Doug Dillard dies at 75; banjo player, member of the Dillards band
Doug Dillard played with his brothers in the bluegrass group, performed as a solo artist and collaborated with numerous other country, bluegrass, rock and pop musicians.
By Randy Lewis, Los Angeles Times
Bluegrass banjo pioneer Earl Scruggs answered a knock at the door of his Nashville home in 1953 to find an eager-looking banjo enthusiast on the porch asking Scruggs to put a set of his special tuner keys on the young man's instrument.
"He was so gracious," Rodney Dillard said of the reception his older brother, banjo player Doug Dillard, received that day from the father of the bluegrass banjo. "He sold him the tuners, then sat down at his kitchen table and installed them on the spot."
Doug Dillard, who died Wednesday at 75, put those tuners and Scruggs' influence to good use over a long career as a founding member of the Dillards bluegrass band, as a solo artist and in collaboration with numerous other country, bluegrass, rock and pop musicians.
He and the band helped popularize bluegrass in the 1960s through regular appearances on "The Andy Griffith Show," and they were important figures in the creation of what would become known as country rock music.
Dillard, who suffered a collapsed lung several months ago, recently developed a lung infection and died in a Nashville hospital, his brother said.
His declining health prompted Dillard to give up touring about two years ago. Yet he still played occasional recording sessions and isolated concert performances, including when the Dillards were inducted in 2009 into the Bluegrass Hall of Fame in Owensboro, Ky., by the International Bluegrass Music Assn.
"I would put him at the very top level of proficiency on the banjo, right up there with Earl Scruggs," Chris Hillman, a founding member of the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers, said Thursday. "He was a great musician, and he greatly influenced me."
Actor and comedian Steve Martin, who has focused in recent years on his career as a bluegrass banjo player, said in a statement: "Doug Dillard was a banjo icon. He, along with his group, the Dillards, influenced so many players.... He was fast, clean and a melodic player with his own style."
Born March 6, 1937, in Salem, Mo., in the Ozark Mountains, Douglas Flint Dillard was one of three sons of Homer and Lorene Dillard. Music ran in the family: Homer played fiddle, their mother was a guitarist and the eldest sibling, Earl, played keyboards.
Doug Dillard never forgot how Scruggs affected him the first time he heard him. "I was driving down the road with the radio on," Dillard recalled. "All of a sudden I heard this incredible banjo music. I got so excited that I drove off the road and down into a ditch. I had to be towed out."
He started on guitar, got his first banjo at 15 as a Christmas present and promptly wrote a letter to Scruggs asking whether 16 was too young to learn the banjo. Scruggs wrote back encouraging his interest in the instrument, cementing Dillard's love for the banjo. By 19 he was performing regularly on a Salem radio station. He and Rodney were members of the Ozark Mountain Boys from 1956 to 1959.
But as teenagers in the '50s, the Dillard brothers were also exposed to the sounds of rock 'n' roll, which they wanted to incorporate into their music. Doug earned an accounting degree at Washington University in St. Louis, and Rodney, five years younger, said he "quituated" from studies at Southern Illinois University to pursue their passion for playing music.
When they were ready to seek a wider audience, "we decided we wanted to go to Los Angeles, because we felt people were more open-minded, creative-wise," Rodney Dillard said Thursday. "Nashville was formula cut-and-dried at that time."
Shortly after arriving in L.A., the Dillards were signed to the burgeoning folk-rock label Elektra Records, which issued their major-label debut album "Back Porch Bluegrass."
"When they hit town, they completely blew everybody away," Chris Hillman, a founding member of the Byrds, said Thursday. The Byrds later enlisted the Dillards as an opening act after their own career took off.
"It wasn't the old bluegrass thing," Hillman said. "Doug Dillard was the only bluegrass banjo player who actually smiled on stage. He really enjoyed himself. Their entire approach was very entertaining. And Doug was an amazing player."
The Dillards also departed from strict bluegrass tradition as one of the first acts to use amplified instruments.
Their music and faces became familiar nationwide starting in 1963, when they began appearing on "The Andy Griffith Show" as a band called The Darlin' Boys. Griffith encouraged them to use their original songs as often as possible on his show. Their popularity led to guest spots on musical variety shows hosted by Judy Garland, Tennessee Ernie Ford and others.
"Because of 'The Andy Griffith Show' and the exposure that music brought, it gave an introduction to bluegrass to a lot of people who never ever would have gotten to it," Rodney said. "They found others like Flatt & Scruggs and the Osborne Brothers, and found this whole world of the classic form of traditional music."
