“We lost one of the greatest banjo players to ever pick up the five,” tweeted fellow banjoist Bela Fleck, just one of numerous artists who took to social media to share their thoughts about the master of the bluegrass banjo in the days following his passing.

“He was an absolute legend… He will be remembered as one of the greatest to ever play bluegrass music,” maintains acclaimed roots guitarist Billy Strings. “He had tone, taste and timing like no other. The space between the notes he played and the way he rolled them out just kept the band driving, running on all cylinders like a V* engine. He was just the best bluegrass banjo player out there, man,” he tweeted.

In social media posts, Mark O’Connor, a noted roots fiddler and guitarist, who had a brief stint in Crowe’s band when he was just 14 in the mid-1970s, called Crowe “one of the absolute greats in bluegrass, and a really wonderful mentor to me when I was a young boy coming.” In O’Connor’s view, there’s “no better bluegrass banjo player the history [of the genre] other than Earl Scruggs.” Crowe might be considered a disciple of Scruggs and, like him, he played in a three-fingered style. However, although he respected and sought to preserve the tradition and the legacy of the genre, Crowe was not a bluegrass purist. He also experimented and expanded bluegrass music’s traditional boundaries and helped redefine the genre and widen its appeal in the process. His pioneering progressive bluegrass band, J.D. Crowe and the New South, his pioneering progressive bluegrass band featured such notable players as Jerry Douglas, Keith Whitley, guitarist Tony Rice (who died last Christmas), Ricky Skaggs, Phil Leadbetter, and Don Rigsby over the years.

James Dee Crowe was born in Lexington, Kentucky in 1937. While just a teenager and still in school, he performed and toured with acclaimed bluegrass guitarist Jimmy Martin in the mid-1950s. Returning home to Lexington in 1961, he partnered with mandolinist Doyle Lawson and bassist Bobby Sloane to form the Kentucky Mountain Dogs, which became J.D. Crowe and the New South in the 1970s and featured a revolving lineup of players. The group’s 1975 Rounder Records release, The New South, is considered one of bluegrass music’s seminal albums. In 1983, J.D. Crowe and the New South won a Grammy Award for Country Instrumental of the Year for “Fireball.”

Here’s a link to view a video of J.D. Crowe and the New South performing “Fireball”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-2rv9lxNlw

Crowe also formed and recorded with the Bluegrass Album Band featuring Lawson, guitarists Rice and Douglas, fiddlers Vassar Clements and Bobby Hicks, and Todd Phillips and Mark Schatz rotating on bass. He was a recipient of numerous awards and accolades. He was inducted into the Bluegrass Hall of Fame in 2003, received the Bluegrass Star Award in 2011, an honorary doctorate from the University of Kentucky in 2012, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Lexington Music Awards in 2016. Although he gave up touring in 2019, Crowe had continued to record.

Here’s a link to view a video of the Bluegrass Album Band performing “Big Spike Hammer” during an IBMA Awards Show:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PO__VTOMNJo

Stanley, a banjo player and vocalist, was elected a fellow in the humanities and arts category this year, along with actor and director Al Pacino, novelists John Irving and Annie Proulx, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Jules Feiffer and former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, among others.

Among the last living founders of bluegrass music, Stanley has been hailed as “a bluegrass deity” by Vanity Fair and “a cultural treasure” by the Los Angeles Times. He has performed around the world for 68 years and has recorded dozens of albums. Many of the songs that he has written and recorded have become bluegrass standards, while Stanley has inspired other notable artists across the musical spectrum such as Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Jerry Garcia, Vince Gill and Dwight Yoakam.

In 1946, Stanley partnered with his older brother Carter, a singer-songwriter, to form the Stanley Brothers. Over the course of 20 years performing, recording and appearing on television together and with their band, the Clinch Mountain Boys, the Stanley Brothers became one of the most popular brother acts in country music history. They were known for such songs as “Angel Band” and “Man of Constant Sorrow.” Tragically, Carter Stanley died in 1966, at age 41.

Although distraught over the loss of his brother, Stanley carried on in music. Accompanied by a re-formed Clinch Mountain Boys that, over the years, included such country and bluegrass notables as Ricky Skaggs, Larry Sparks and the late Keith Whitley, Stanley became an iconic figure in bluegrass music and a three-time Grammy Award-winner.

However, he did not receive his first Grammy Award until 2002. Stanley’s haunting rendition of the dirge ‘O’ Death,” a plaintive plea against dying that was featured in the popular 2000 movie “O’ Brother Where Art Thou” and also appears on its seven million-selling soundtrack, secured him the award for Best Male Country Vocal Performance.

Over the years, Stanley, who grew up in and still lives in and derives inspiration from the rural mountainous region of southwestern Virginia, has received a number of other accolades and honors. He performed at the inaugurations of two U.S. Presidents (Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton) and received a National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship and National Medal of the Arts from President Ronald Reagan and President George W. Bush, respectively. The Library of Congress bestowed on Stanley its Living Legend award in 2006, while Virginia’s General Assembly named him an Outstanding Virginian in 2008. He’s also been inducted into the International Bluegrass Hall of Fame and the Grand Ole Opry and has been a recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from Folk Alliance International. Earlier this year, Stanley was awarded an honorary doctor of music degree from Yale University. Lincoln Memorial University had previously conferred one on him.

Stanley’s autobiography, entitled Man of Constant Sorrow: The Life and Times of a Music Legend and written with Eddie Dean, was published in 2009. Stanley continues to perform in concert, although now well into his 80s.

Rolling Stone has referred to him as “a master performer without an expiration dates,” and noted that “Ralph Stanley continues to make American mountain music, playing the bluest grass with the baddest ass.”

Although Stanley had billed his current concert tour, which extends through this December, as his last, he has since opted not to retire this year. “God has had his hand in my career for the past 68 years. It’s up to him wen I quit,” reads a message posted on Stanley’s website. “I have no plans of slowing down. I love my fans, and I love performing.”