NASHVILLE — Roland White, a mandolin player and singer who helped shape major developments in bluegrass and country-rock over a seven-decade career, died here on Friday. He was 83.His death, in a hospital after a recent heart attack, was confirmed by his wife, Diane Bouska.Mr. White was admired for his rich tone and rhythmic imagination as a mandolinist, as well as for his warm, expressive vocals, which were equally suited to the lead and harmony parts in an arrangement. His openness to ideas and approaches outside the bounds of traditional bluegrass was also among the hallmarks of his music.He first made his mark in the late 1950s with the Country Boys (later renamed the Kentucky Colonels), the West Coast bluegrass band that originally included his younger brothers Eric and Clarence on tenor banjo and guitar. Inspired by the virtuoso flatpicker Doc Watson, Clarence reimagined the role of the guitar in bluegrass, transforming it from a strictly rhythmic vehicle to a more expansive instrument on which lead and rhythm could be played simultaneously.“Appalachian Swing!,” the Kentucky Colonels’ all-instrumental album from 1964, was among the most influential bluegrass collections of the 1960s. In terms of repertoire and technique, the record — which, along with Roland and Clarence White, featured Billy Ray Latham on banjo, Roger Bush on bass, Bobby Slone on fiddle and LeRoy Mack on dobro — was a touchstone for the musically adventurous bands of the 1970s and beyond whose music came to be known as “newgrass.”The album’s reach extended to country-rock bands like the Byrds and Buffalo Springfield, who incorporated bluegrass instrumentation and sensibilities into their music. The album’s enduring relevance is also due in large part to Mr. White’s innovative mandolin work, as well as to his leadership with the project.“I don’t think it was my playing that had so much influence as just the fact that I was playing in the style and pulled things together for us to play, learn and be a band,” Mr. White said in a 2010 interview with the website Mandolin Cafe.“I didn’t show anybody what to play on their instrument, and really nobody else did, either,” he added. “Bits of things might have been shown to us by someone here and there, but almost all of it was by ear and observing.”Despite the band’s impact on West Coast folk and bluegrass, the Kentucky Colonels struggled to gain a foothold commercially amid the increasingly rock-dominated West Coast music scene of the 1960s.The group disbanded in 1966, with Mr. White moving to Nashville and, in 1967, becoming the lead singer and guitarist for Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys, with whom he made recordings like “Sally Goodin” and “Walls of Time.” (His brother Clarence found work as a studio musician and later joined the Byrds as lead guitarist.)After about two years with Mr. Monroe, Mr. White took a job as mandolinist with the Nashville Grass, the band of another bluegrass patriarch, Lester Flatt.Mr. White around 2000. He began his career in the 1950s playing country music at dances and other social functions with his siblings.Stephen A. Ide/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesMr. White remained with Mr. Flatt until 1973, when he and his brothers reunited to form the New Kentucky Colonels with the banjo player and singer Herb Pedersen. The reunion ended tragically when Clarence White was killed by a drunken driver while loading equipment outside a club in Palmdale, Calif.Roland Joseph LeBlanc was born on April 23, 1938, in Madawaska, Maine, the first of five children of Eric and Mildred Cyr LeBlanc. His father, a carpenter, played guitar, tenor banjo and harmonica; his mother was a homemaker. Of French Canadian descent — young Roland spoke French at home until he was in the second grade — Mr. White’s father stopped using the original family name in favor of its anglicized equivalent, White, sometime after Roland was born.The family moved to Southern California in 1954, and the three brothers, with their sister Joanne occasionally joining them on bass, began playing country music at dances and other social functions. They moved to Burbank in 1957; shortly after that, the brothers won a talent contest sponsored by the Pasadena radio station KXLA.They also attracted the attention of the guitarist Joe Maphis, who helped get them bookings on “Town Hall Party” and other musical variety shows of the day.By this time a quintet, the group appeared on the sitcom “The Andy Griffith Show” shortly before Mr. White was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1961. They recorded their first album, “The New Sound of Bluegrass America,” in 1962, at which point they changed their name to the Kentucky Colonels at the suggestion of the guitarist Merle Travis. (Mr. White was still stationed in Germany at this point; his brother Eric had previously left the group to get married.)After his brother Clarence’s death in 1973, Mr. White joined the Country Gazette, a musically omnivorous Los Angeles-based bluegrass band that also included Mr. Pedersen, the fiddler Byron Berline and the banjoist Alan Munde. Mr. White toured and recorded with the group while also releasing an acclaimed solo album, “I Wasn’t Born to Rock’n Roll,” in 1976.He left the Country Gazette in 1987 to join the Nashville Bluegrass Band, with whom he recorded Grammy-winning albums in 1993 and 1995. In 2000, he formed the Roland White Band; the group’s debut album, “Jelly