Crowe on the Banjo: The Music Life of J.D. Crowe

7. Rounder 0044 and the Convergence of 1975

chapter 7 rounder 0044 and the convergence of 1975 It was several months before Tony Rice felt comfortable with the band: It was a little rough at first, and in retrospect, I really don’t know how [J.D.] had the patience to deal with what he had to deal with, but he did. The vocals weren’t so much the problem, as it was the rhythm section. At that time, I don’t think there had been any rhythm section that could touch them in terms of being able to hold a piece of music together from beginning to end. There was something real magical about that combination of Crowe, and Doyle on rhythm guitar and Larry on mandolin and Bobby Slone on bass. I knew how to play rhythm guitar, but when I went into J.D. Crowe’s band, all of a sudden everything had shifted in terms of the rigidity of the timing aspect. It was very rigid. I know precisely where that comes from—that rigidity and that demand from Crowe as a musician came from the school of Jimmy Martin. Crowe by nature is like myself, in this aspect, that he doesn’t like to discuss music. Once in a while, if we felt like there was something that we needed to do, or if things were getting stale, then Crowe would call a rehearsal. i-xviii_1-240_Godb.indd 113 8/3/11 9:28 AM 114 chapter 7 Looking back, I had stepped in and replaced Doyle, whose rhythm on the guitar and drive was that metronomic, and that was one of the things I hadn’t had, back in the Bluegrass Alliance. It was a totally different ball game, playing with Crowe. Being the personality that he is, he didn’t really have to say anything to express dissatisfaction; it was like an aura that you could feel coming off of him, and sometimes that aura was real, real, real intense. I could just tell, basically, that he was pissed off, but I never felt that aura of anger coming off of him so bad that he was ready to give up. Richard Bennett, J.D.’s guitar player in the early 1990s, described an incident when Tony first started with J.D.: “Crowe wasn’t talking to him, and Tony said, ‘Are you mad at me?’ and Crowe said, ‘No, you’re rushing.’” “J.D. is a perfectionist,” Don Combs said. “Every set he played was like a concert. Sometimes, if we couldn’t get it, he’d get just a little bit huffy. There were some songs he played that I just simply didn’t play, ’cause drums didn’t fit. Some songs were so fast you’d almost be playing a drum roll.” “It took a lot of work,” J.D. agreed. “That kind of thing doesn’t happen by itself; there are a lot of frustrations, but if you want to learn to do it, then that’s what you’ve got to do. You’ve got to learn to ‘think alike.’ There has to be an effort on everybody’s part.”1 In the December 1971 issue of Bluegrass Unlimited, the reader’s poll again named J.D. fourth-favorite banjo player, after Reno, Scruggs, and Stanley; the Kentucky Mountain Boys were again fourth-favorite band, after the Country Gentlemen, Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys, and Stanley’s Clinch Mountain Boys. This was before the addition of Tony and the name change were known to the readership. Besides his extraordinary voice and lead guitar skills, Tony brought to the group, with Larry, the “blood harmony” that has been so much a part of bluegrass and country music. The trios, while different from those with Doyle, were strong and flavorful. “Tony sung the high part,” J.D. said, “not as high as Doyle, but we did more straight trios. We’d switch [parts] around.2 Listen, you could be the best picker in the world, but if you don’t have your singing you don’t have anything. I think singing is half of it, or all of it. When you really get down to it, it’s your singing that sells it. A lot of practice goes into that.”3 i-xviii_1-240_Godb.indd 114 8/3/11 9:28 AM Rounder 0044 and the Convergence of 1975 115 “Tony had exposure to and an...