The Foundation for Bluegrass Music has announced details for their 2014 grant cycle. A total of $10,000 in grants will be awarded this year to honor the memory of pioneers Doug Dillard and Doc Watson. This is a $2000 increase over last year.
Programs eligible for these grants, as described by the Foundation, will…
…support educational, literary and artistic activities related to bluegrass music, of public benefit. Examples of programs that can grow under this umbrella include Bluegrass in the Schools (grants, workshops, programs); academic conferences; literary works and related efforts; public artistic presentation of an educational nature; historic preservation; and other works of a charitable nature.
A special consideration is given to programs and opportunities to benefit young people.
The Foundation was created in 2007 in response to a sizable donation from a major supporter of bluegrass music, and while sharing office space with the IBMA, is separately chartered and managed by its own board. It continues to award these grants through ongoing donations from people eager to see its mission succeed.
Applications for the 2014 grants must be received by June 30, 2013. Awards will be announced during the World of Bluegrass convention this Fall, and funds will be available after January 1, 2014.
More details and an application form can be found online.
One of the special features of this year’s IBMA World of Bluegrass event in Nashville next week – Monday, September 24 to Thursday, September 27 – isthe early morning Storytelling Sessions, each of them remembering one of bluegrass music’s recently departed icons.
The sessions take place from 8:00 – 9:30 a.m. in the 3rd Floor Lounge (NCC Level 3 Lounge) of the Renaissance Hotel, and are free and open to the general public. All will be ably moderated by John Fabke, one of south Wisconsin’s finest traditional musicians.
Tuesday, September 25
Early Morning Storytelling: Remembering Earl Scruggs
The first session features musicians of three different generations to celebrate the life of Earl Scruggs, whose individual contributions to the creation of the bluegrass sound are arguably as important as those made by Bill Monroe. Confirmed very special guests for this session include the last surviving Foggy Mountain Boy Curly Seckler, brothers Haskell and Gerald McCormick, and bass player Kent Blanton.
Born near Shelby, Cleveland County, NC, Scruggs passed away on March 28, at the age of 88.
This oral history session will honour the late, great banjo icon Doug Dillard. Attendants will be able to hear stories of Dillard’s colourful life and career, from his beginnings with the Ozark Mountain Boys through to his time with The Dillards, The Byrds, his unforgettable appearances on The Andy Griffith Show, and his work as a soloist, session musician and bandleader. The guests are younger brother Rodney Dillard, fellow banjo player John McEuen, Kathy Chiavolaand Ginger Boatwright, all of whom were very closely associated with both the man and his music.
Born March 6, 1937, in East St. Louis, IL, Doug Dillard passed away on May 16.
Thursday, September 27
Everett Lilly Storytelling Session: Remembering the Lilly Brothers
The last storytelling event brings together family and friends of first generation bluegrass pioneer Everett Lilly. His long career in bluegrass and old time country music included stints with Molly O’Day, Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys, and Don Stover and, most recently, the Lilly Mountaineers. Special guests include Everett Lilly’s son, Everett Alan Lilly, as well as RichardBrownand left-handed guitarist and record producer Jim Rooney.
Everett Lilly died at his home in Clear Creek, WV, on May 8. He was 87.
For more information about these and other IBMA events during World of Bluegrass week, visit: www.ibma.org.
This reflection on three legends who have passed on during 2012 is a contribution from flatpicking legend Dan Crary. In addition to being a pioneering guitarist, Crary is an Associate Professor of Speech Communications at California State University at Fullerton. Dan is said to be working on a new album this Fall.
“Give sorrow words” the poet advised; not an easy thing to do when we have seen the passing of some of the greats of our music. And it always comes as a shock; you “know not the hour” as the Bible says. 2012 has been the year of the passing of some of our music’s greatest monumental figures, especially for me, Doc Watson, Earl Scruggs, and Doug Dillard, as well as other greats of our music, including Everett Lilly. Sic transit gloria mundi, “thus passes away the glory of the world.” And so we grieve for these giant figures in our lives and music, we feel their absence, make speeches, write memorials, and as the characters in the play said, gathered around the deathbed of Richard II, “For God’s sake let us sit down upon the ground and tell sad tales of the death of kings.”
The tales of Doc and Earl and Doug will be many to tell, in fact they already have been: happily these great players did actually receive some of their flowers while they were living, as the old Stanley Brothers song has it. Earl Scruggs seemed to come out of nowhere in the 1940’s playing a style of banjo that was, by the time the world heard it, so complete, so powerful, that all banjo playing since has been judged by its standard. The old tapes of the Blue Grass Boys on the 1940’s Grand Ol’ Opry record how audiences went beserk for Earl’s banjo, demanding so many encores, it almost stopped the rest of the Opry show.
