When guitarist Tony Rice died on Christmas Day at his North Carolina home, bluegrass music said goodbye to a second-generation star who expressed his music in modern terms and embraced the potential of bluegrass to mix and influence other genres.
“The music world has lost a real innovator,” says Jimmy Gaudreau, who played mandolin with Rice in the 1980s and 1990s. “As far as guitarists today are concerned, they cite Tony Rice as the number one influence.”
Rice emerged at the forefront of bluegrass music when she joined band leader JD Crowe in the early 1970s. Crowe rocked bluegrass music by inviting folk music lover Rice to bring songs like “Summer Wages” (Ian Tyson) and “You Are What I Am” (Gordon Lightfoot) and generously showing Rice’s harvest and singing and rising star Ricky Skaggs. Together with their boss, Skaggs and Rice formed the nucleus of the JD Crowe and the New South album released in 1975. Affectionately known today for its catalog number “0044”, many consider it the greatest album ever recorded in bluegrass. He fired at Crowe’s lively banjo and Skaggs’ cheerful tenor song. But Rice’s solid guitar style and heart-breaking lead vocals anchored the sound.
Many purists sniffed the diverse set list and laid-back “0044” arrangements, but 45 years later fans still celebrate the album. It is one of the reasons why bluegrass freely accepts experimentation today.
Born in 1951 to a family of musicians in Danville, Virginia, who raised him in California, Florida and North Carolina, Rice admired legendary guitarist Lester Flatt and West Coast guitarist Clarence White (who joined the Byrds in the late 1970s 1960). “He was refined and took what Clarence was capable of and went beyond that,” says Gaudreau.
Beginning in the 1960s, the young guitarist played in a number of regional bands, but his pace picked up in 1970 when he took over the lead vocals for the Bluegrass Alliance based in Louisville, Kentucky, which featured mandolin player Sam Bush and married liberally with bluegrass and new musical styles. “Rice was a step above most of the people who played with the band at the time,” recalls Harry Bickel, a champion of bluegrass music in Louisville in the seventies.
Meanwhile, JD Crowe hired Tony’s older brother, Larry, to play the mandolin. In an interview from his home near Lexington, Kentucky, Crowe said Rolling Stone it didn’t take long for him to enlist Tony too. On the 1971 Labor Day weekend, Tony played his last show with the Bluegrass Alliance at the bluegrass festival in Camp Springs, North Carolina, to be filmed by director Albert Ihde for his 1972 documentary. Bluegrass Country Soul. Crowe was also playing at the festival and needed the strong singer as much as the Bluegrass Alliance. The most demanding fans of the classic documentary will know that Tony appeared with the two bands that weekend: in paisley with the Bluegrass Alliance and in a starched white shirt with Crowe.
Rice’s four years with Crowe were like university training. “When he first came with me,” says Crowe, “he was trying to play everything he knew at a break, and I said to him, ‘Play the melody first. You can have your pros and cons, but let the melody stand out first. Time and melody, is what you follow. ‘No one had ever explained it to him that way. “
Thanks to the regular show at the Holiday Inn in Lexington, where they played five nights a week, Crowe’s band evolved into a precisely calibrated locomotive. “We got to the point where we knew what everyone was thinking, just looking at each other, and that’s a great feeling,” explains Crowe. “Tony was very good at paying attention because whatever was playing, he wanted it the right way, the best he could. I loved it because there are many waste pickers who don’t think so. “
“We were not just scavengers, we were friends. Losing Tony was like losing a brother. ”- JD Crowe
In the wake of the innovative “0044”, Rice met jazz-folk-bluegrass fusionist David Grisman in California. “Grisman came home with me in Kentucky and sat and played a few nights with New South, which was the last New South setup I was in,” Rice told writer Barry R. Willis. “And then, from there, we became friends and started talking on the phone from time to time, just to talk more or less. And it was sometime in the summer of that year that we started talking seriously about collaborating on something – be it a group project, or a recording, or whatever. “
But before Rice left to join David Grisman Quintet in late 1975, he did another performance with Crowe. “Tony had been with me for almost four years now and I knew he was getting tired, I could tell,” says Crowe. “And he had already told me about making a move and I said, ‘I hate to lose you, but you have to do what you want. Thank you for mentioning that. I can’t blame you. I hate it, but I understand. ‘The last show we did was in Japan, in 1975, and I’ll tell you something, the last song we sang when we left the stage, he had tears in his eyes. He could barely speak to me. We were not just scavengers, we were friends. Losing Tony was like losing a brother. “
With Grisman, Rice studied music theory and flourished while the band carried their beloved bluegrass to the realm of jazz, factors that led him to leave on his own as Tony Rice Unit in 1979. Originally conceived as an instrumental group, the band would go on to record several albums for Rounder, including the renowned Manzanita, which mixed jazz, folk and bluegrass and featured former bandmates Ricky Skaggs and Sam Bush.
