Tony Rice, Bluegrass Innovator with Guitar Pick, Dies 69


Tony Rice, a tremendously influential singer and guitarist in the new sound music circles growing up in and around Bluegrass, will be performing in his Redsville, N.C. on Saturday. Died at the age of 69.

His death has been confirmed by the International Bluegrass Music Association. No reason specified.

Singer-songwriter Jason Isbel said, “Tony Rice was the king of flatpicked flat op guitars.” Said on Twitter. “His influence probably can’t be overstated.”

Mr. Isabel was referring to what is commonly known as flatpicking, a technique that involves hitting a guitar string with a pick or pectrum instead of fingers. Inspired by the sheer glare of leading bluegrass bandlader Jimmy Martin, Mr. Rice’s flatpicking was quick and agile.

“I don’t know if anyone can make anything more beautiful.” Mr. Isabel said in his tweet that Mr. Rice’s description of the liquid, percussive playing, in which emotion is expressed, peacefully or melodically, took precedence over the flash. .

Mr. Rice left an imprint on the legacy of sound music, such as his fellow Nugras innovators Mark O’Connor and Bala Flake, Chris Thile and Alison Crus, and leading musicians including his flat-elected disciples Brian Sutton and Josh Williams.

In an interview with The New York Times Magazine for Mr. Rice’s profile in 2014, Ms. Krauss said of the Bluegrass, “There is no way back to what it was before. Mr. Rice was hardly a teenager when Mr. Rice first introduced her to him. Invited on stage to play together.

His work with the JD Crow and New South group in the 1970s created the Sri Sri Rice Bridge, which expands on traditional bluegrass, 60s folk songs, jazz improvisation, classical music, and pop-songwriters.

It was the catalyst for the Nugras movement, in which bands broke the bluegrass tradition by drawing PSP and rock sources for inspiration, using a more ambiguous approach to introduce and incorporate previously uploaded instruments such as electric guitars and drums.

The Bluegrass Association named him a six-year instrumentalist, and in 1983 he received a Grammy Award for Best Country Instrumental Performance for the track “Fireball Law” recorded with JD Crow and New South.

Not only was Vertuso a guitarist, but Mr. Rice was also a gifted singer and master of freaking. His rich, gentle baritone, house vocalist alike, was similar in the three-part bluegrass harmony system, as he embraced Gordon Lightfoot’s tourbedor ballads under the Nugras banner.

But his acting career took a sudden short start in 1994, when he was diagnosed with muscle strain dysphonia, a severe voice disorder that caused him to lose the ability to sing in public and reconcile with his speaking voice. Until 2013, the Bluegrass Association nominated him to the International Bluegrass Hall of Fame, unless he sang on stage or addressed an audience.

Shortly after that diagnosis, Mr. Rice learned that he also had lateral epicondylitis, commonly known as tennis elbow, which made playing the guitar in public very painful.

David Anthony Rice was born on June 8, 1951 in Danville, Va .; Born in, Herbert Hoover Rice and Dorothy (Poindexter) one of the four boys of rice, known as Lewis. Her father was a welder and amateur musician, her mother a mill worker and a house builder. She had an idea to call her son Tony after her favorite actor Tony Curtis. Everyone in the rice house played or sang bluegrass music.

After the family settled in the Los Angeles area in the mid-1950s, Mr. Rice’s father formed a bluegrass band called the Golden State Boys. The group, which had many singles records, consisted of two brothers from his own mother and at one stage a young Dale McCurry, before he became a Bluegrass master in his own way. The band inspired Mr. Rais and his brothers to create their own, Hafards Bluegrass outfit.

Hefzards sometimes shared a local bill with the Kentucky Colonel, whose band was a shining guitarist, Clarence White – a future member of the rock band Birds – who influenced Mr. Rice’s early development as a musician.

(Mr. White was hit by a drunk driver while loading instrument after a show in 1973. Subsequently, Mr. Rice discovered Mr. White’s 1935 Martin D-28 herringbone guitar, which he bought from his new owner in 1975 for $ 550. Guitar, he started working with it, lovingly calling it “antique.”

The rice family moved from California to Florida in 1965 and then to various cities in the Southeast, where Mr. Rice’s father took up one welding opportunity after another.

He also drank, creating a miserable domestic life that forced Mr. Rice to quit when he was 17 years old. Tony Rice himself struggled with alcohol, but, according to him, has been quiet since 2001.

After leaving high school, Mr. Rice bounced to relatives’ homes before moving to Louisville in 1970 to join the Bluegrass Alliance. Band members, including mandolinist Sam Bush, went on to form the many founding centers of the progressive bluegrass band New Grass Revival.

Mr. Rice was born in 1971 to J.D. Crow and joined the New South. Three years later, Mr. Skags also signed, replacing Mr. June’s brother Larry. Dobro player Jerry Douglas has also become a member of the New South this time around. In 1975, the band released an album called “Jedi Crow and the New South” (but commonly known by its first track, “Old Home Place”), which modernized the bluegrass in the way it shaped music in the 21st century.

Mr. Rice, Mr. Douglas, and Mr. Skags left the group in August 1975. Mr. Rice then traveled to San Francisco and helped find David Grisman Quartet, a feature of bluegrass instrumentation, which blended classical and jazz sensations to create Mr. . Grisman is called “Dog Music”.

Mr Rice told Times Magazine in 2014, “The music in front of me was like nothing I’ve ever seen.” At first I thought I couldn’t learn it. The only thing that saved me was that I always liked the sound, the small-group, the sound of modern jazz. “

After four years with Mr. Grisman, Mr. Rice formed his own group, the Tony Rice Unit, which was praised for its experimental, jazz-striped approach to bluegrass heard on albums such as “Manznita” (1979) and “Mar West”. (1980).

Mr. Rice also recorded more mainstream and traditional material for numerous other projects, including a six-volume series of albums that paid homage to the creative bluegrass of the 1950s.

In the history-conscious album “Skegs and Rice” (1980), Mr. Skegs and Mr. Rice sang a unified, intimate harmony in tribute to Brother Duos, prevalent in the pre-bluegrass era.

Most of Mr. Rice’s post-1994 releases, the year in which he was diagnosed with deafness, were instrumental projects or collaborations, such as “The Pizza Tapes”, a studio album with Mr. Grisman and Jerry Garcia of Gearing Dead Fame; Mr. Rice contributed acoustic guitar.

His survivors include his wife of 30 years, Pamela Hodges Rice and her brothers Ron and Wyatt. Her brother Larry died in 2006.

Mr. Rice cut the sten stage, finishing with finely tied suits and dignified bearings, as if Bluegrass had not been respected outside the South at times due to the onset of his receptive receptivity.

Mr. Rice was as conscious of this cultural dynamism as he was of the boundless possibilities he saw in bluegrass music.

“Maybe the reason I dress like me goes back to the day, if you went out on the street, unless you had a job digging until you tried to feel like a slab.” Tim Stafford and Caroline Wright asked her biographers for “Still Inside: Tony Rice Story” (2010).

“Back in the feast of Miles Davis’ most famous band, you wouldn’t have seen Miles without a favorable suit, ”he continued. “My musical heroes wear outfits.”