When Doc Watson burst on the national scene in those early ‘60s Newport Folk Festivals, he blew the New England folkies away with the power of his gravel-pure voice, and the greatest guitar flatpicking that had ever been heard. And when Doc and son Merle toured the world starting in the late sixties, they began the biggest migration of a single musical instrument in history. The steel-string guitar went from deep obscurity in the mid-20th Century to become the most ubiquitous instrument on earth.
Out of all the sincere and well-intentioned attempts of politics, diplomacy, philosophy, religion, and education to get people to be peaceable together, ironically today, the last thing on earth that all seven billion of us agree on is that we like the steel string guitar. If you could get into Tehran, Bejing, or Mogadishu there would be a peaceable jam session, and someone there would know the Wildwood Flower. Having thus swept the world, guitar music may, just maybe, someday save humanity; if it does, Doc and Merle started the trend.
Doug Dillard was another tremendous personality and player, very influential, and with The Dillards band, came roaring out of the California music scene in the late 60’s and early seventies. The Dillards showed the world that bluegrass music, acoustic instruments, and entertaining stories and repartee could make it on a major label and stand on its own surrounded by electrified country and rock music.
So it’s shocking to think of our world without them; for me Earl was the blazing banjo sound that hooked me as a little kid in 1951; in my world, Doc was the fifth face on the Mt. Rushmore of music; and Doug was sassy, smart old time music walking unapologetically up and down Santa Monica Blvd. Now, without them, the world feels very strange, and we wonder what more to say about their absence. Books will be written, memorials created, and most of all, we will tell stories of Doc and Earl and Doug for a long time.
So what more is there to say? Just one thing more: to remind ourselves how their music and their example ought to influence us. In history the great funeral orations were aimed not at the departed, but at the living. Pericles after the Peloponnesian War and Lincoln at Gettysburg, for example, reminded the living to carry on the vision of those being memorialized. And that’s what we can do as we celebrate and feel the loss of Doc and Earl and Doug. We can go back to the source, listen again to the recordings, hear in Doc’s singing and playing what Utah Phillips called “the power of an authorless folksong.” Listen to the beautiful inside stuff of Earl’s banjo, the irony, the tone, the drive. And revisit those sessions from over three decades ago when Doug and the Dillards took bluegrass to town and made it dance in the city streets.
And there is another important tradition that these heroes of our music all taught us: the tradition of, it’s OK to do something different. Realize that the passing greats of 2012 are immortal and revered by us both because they were true to their roots and traditions, and also because the music they actually performed changed everything that went before. Doc, Earl, Doug: all innovators who warped and altered the music drastically while somehow never letting you forget where they (and it) came from. That’s a difficult line to walk: their legacy of rooted-but-different is a challenging course for us to navigate, and it can get divisive. If you don’t think so, just sit in on some of our beer-and-opinions arguments that range everywhere from “bluegrasser-than-thou” to “it’s my guitar and I’ll play what I want to.” It’s a dialogue as old as western civilization: will it be permanence or change? The answer to that one, my friends, had better be: “Yes!”
The examples of Doc and Earl and Doug are a perfect guide into our future. They’re a compass to keep the music on course in some sense, but also to point to the next Earl, Doc, or Doug, the next inspired young player waiting in the wings to knock your socks off.
Think about it: somewhere out there, today, walking around, are the players who will be the heroes of 2062. So our job is twofold: we need to be the old curmudgeons nagging the young players to remember the tradition, and then we need the wisdom to get out of their way as they change things, become Doc II, or the kid-who-will-become-Earl, or a Doug-for-the-next-generation. Because as Lee Hayes of the Weavers famously said: “The future isn’t what it was cracked up to be; and what’s more, it never was.”
Milo Farineau caught up with Del McCoury recently, and took the opportunity to get his reflections on some fellow bluegrass legends who have passed on this past few months.
Milo: It’s been a tough year of loss for the bluegrass world. The passing of Earl Scruggs, Doug Dillard and Doc Watson were a big loss to those of us who only knew them only through their music, but these were your friends. You played at Earl’s funeral and it was during Delfest this year that we we learned of Doc’s fall. That’s a lot to take in one year.
Del: Sam Bush was just up here and we were talking about all that loss… Doc, Doug and Earl. It was good talking about them. Remembering, telling stories while they weren’t there to defend themselves (laughs).