“I am a bluegrass musician forever in my heart,” he said Bluegrass Unlimited in the 1980s, perhaps paying attention to those who may have thought he had abandoned his roots. “But I want to explore and discover some other things along the way. When I think piano, drums and soprano saxophone are appropriate, I add them. I really wanted to stop restricting myself to one format. But I am a guitarist, but the music challenge is elsewhere now. “
A failed relationship in California took him back to the east, where he reformed the Tony Rice Unit in order to bring his voice back to the forefront. After a series of instrumental albums influenced by jazz, he dusted off folk-influenced vocals for solo albums Church Street Blues in 1983 and 1984 Cold shoulder, the latter with instrumentalists Béla Fleck, Vassar Clements and Jerry Douglas. The big bluegrass audience got used to progressive bluegrass thanks to bands like New Grass Revival and even JD Crowe’s experimentation, so it was not difficult to sell the experimental elements that became part of Rice’s sound to bluegrass fans.
“It was new,” says Gaudreau, who joined the Unit in the 1980s. “It was, ‘Tony Rice is back and he is singing.’ That was the battle cry that ran through the bluegrass circuit. ‘And he has a group that will take you to the top.’ We resisted for a while, but as soon as the news spread, everyone wanted it. Tony was like singing with a vocal machine. He was right, always on the pitch, he never threw a curve at you. They were always fast balls. “
By becoming the teacher Crowe and Grisman had been to him, Rice allowed his companions to thrive. “Without a doubt, it was the most educational experience I had in music,” says Gaudreau. “As far as getting to know my instrument better, becoming a more proficient musician and developing an appreciation for where music can go – he showed me the way. He showed me that there are ways to play music that are based on tradition, but in which you can put your own brand. Whatever Tony Rice played and sang, he signed his name. “
As if to remind the audience of his bluegrass soul, Rice gathered Crowe, tenor singer Doyle Lawson, violinist Bobby Hicks and bassist Todd Phillips in 1981 to do The Bluegrass Album for Rounder. “We arrived halfway through the first album,” says Crowe, “and we were listening to the reproduction and Tony and I were standing side by side and he looked at me and said, ‘Crowe. That’s really good. We can’t let that go on an album. We need to do more than one. ‘”In fact, this group, which became known as the Bluegrass Album Band, recorded five additional albums, constituting the last major chapter in Rice’s recording career.
“But on the fourth album we did, I could say that Tony’s voice was not as good as it was before,” continues Crowe. “That was when I realized that his voice was getting a little lower. He was struggling to do things that he didn’t usually strive to do. ”Simply put, years of excessive singing and consumption of tobacco and alcohol damaged his throat. Doctors called it “dysphonia” and by the mid-1990s it was so advanced that the Bluegrass Album Band had to end its career with an instrumental collection.
Gaudreau saw Rice’s health deteriorating at the 1994 Gettysburg Bluegrass Festival in 1994, where Rice and Ricky Skaggs and other members of the New South held a reunion concert. “His voice was already breaking,” says Gaudreau. “It was rough. For a few years, he pressed harder and harder until he could no longer function. At this particular show, he looked at Ricky and kind of shook his head when he left the stage. [Fiddler] Rickie Simpkins and I were there and he walked past us and said in his husky, growling voice, with whatever he had left, ‘I’m not singing anymore.’ “
Despite his disability and other health problems, Rice continued as a guitarist. He remained a force in the instrument and a guide for younger musicians. Fans never tired of seeing their little North Carolina-labeled pick-up enter the festival parking lot just before showtime.
Occasionally, the Bluegrass Album Band would meet for concerts, the last one in Asheville, North Carolina, in 2013. “It was after he started feeling really bad, and he didn’t know if he could do it and they scheduled it to show that way ”, Recalls Crowe. “I had a guy waiting to help us and do Tony’s part if he couldn’t go. He did well, but I could tell he was not like the Tony I knew. We did the show and two encores, and when we left the stage, he looked at me and said, ‘Crowe, I’m exhausted.’ Those are the words he said. I could say. I said, ‘Tony, you were great. I know you’re tired, but you did it, buddy. He kind of smiled. From there, he declined. “
Rice continued to call his former teacher in August on his birthday, whistling greetings to Crowe when it was difficult to speak. But Rice didn’t call this year, so when the phone rang the day after Christmas, he wasn’t surprised to learn that the innovator’s body had finally failed.
To this day, Crowe marvels at Rice’s talent, be it commanding the microphone, choosing a track on his Martin D-28 or relaxing gracefully while others do a solo. “Tony was probably my favorite guitar player. As much as a singer, as much as time and singing and knowing where to put him, he was the guy, ”says Crowe. “When he learned and stayed there, he never forgot.”