on My Tofu,” was nominated for a Grammy.A prolific mandolin teacher, Mr. White published numerous instructional books and videos with Ms. Bouska, who, in addition to singing and playing guitar in the Roland White Band, was a co-producer of their records.Mr. White was inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Hall of Fame in 2018. The Kentucky Colonels received the same honor a year later.In addition to Ms. Bouska, he is survived by a daughter, Roline Hodge, and a son, Lawrence LeBlanc, both from a previous marriage; two grandchildren; a great-granddaughter; and a sister, Rose Marie Johnson.As influential as the album “Appalachian Swing!” proved to be, of equal impact on the West Coast folk scene of the 1960s were the club dates that Mr. White and the Kentucky Colonels played at the Ash Grove in Los Angeles.The Byrds were particularly impressed, adapting the bluegrass instrumentation and technique they gleaned from those shows — they even enlisted Clarence White to play guitar on landmark albums like “Younger Than Yesterday” (1967) and “Sweetheart of the Rodeo” (1968).“Playing the Ash Grove opened the way for us to play to a totally new audience — a folk audience that we had known nothing about,” Mr. White said in an interview with the website The Bluegrass Situation. “They dressed differently from the country-western audience (they were college students, professors, beatniks, doctors and lawyers) and they paid close attention to the music.” More

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

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      Drawing on rock and R&B, Mr. Crowe recast the sound of bluegrass while helping launch the careers of some of the genre’s biggest stars.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.The 1975 album by Mr. Crowe’s band the New South changed not only how people thought about bluegrass but also their approach to playing it. 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.” More

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      Tony Rice, Bluegrass Innovator With a Guitar Pick, Dies at 69

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTony Rice, Bluegrass Innovator With a Guitar Pick, Dies at 69The nimble king of flatpicking had enormous influence on a host of prominent musicians. And he could sing, too, until he could no longer.Tony Rice in about 2000. “I don’t know if a person can make anything more beautiful” than his guitar playing, the singer-songwriter Jason Isbell said.Credit…Stephen A. Ide/Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty ImagesDec. 28, 2020Updated 6:26 p.m. ETTony Rice, an immensely influential singer and guitarist in bluegrass and in the new acoustic music circles that grew up around it, died on Saturday at his home in Reidsville, N.C. He was 69.The International Bluegrass Music Association confirmed his death. No cause was specified.“Tony Rice was the king of the flatpicked flattop guitar,” the singer-songwriter Jason Isbell said on Twitter. “His influence cannot possibly be overstated.”Mr. Isbell was referring to what is commonly known as flatpicking, a technique that involves striking a guitar’s strings with a pick or plectrum instead of with the fingers. Inspired by the forceful fretwork of the pioneering bluegrass bandleader Jimmy Martin, Mr. Rice’s flatpicking was singularly nimble and expressive.“I don’t know if a person can make anything more beautiful,” Mr. Isbell went on to say in his tweet, describing Mr. Rice’s fluid, percussive playing, in which feeling, whether expressed harmonically or melodically, took precedence over flash.Mr. Rice left his mark on a host of prominent musicians, including his fellow newgrass innovators Mark O’Connor and Béla Fleck, acoustic music inheritors like Chris Thile and Alison Krauss, and his flat-picking disciples Bryan Sutton and Josh Williams.“There’s no way it can ever go back to what it was before him,” Ms. Krauss said of bluegrass in an interview with The New York Times Magazine for a profile of Mr. Rice in 2014. She was barely a teenager when Mr. Rice first invited her onstage to play with him.Starting in the 1970s with his work with the group J.D. Crowe and the New South, Mr. Rice built bridges that spanned traditional bluegrass, ’60s folk songs, jazz improvisation, classical music and singer-songwriter pop.He was a catalyst for the newgrass movement, in which bands broke with bluegrass tradition by drawing on pop and rock sources for inspiration, employing a more improvisational approach to performing and incorporating previously untapped instrumentation like electric guitar and drums.The bluegrass association named him instrumental performer of the year six times, and in 1983 he received a Grammy Award for best country instrumental performance for “Fireball,” a track recorded with J.D. Crowe and the New South.Not only a virtuoso guitarist, Mr. Rice was also a gifted singer and master of phrasing. His rich, supple baritone was as equally at home singing lead in three-part bluegrass harmony arrangements as it was adapting the troubadour ballads of Gordon Lightfoot under the newgrass banner.But his performing career was abruptly cut short beginning in 1994, when he learned he had muscle tension dysphonia, a severe vocal disorder that robbed him of the ability to sing in public and compromised his speaking voice. He would not sing onstage or address an audience again until 2013, when the bluegrass association inducted him into