It’s a really big loss, you know. Really big. All of them. Earl Scruggs was the reason I started playing music in the beginning. My older brother G.C. went and bought that record, Rollin’ in my Sweet Baby’s Arms, and that was 78 RPM records back then (laughs). I was 11 years old when I heard that song the first time. My brother had taught me a little guitar back then, some chords, but when I heard Earl play that banjo, that backup on that song, I said “Boy I got to do that!” I eventually got one to play. It took me forever, but I kinda learned to play it. So that was really my interest back then. The banjo. It really was.
I got to really know Earl in his later years and we became great friends. He could remember a lot of things that happened over the years and he really liked talking about them to me. He could remember a lot of things!
I didn’t meet Doc ’till I was playing with Bill Monroe in 1963. I was on rhythm guitar and Bill was booked for a couple of weeks out there at The Ash Grove, in California. Ed Pearl‘s place. Bill’s manager came up and said “I’m gonna have Doc Watson come up here and open the show for you, Bill,” so Doc shows up, and he didn’t have any band with him or anything. So he was wondering if I’d come play guitar with him, you know, just pull up a chair and play some rhythm. And I said “Well I don’t know if I know enough…” and he just cut me off and said “Come on you’ll get it. Don’t worry ’bout it.”
So that’s what I did. I literally started playing with Doc the minute I met him (laughs). That was really a big treat for me. Doc was such a great guitar player and singer, a true entertainer who really had a way with the audience that was truly great. Years later I got to record with him, with Mac Wiseman. We did a record with him. We really didn’t rehearse or anything. Someone would just say, ”Hey, let’s do this song,” and well, we‘d do it. Then someone else would name another song, and we’d just play it and record it. That’s pretty much how that whole album with Doc came about. It was great. A really good time.
And Doug Dillard… I met him when I was playing with Bill too. Bill and Betsy were staying at that Holiday Hotel, when we were out playing at that Ash Grove. Bill says “You and Kenny gonna stay up there with the Dillards,” and I’d heard of some Dillards that had this great song Banjo in the Hollow, and I thought ‘That must be a different bunch of guys we’re staying with,” but it was them. They told me they were out there in California and had just done some filming with Andy Griffith, for the show, and they were grateful to have gotten some work because they hadn’t really gotten much going on, and it was right after that, after I met them that ‘bam,’ it really took off for them.
Milo: I talked to Sam Bush at FloydFest about the loss and he said “Del is the King of bluegrass” and he was speaking about you being one of the last great elders and statesmen of the bluegrass tradition. That said, do you feel any pressure, any need or obligation to protect traditional bluegrass?
Del: Well, yes I do kinda feel that way but I’ve never really said anything about it you know. When I started and got my first band after I quit Bill Monroe, I still wanted that sound, that makeup of a band, those instruments that I first heard together. It impressed me so much when I first hear that stuff, it really did. Flatt and Scrugs and Bill Monroe… I heard them first together when I was younger, and not really paying much attention to it.
Then I heard Flatt and Scruggs together, and Bill Monroe by himself. I used to listen to the Grand Ole Opry with my dad and granddad. When I got to be able to drive I’d run around to all these hillbilly parks, so many not more than an hour or two away from each other, and hear them play. All of them… Flatt and Scruggs, and Bill Monroe, the Stanleys and the Osbornes.
It seemed that in those days that each one of them had a distinctive sound. More so than today I think. I like playing that traditional bluegrass sometimes. It’s important. But I like all these new young guys too. I like playing it all. My manager is always coming up with interesting ideas of who to play with, and I really love it too. Mixing it up.
Milo: Speaking of playing with a great mix, you’re headlining Jomeokee Music Festival in Pinnacle, NC September 14-16.
Del: I’m excited about this one. You know the lineup, the people, it’s kinda like a little Delfest. I love that spot too… that view of Pilot Mountain. Lots of good music has been played there. I’m really looking forward to that!
The latest edition of eBULLET, the official newsletter of the Andy Griffith Show Rerun Watchers Club, is a special issue remembering Doug Dillard both for his contributions to the show as part of the Darling Family, and for his larger contributions to the bluegrass and banjo worlds.
It includes a detailed career overview, comments from fellow cast members on the show, and text of the lovely eulogy delivered at Dillard’s funeral by his friend, Bernie Leadon. Any fan of Doug Dillard, or the banjo generally, will want to read the whole thing, but let me quote just the concluding paragraphs.
“Earl Scruggs was excited about what Snuffy Jenkins was playing, Doug was excited about what Earl and Don Reno were playing, me and the other players coming up were excited about what Doug was playing and so on. There have now been several generations of players who have matured after Doug, many of them great indeed, but none of them have the same attack, directness and flat-out fire that Doug played with. He is, and will always remain, one of a kind.
