Progressive Bluegrass Pioneer Flies Away
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Last week IMBA Hall of Hamer Mitch Jayne died in Columbia, MO. Mitch was the bassist and front man for The Dillards, best known for playing bluegrass group The Darlins on The Andy Griffith Show but also one of the first progressive bluegrass groups incorporating electric instruments and rock and roll elements into their sound. The Dillards were from Salem, Missouri, which is not far from where I live, and are part of a proud if little known Ozarks music tradition which includes Charlie Haden, The Ozark Mountain Daredevils, Porter Wagoner, Bob Holt, Slim Wilson, Chet Atkins, The Carter Family, and Les Paul.
Hear a story about Mitch and The Dillards from my local NPR station here
http://www.ksmu.org/content/view/7082/66/
Here is info on The Dillards from the IMBA Hall of Fame press release:
The Dillards were a driving force in modernizing and popularizing the sound of bluegrass in the 1960s and '70s. Rodney Dillard (guitar) and Douglas Dillard (banjo) grew up playing music with their family and friends (including a teenaged John Hartford) in Missouri. They performed on a St. Louis radio station as The Dillard Brothers in 1958, recording for a local label. After meeting Dean Webb they recruited him to play mandolin and bass for another self-produced recording which ended up in the hands of Mitch Jayne, a one-room school teacher who hosted a radio show called "Hickory Holler Time," in Salem. Mitch attracted the attention of a manager when he was visiting his sister in California in 1961, and then he went back to Missouri to tell the guys he wanted to learn bass and join the band as their emcee, utilizing his talent as a storyteller.
The Dillards played their first show at Washington University in St. Louis and hit the road for Los Angeles in 1962 with $300 in their pockets, stopping to work in Oklahoma. Their first night in L.A. they went to see the Greenbriar Boys at a club called The Ash Grove. They were invited onstage to jam and impressed an Elektra Records rep in the crowd; by the next evening they had a record deal. A DesiLu Studios rep saw an ad in Variety magazine about Elektra signing the Dillards, and within days they were called in to audition for the role of The Darlins on The Andy Griffith Show. Despite the fact that The Dillards recorded only six episodes for the program, they continue to be the most often seen bluegrass artists on television, thanks to re-runs.
Their first three albums include original songs that have become bluegrass standards like "The Old Home Place," "Dooley," "Doug's Tune," "Banjo in the Holler" and "There is a Time." The Dillards incorporated stand-up comedy into their stage show, and their talents as entertainers brought bluegrass to new audiences in urban clubs from L.A. to New York City, on college campuses, in movie scores, at folk festivals and on tour with mainstream rock bands and comedians.
By the late '60s The Dillards had become a driving force in creating new sounds in the West Coast music environment-sometimes upsetting bluegrass purists as they amplified their instruments and added drums and steel guitar. The band's unique flair for songwriting and arrangement affected a broad range of important future musicians in the bluegrass and pop music world alike, and they are credited with helping set the stage for the "country rock" movement and the burgeoning progressive sounds of bluegrass.
The band would experience personnel changes in 1967 but has reunited periodically in concert and television appearances, and members continue to pursue a broad array of music related opportunities.
Locating MOG account...
Comments (7)
I can't get over this. Here, you suddenly follow me, I go to your home page and the first thing I see is a post concerning one of my old favorite groups, naming my favorite of their albums! (It was "Some glad morning" when I went into the Farm Store and found that one in the cut-outs bin.) Except, sadly, it's about the death of the beloved Mitch Jayne.
Mitch was a wonderful guy. I think they all are. I used to see them at the Cellar Door in D.C. when Billy Ray Latham was in the group. (They said when they got to LA people asked what kind of music do you play. They said, "Our kind of music. If we'd said bluegrass, they'd have swept us out with the McDonalds cups and wrappers in the morning." I thought, "Bluegrass? I'm at a bluegrass show?" Epiphany!)
Much later I aquired a banjo-playing brother-in-law who was friends with them. The cover of his copy of Wheatstraw Suite is all messed up because Rodney gave it to him when they were driving somewhere in a pickup truck and they set a bushel of apples on it with a few rotten ones.
Mitch was also an accomplished author. For example, he wrote a novel called "Fishhawk", which was made into a good movie. But the book is much better. Highly recomended reading. Also, "Fiddler's Ghost".
Got wind of this in my feed...Nice!
Good to hear from ya on this Spike. I'm kind of sniper on my follows as I go through periods of being very tuned into my mog feed and commenting and posting and periods of just listening depending on what else is going in my life.
Bluegrass isn't so exoctic in the Ozarks of course it's just our local hillbilly music. The Dillards I think well represent the type and quality of musicians we have in the Ozarks which is seemingly so ever-present as to be innocuous.
In case you are interested here are a couple current Ozarks bluegrass bands.
http://mog.com/artists/mn236927/big-smith
http://mog.com/artists/mn1148712/the-hillbenders
These guys didn't grow up here but they live hear now, we call them types foreigners.
http://mog.com/artists/mn183611/the-chapmans
Great Dillard's storiers btw, will have to look for those books Mitch wrote, a multi-talented man for sure.
Good to hear from you, too. I wish I had time even to "just listen". Often I just drool over the stuff and hope to get back to it when work lets up. I have thousands of emails in my bulging inbox. I couldn't help lookin' at this one. When someone follows me, I go directly to their home page and view some posts. How did you get onto me? Was it the Carolina Chocolate Drops post?
Thanks for the links. I'm bound to look at them. Here's a Dillards info link http://www.burritobrother.com/dupdate.htm
Actually, Mitch published more books I was not aware of. See the link above. I guess Fishhawk is really Fish Hawk. I call it that b/c it was his preference. But if you look for it, it will be "Old Fish Hawk." My brother-in-law Frank Schoepf is full of great stories. He's been a picker, not only in the sense of picking the banjo, but also picking up original banjo parts and building and repairing instruments. He has restored autoharps and, I think, at least one mandolin. Played around in Northern Va. - DC area, where there was a lively bg scene (likely still is), was in Bittersweet, more recently the Carroll County Ramblers and I don't recall the name of the new one.
Maddy: I'm glad you joined in, here. I was shocked to see no comments on this post and I hoped someone would view it if I commented.
I wasd reading Braingm's Post on Gypsy music which he said was inspired by own of your posts so i followd the link, liked what I read looked at your profile to see other posts and liked what I saw.
Makes sense that there would be a good bg scene in DC area due to it's proximity to Appalachia.
Like your brother-in-law I am a musician and I also do repair, repair is actually my full-time job, but instead of the banjo I play and repair trumpets and instead of bg I play jazz (and funk, rock, folk, whatever I can get paid for really). Love listening to bg but haven't found a way to make trumpet work in it yet and I'm not very good at string instruments.
I'll close with a banjo joke as eveyone likes making fun of the banjo.
What's the difference between a banjo and an uzi? An uzi only repeats 100 times before it stops!
Good. So long as you didn't take the list of songs recently listened to seriously. I'll lay claim to some of them, but some are a mystery. I might find time to ask them how to take that widget off. (When I had the Mog music service, I used it to audition songs as much as to listen.) I'll have to email support to find out how to have that former widget removed.
I must find a website that lists musician jokes. I can't remember jokes too well, I've heard a few. I like this one:
What do you call a bass player without a girlfriend? Homeless.
Oh, yeah. Good old Google. The cross-word puzzler's friend.