Tony Rice, the bluegrass guitarist and vocalist known for his sleek and innovative flatpicking, died on Friday at his home in Reidsville, North Carolina. He was 69 years old. Rice’s death was confirmed by the International Bluegrass Music Association, which referred him to the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame in 2013.
Born David Anthony Rice in Virginia on June 8, 1951, Rice learned about bluegrass from his father, an amateur musician who raised his family in Los Angeles, and from Tony’s older brother, Larry Rice, who played mandolin. When Tony was 20, he joined his brother as a member of New South, the bluegrass group led by banjoist JD Crowe. The band played throughout Kentucky and introduced Rice to Ricky Skaggs, who joined New South in 1974. After his death, Skaggs proclaimed Rice as “the most influential acoustic guitarist in the past 50 years”.
The high praise is justified. Rice was a force of nature in the guitar player, dazzling bluegrass fans with his agile flat beat and his mastery of the Martin D-28 guitar. Her first 1973 solo album was simply titled Guitar, and featured Rice’s interpretations of Merle Travis’s “Nine Pound Hammer”, Bob Wills’s “Faded Love” and one of his signatures, “Freeborn Man”. The fact that Rice also sings as well as playing has made him even more of a central figure in the genre. “Even if Tony Rice had never played a lick, his voice alone was a singular force, and the songs he sang increased the game to compose in bluegrass and beyond,” Charlie Worsham, an acolyte from Rice, I wrote on twitter.
Along with his solo albums, Rice played and recorded with David Grisman Quintet, with JD Crowe as the Bluegrass Album Band, with Norman Blake, with his brothers as the Rice Brothers, with the Byrds’ Chris Hillman, with Peter Rowan and his new South companion, Skaggs (they released the collaborative LP Skaggs and rice in 1980.) But it was with his own group, the Tony Rice Unit, that Rice did some of his most acclaimed and inventive work. The 1979 outfit album Manzanita is a sacred text in bluegrass, with guests like Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, Skaggs and Grisman composing Rice’s band. For 1980 Mar West, Rice mixed bluegrass with elements of jazz and folk to create a hypnotic style that he called “spacegrass”. In 1983, he won a Grammy for Best Country Instrumental Performance for “Fireball” and would become the six-time winner of the IBMA Guitarist of the Year title, most recently winning the title in 2007.
In the 1990s, Rice was diagnosed with dysphonia, a vocal cord problem that almost deprived him of his singing voice. Rice also struggled with arthritis and elbow problems that affected her playing. He gave his last public performance on the guitar during his introduction in 2013 at the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame and delivered an exciting acceptance speech. “It is our duty not only as musicians, but also as participants in this musical form that is like any other musical form in history,” he said. “It is our duty to allow bluegrass music … to grow and flourish while retaining the most important part of it: and that is the essence of the sound of true bluegrass music.”
Rice’s death on Christmas morning resonated throughout the bluegrass world, as well as in the guitar community in general. “The list of guitarists who have reinvented the most played instrument in the world is very short. Eddie Van Halen, Jimi Hendrix … some others. Tony Rice is on that list, ”said Charlie Worsham Rolling Stone in an email. “Spend time with some guitarists and you will hear phrases like ‘Manzanita, or’ Cold on the Shoulder ‘, that come into the conversation as a code, as a test to see how much you know about the good things. Anyone who struggles to pick up a guitar with a solid right hand, to combine raw physical strength with the grace and precision of a hummingbird’s wings, owes a debt of gratitude to Tony Rice. “
John Osborne, of the Osborne brothers, repeated Worsham’s comparison with Hendrix. “What Hendrix did for the electric guitar, this man did for the acoustics,” he tweeted. Billy Strings remembers Rice as “cool, elegant, tough, classy … always in the same mood as the old D-28”. And Béla Fleck compared playing with Rice to “get on a magic carpet. Your pace of execution has set you free. “Jason Isbell encouraged music fans to explore Rice’s catalog: “If you are not familiar with his music, please look it up. I don’t know if a person can do something more beautiful. “
Skaggs, in an official statement on behalf of the Rice family, reflected on Rice’s lasting legacy. “Thank you for your great talent,” he said, “and for the music that will continue to inspire more and more generations.”