God bless, Doug. We are all extremely blessed that you passed our way. God Speed.”
eBULLET also reminds its readers about the Douglas Dillard Legacy Fund, established to perpetuate Doug’s musical legacy. Donations can be sent to:
Douglas Dillard Legacy Fund
PO Box 90537
Nashville, TN 37209
Vicki Dillard, wife of the recently-departed banjo legend Doug Dillard, has shared a few words about her husband’s funeral last week.
Doug had passed away on May 16 following a number of health issues over the past year.
Here is Vicki’s brief account of the service:
“The service was beyond awesome. Very beautiful, and great music!!! Sam Bush, Richard Bailey, David Grier, Holly-Jamie Hartford, Kathy Chiavola, Ginger Boatwright… So many great pickers came and all played and sang together.
We also sang at the graveside. It’s a beautiful spot just over looking the Tennessee, with hills all around. And a little dirt country road, and trees on the other side. Truly beautiful.
I never have seen so many grown men cry. I will miss him so much.”
She also passed along news of a fund that has been established to keep Doug’s banjo legacy alive going forward, hopefully including arranging for reissue of some of his recordings. Hopefully this will include his brilliant 1973 album, Duelin’ Banjo.
Donations can be sent to:
The Douglas Dillard Legacy Fund
P.O. Box 90537
Nashville, TN 37209
After the death of Earl Scruggs and the announced retirement of J. D. Crowe, the banjo world suffered another loss last week with the passing of Doug Dillard.
Having been seen by millions, perhaps 100 million, through nearly 50 years of Andy Griffith Show reruns, Doug Dillard established his place in the history of bluegrass banjo. However, because much of the mainstream bluegrass world was oriented to groups in the eastern region in the 1960’s and 70’s, and Dillard explored the world outside traditional bluegrass in much of his early career, I must confess that I did not fully appreciate the magnitude of his career at the time, and did not know or understand the contributions he made not only to bluegrass, but to other musical genres.
Born March 6, 1937 in Salem, Missouri, as the middle son of a musical family, Douglas Dillard first began playing guitar at age five. He received his first banjo as a Christmas present at the age of fifteen, and, like most young banjo players in the early 1950’s, credited Earl Scruggs, Don Reno, and Ralph Stanley as his major influences. He reportedly had the oft-told experience of running his car in a ditch the first time he heard Earl Scruggs on the radio.
Doug began his musical career playing in the family band, which included his father Homer, Sr. on fiddle, his mother Lorene on guitar, and older brother Earl on keyboards. In the mid-to-late 1950’s, Doug played in several groups, including the Dixie Ramblers, which also included his younger brother, Rodney, on guitar.
Eventually, Rodney and Doug struck out on their own and formed the band that most will recall, including Dean Webb on mandolin, and Mitch Jayne on bass. This version of the Dillards played their first concert at Washington University in St. Louis in 1962, one of the earliest bluegrass concerts on a college campus, recorded and released 37 years later on a CD titled The Dillards: a long time ago, The First Time Live.
In the closest thing to an overnight success as the bluegrass world has probably ever seen, the Dillards decided the same year to relocate to the west coast, and shortly after arriving they heard about a hotspot for folk music, the legendary Ash Grove nightclub. They went, got up on stage after the night’s scheduled entertainment had ended, were seen by a representative of Elektra Records, and by the next night were signed to a three album deal with Elektra Records — the stuff musicians’ dreams are made of.
Their Elektra debut release was the legendary Back Porch Bluegrass, which included Dooley, Banjo In The Hollow, Old Home Place, and Doug’s Tune, among others.
The following year, they were cast in recurring roles as the Darlin Family on the Andy Griffith Show, leading to numerous other television appearances, including special shows hosted by Judy Garland and Tennessee Ernie Ford.
During this time, the Dillards appeared at numerous folk festivals, including the Newport Folk Festival at which Bill Monroe and the Stanley Brothers also appeared, and they toured with Bob Bylan, Joan Baez, and many others. In the mid-1960’s, the Dillards became one of the first bluegrass bands to “plug in,” electrifying their instruments which, given sound reproduction technology of the day, would have been the most practical way to produce sufficient volume to compete with the groups they were touring with at that time.
In 1968, Doug decided to strike out in a different direction and left the Dillards to join the Byrds on their first European tour. After the tour, Doug formed a group with ex-Byrd Gene Clark, the Dillard & Clark Expedition, which blended back hills country and rock music, with musicians that included Bernie Leadon, Don Beck, Byron Berline, and others. This new country-rock sound, blending banjo, fiddle, and other acoustic instruments with drums, electric guitars, steel guitar, and keyboards, was emulated by later groups, such as The Flying Burrito Brothers, Poco, and The Eagles.