One of those was contemporary banjo innovator Bela Fleck, who first heard the Dillards when he was growing up in New York City. "It was one of the few bluegrass bands you could see on TV. Flatt & Scruggs were on 'The Beverly Hillbillies' pretty rarely."
Living and working in Southern California in the 1960s, the Dillards were in on the birth of what would become known as country rock.
"They were living in the real world playing this music, and that world was very different than what it was to be playing in Flatt & Scruggs' time," Fleck said. "They were trying to figure out how to bring that music to the audience that was there, so they were open to everything…. They really had a unique band sound, and Doug was at the center of it — he came up with a variation on the Scruggs style that was hard-driving but intelligent. It wasn't like the old mountain stuff. "
The Dillards were invited to open shows on a two-week tour by the Byrds, which was at the forefront of blending country, rock and folk strains. After he left the Dillards, Doug joined the Byrds on their European tour.
In the 1970s Dillard joined ex-Byrds member Gene Clark in the Dillard and Clark band. With Doug pursuing solo and other interests, the Dillards continued with Rodney at the helm. The Dillards' only album to chart on Billboard, 1972's "Roots and Branches," was recorded without Doug.
The brothers had toured together again in recent years until Doug's health declined to the point where he could no longer handle the rigors of the road.
Besides his brothers Rodney and Earl, Dillard is survived by his wife, Vikki Sallee.
Dillard & Clark: Celebrating an unsung L.A. country rock classic
Before there was the Eagles, or the Flying Burrito Brothers, or Poco, there was "The Fantastic Expedition of Dillard & Clark," the 1968 country rock album created in Los Angeles by former Byrd Gene Clark and banjo player Doug Dillard.
Dillard, who died on Thursday at age 75 (read Randy Lewis' wonderful obit here), was best known for his work with the Dillards, the bluegrass band he co-founded, but to devotees of the budding Los Angeles country music scene that put the Byrds, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Poco, and the Eagles, among others, on the map, Dillard will be forever linked to "The Fantastic Expedition," an unsung gem that continues to draw fans 44 years after its release.
In addition to featuring a wonderful portrait of the pair on the cover (courtesy photographer Guy Webster), the album and its nine songs -- eight originals and a Flatt & Scruggs song -- are one of the bigger bangs of Los Angeles country rock. Along with the Byrds and Dillards affiliations, core players on the album include Bernie Leadon, who would go on to co-found the Eagles, and Chris Hillman, also a former Byrd. The album was produced by Larry Marks, whose work with everyone from Phil Ochs to the Flying Burrito Brothers and Emitt Rhodes remains some of the most vital of the era.
All those links are rendered meaningless within the opening groove of the first track on "Fantastic Expedition," "Out on the Side," a floating, a Clark-penned classic featuring glorious vocal harmonies, Dillard and Clark's tangled guitar and banjo conversation, and rich, humming organ adding texture below. If you've never heard it and enjoy harmony and twang, you owe it to yourself to track it down before the day's over.
Fans of country & western, alternative country, bluegrass or any combination thereof will find much to love on the album (which, curiously, is avalable on vinyl, CD, and through streaming services, but not, from what I've been able to find, as an MP3 download). There's twang galore, but it's a smooth, casual kind, mixed within acoustic strums, loaming bass lines and stunning harmonies. The Leadon/Clark gem "Train Leaves Here This Mornin'," which closes the first side of the album, feels like it's existed forever, with a classic Nashville chord progression, a few choice solos and Clark's rich tenor.
Released by A&M Records, the album signaled the label's late '60s embracing of folk and country rock. The label, founded by Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss and at that time located in the old Charlie Chaplin Studios on La Brea (now Henson Studios), had on its roster during the period Phil Ochs, Joan Baez, Fairport Convention, Cat Stevens, and Procol Harum, among others. Such a volume of output didn't help the cause of "The Fantastic Expedition of Dillard & Clark," which failed to find an audience after it was released in October 1968. The pair released a follow-up, "Through the Morning, Through the Night," in 1969, which is nearly as beautiful.
That album's importance in the scene's history is equally interesting. Around the same time "Through the Morning" was recorded, three players on it -- Leadon, Chris Hillman, and Sneaky Pete Kleinow -- were getting comfortable in their new gig: working with Gram Parsons as the Flying Burrito Bros.