the International Bluegrass Hall of Fame.Not long after that diagnosis, Mr. Rice learned that he also had lateral epicondylitis, commonly known as tennis elbow, which made it too painful for him to play the guitar in public anymore as well.A 1975 album by the band J.D. Crowe and the New South, with Mr. Rice on guitar, modernized bluegrass in ways that shaped the music into the 21st century. From left, J.D. Crowe, Ricky Scaggs, Bob Slone and Mr. Rice. David Anthony Rice was born on June 8, 1951, in Danville, Va., one of four boys of Herbert Hoover Rice and Dorothy (Poindexter) Rice, who was known as Louise. His father was a welder and an amateur musician, his mother a millworker and a homemaker. It was her idea to call her son Tony, after her favorite actor, Tony Curtis. Everyone in the Rice household played or sang bluegrass music.After the family moved to the Los Angeles area in the mid-1950s, Mr. Rice’s father formed a bluegrass band called the Golden State Boys. The group, which recorded several singles, included two of his mother’s brothers as well as a young Del McCoury at one point, before he became a bluegrass master in his own right. The band inspired Mr. Rice and his brothers to form a bluegrass outfit of their own, the Haphazards.The Haphazards sometimes shared local bills with the Kentucky Colonels, a band whose dazzling guitarist, Clarence White — a future member of the rock band the Byrds — had a profound influence on Mr. Rice’s early development as a musician.(Mr. White was killed by a drunken driver while loading equipment after a show in 1973. Afterward, Mr. Rice tracked down Mr. White’s 1935 Martin D-28 herringbone guitar, which he purchased from its new owner in 1975 for $550. Restoring the guitar, he started performing with it, affectionately calling it the “Antique.”)The Rice family moved from California to Florida in 1965 and then to various cities in the Southeast, where Mr. Rice’s father pursued one welding opportunity after another.He also drank, creating a tumultuous home life that forced Mr. Rice to move out when he was 17. Tony Rice struggled with alcohol himself but, by his account, had been sober since 2001.Dropping out of high school, Mr. Rice bounced among relatives’ homes before moving to Louisville in 1970 to join the Bluegrass Alliance. The band’s members, including the mandolinist Sam Bush, went on to form much of the founding nucleus of the progressive bluegrass band New Grass Revival.Mr. Rice joined J.D. Crowe and the New South in 1971. Three years later, Mr. Skaggs signed on as well, replacing Mr. Rice’s brother Larry in the group. The dobro player Jerry Douglas also become a member of the New South at this time. In 1975, the band released an album titled simply “J.D. Crowe and the New South” (but commonly known by its first track, “Old Home Place”), which modernized bluegrass in ways that shaped the music into the 21st century.Mr. Rice, Mr. Douglas and Mr. Skaggs left the group in August 1975. Mr. Rice then moved to San Francisco and helped found the David Grisman Quartet, a trailblazing ensemble featuring bluegrass instrumentation that fused classical and jazz sensibilities to create what Mr. Grisman called “dawg music.”“The music laid out in front of me was like nothing I’d ever seen,” Mr. Rice told The Times Magazine in 2014. “At first I thought I couldn’t learn it. The only thing that saved me was that I always loved the sound of acoustic, small-group, modern jazz.”After four years with Mr. Grisman, Mr. Rice established his own group, the Tony Rice Unit, which was acclaimed for its experimental, jazz-steeped approach to bluegrass as heard on albums like “Manzanita” (1979) and “Mar West” (1980).Mr. Rice also recorded more mainstream and traditional material for numerous other projects, including a six-volume series of albums that paid tribute to the formative bluegrass of the 1950s.“Skaggs & Rice” (1980), another history-conscious album, featured Mr. Skaggs and Mr. Rice singing seamless, soulful harmonies in homage to the brother duos prevalent in the pre-bluegrass era.Mr. Rice performing in 2009 with his band the Tony Rice Unit at the Bonnaroo music festival in Tennessee. Credit…Jason Merritt/FilmMagic, via Getty ImagesMost of Mr. Rice’s releases after 1994, the year he got his vocal disorder diagnosis, were instrumental projects or collaborations, like “The Pizza Tapes,” a studio album with Mr. Grisman and Jerry Garcia of Grateful Dead fame; Mr. Rice contributed acoustic guitar.His survivors include his wife of 30 years, Pamela Hodges Rice, and his brothers Ron and Wyatt. His brother Larry died in 2006.Mr. Rice cut a dashing figure onstage, complete with finely tailored suits and a dignified bearing, as if to gainsay the lack of respect bluegrass has sometimes received outside the South, owing to its hardscrabble rural beginnings.Mr. Rice was as conscious of these cultural dynamics as he was of the limitless possibilities he saw in bluegrass music.“Maybe the reason I dress like I do goes back to the day where, if you went out on the street, unless you had some sort of ditch-digging job to do, you made an effort to not look like a slob,” he told his biographers, Tim Stafford and Caroline Wright, for “Still Inside: The Tony Rice Story” (2010).“Back in the heyday of Miles Davis’s most famous bands, you wouldn’t have seen Miles without a tailored suit on,” he went on. “My musical heroes wear suits.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More