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.
Co-founder and lead singer Rodney
Dillard is The Last Dillard Standing and continues to tour and
record.