A fact not well known: although Earl Scruggs’ recording of Foggy Mountain Breakdown was used in the movie Bonnie & Clyde, all of the remaining background music featuring banjo in the movie was recorded by Doug Dillard. The 1970’s saw Doug Dillard doing a great deal of session work, commercial, and solo projects. His credits include work for 7Up, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Chevrolet, VISA, television appearances on the Dean Martin Show, an extended on screen appearance in the movie The Rose, and session work with the Monkeys, Johnny Cash, Arlo Guthrie, Glen Campbell, Michael Martin Murphey, The Beach Boys, Linda Ronstadt, and others too numerous to list.
In 1983, Doug returned to mainstream bluegrass, forming the Doug Dillard Band, which over the years featured many great musicians including Ginger Boatwright, David Grier, Kathy Chiavola, Roger Rasnake, Billy Constable, and Jonathan Yudkin. From time to time over the years, Doug reunited with brother Rodney for various projects and concerts, including projects with John Hartford (billed as Dillard-Hartford-Dillard) and with the original Dillards (with Mitch Jayne and Dean Webb). The dedication of their many fans was evident when after agreeing to a four-concert reunion in 1990, the Original Dillards ended up doing 132 shows that year.
Doug stayed active until his death, and the past decade saw Doug, along with the original Dillards, performing a concert at Carnegie Hall with Arlo Guthrie and Pete Seeger. A songbook containing transcriptions of Doug’s most popular banjo works was published. Fortunately before the death of Mitch Jayne in 2010, and Doug Dillard this year, the original Dillards were inducted into the IBMA Hall of Fame. Doug Dillard was inducted individually into the SPBGMA Preservation Hall of Greats in 1992.
On a personal note, although I never had the pleasure of meeting Doug Dillard, what I will remember is his great playing, his trademark archtop “pop”, and his ever present smile (except when playing the somber Jebbin Darlin). His playing was interesting without being unnecessarily complicated. I’ll treasure knowing that I won several contests as a young banjo player by pairing a hard driving Scruggs instrumental with a nicely contrasting rendition of Doug’s Tune.
As I always do when writing about an artist, I try to supplement my personal knowledge and experience by doing some research, and I was surprised at the wealth of source material about Doug’s career, the volume of which pays tribute to the body of work he created and the lives he touched.
The foregoing hardly scratches the surface about his work and achievements, so if you’d like to learn more, I’d suggest checking out his bio on the Flying Burrito Brothers site for an excellent year-by-year chronology of Doug’s work, as well as his website bio at dougdillard.net.
Douglas Dillard was a true pioneer, exploring new musical territory in the realm of bluegrass and beyond. He lived a life worthy of remembrance and celebration.
Details have been announced for Doug Dillard’s funeral arrangements.
Visitation will be held on Wednesday afternoon (5/23) at Harpeth Hills Funeral Home in Nashville from 4:00-7:00 p.m. (CDT). The funeral is scheduled on Thursday at 1:00 p.m., also at Harpeth Hills.
A Memorial Guest Book is posted on the funeral home web site where fans and friends can leave a remembrance.
Another bluegrass legend is gone. Doug Dillard, 75, died Wednesday night after being rushed to a hospital in Nashville.
Doug co-founded The Dillard’s, whose first fame came on The Andy Griffith Show, where the band performed as The Darlings. Those TV appearances helped bluegrass music reach mass audiences at a time when folk music was gaining in influence, giving bluegrass a foothold that allowed it to withstand the rock ‘n’ roll invasion.
But Doug’s banjo work was known far beyond his bluegrass band. He played and recorded with many country music greats in the 1960s and beyond. And a stint with the folk-rockin’ Byrds led to a memorable collaboration with the late Gene Clark that helped fuel the country rock movement.
Doug was influenced by the legendary Earl Scruggs, and Doug, in turn, influenced generations of new pickers. Steve Martin regularly cites Doug as one of the reasons he plays the instrument.
The Dillards are enshrined in IBMA’s hall of fame. And Doug Dillard will always have a special place in the history of the music we love.
Doug Dillard has been released from the hospital. He was admitted into a rehab facility on Monday, and his wife, Vikki, tells us that Doug is in good spirits and eager to get better so that he can play the banjo again!
Dillard was hospitalized in March for serious breathing problems, and issue he has encountered a number of times in recent years. He is currently 75 years of age.
Here’s a second wish for a speedy recovery from everyone at Bluegrass Today.
