David Anthony Rice (June 8, 1951 – December 25, 2020) was an American
bluegrass guitarist and singer. He was an influential acoustic guitar player in bluegrass, progressive bluegrass, newgrass and acoustic jazz. He was inducted into the
International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame
For a professional in the bluegrass music field, election to the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame is the highest honor the genre can bestow. An invitation can be extended to performers, songwriters, promoters, broadcasters, musicians, a ...
in 2013.
Rice's music spans the range of acoustic music from traditional bluegrass to jazz influenced, New Acoustic music to songwriter-oriented
folk
Folk or Folks may refer to:
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*Nation
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Arts, entertainment, and media
* Fo ...
. Over the course of his career, he played alongside
J. D. Crowe and
the New South,
David Grisman (during the formation of Dawg Music) and
Jerry Garcia
Jerome John Garcia (August 1, 1942 – August 9, 1995) was an American musician who was the lead guitarist and a vocalist with the rock band Grateful Dead, which he co-founded and which came to prominence during the counterculture of the 196 ...
, led his own band, the Tony Rice Unit, collaborated with
Norman Blake, recorded with his brothers
Wyatt, Ron, and
Larry, and co-founded the
Bluegrass Album Band. Over the course of his career, he recorded with drums, piano and soprano sax as well as with traditional bluegrass instruments.
Early years
Rice was born in
Danville, Virginia
Danville is an independent city (United States), independent city in the Virginia, Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. The city is located in the Southside (Virginia), Southside Virginia region and on the fall line of the Dan River ( ...
, Growing up, Tony had somewhat of a nomadic childhood. In search of work, his family moved around a lot living in several states, including Florida, Georgia, Texas, and North Carolina. They settled in Los Angeles, California, where his father, Herb Rice, introduced him to bluegrass music. Herb was a mandolin player and taught each of his four sons how to play. Tony and Wyatt were taught guitar, Larry the mandolin, and Ronnie the upright bass. Tony and his brothers learned the fundamentals of bluegrass and country music from L.A. musicians like the
Kentucky Colonels
The Kentucky Colonels were an American professional basketball team based in Louisville, Kentucky. They competed in the American Basketball Association (ABA) from 1967 to 1976. The name is derived from the historic Kentucky Colonels. The Colo ...
, led by Roland and
Clarence White. When the Rice family moved to California, Herb joined the Golden State Boys, which was a group inspired by the
Kentucky Colonels
The Kentucky Colonels were an American professional basketball team based in Louisville, Kentucky. They competed in the American Basketball Association (ABA) from 1967 to 1976. The name is derived from the historic Kentucky Colonels. The Colo ...
. In 1960, when Tony was nine years old, he met
Clarence White, his all-time favorite guitarist, at a show. Tony was so enamored that White allowed him to try out his 1935 D-28 Martin. This guitar was famous for having an enlarged sound hole. Rice never forgot this moment. So much so that in 1975, Rice purchased this guitar. This guitar “became iconic in his hands” and became famously known by its serial number, 58957. Clarence White's guitar playing in particular was a huge influence on Rice, adding elements beyond those of
Doc Watson
Arthel Lane "Doc" Watson (March 3, 1923 – May 29, 2012) was an American guitarist, songwriter, and singer of bluegrass, folk, country, blues, and gospel music. He won seven Grammy awards as well as a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. His ...
's adventurous, fiddle influenced style. Crossing paths with fellow enthusiasts like
Ry Cooder
Ryland Peter Cooder (born March 15, 1947) is an American musician, songwriter, film score composer, record producer, and writer. He is a multi-instrumentalist but is best known for his slide guitar work, his interest in traditional music, and h ...
,
Herb Pedersen
Herbert Joseph Pedersen (born April 27, 1944, in Berkeley, California) is an American musician, guitarist, banjo player, singer-songwriter, and actor who has played a variety of musical styles over the past fifty years including country, blueg ...
and
Chris Hillman
Christopher Hillman (born December 4, 1944) is an American musician. He was the original bassist of the Byrds. With frequent collaborator Gram Parsons, Hillman was a key figure in the development of country rock, defining the genre through his w ...
reinforced the strength of the music he had learned from his father.
In 1971, Tony met Kate Freeman, whom he married in a Lexington church a year later. The couple moved to California when Tony joined David Grisman in creating Grisman's ''Dawg,'' a newly imagined form of acoustic music. Tony and Kate ended things in 1979.
Tony later married Pam Rice with whom he remained until his death in 2020.
Groups

Mandolinist and fiddler,
Sam Bush tells the story about first hearing Rice in 1970 at a campfire at Carlton Haney's bluegrass festival in Reidsville, North Carolina. Bush, who at the time was playing guitar in the Bluegrass Alliance after Dan Crary left, brought Tony to the group.
That year, Rice moved to
Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville is the List of cities in Kentucky, most populous city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, sixth-most populous city in the Southeastern United States, Southeast, and the list of United States cities by population, 27th-most-populous city ...
, playing with the Bluegrass Alliance and shortly thereafter with
J.D. Crowe's New South.
The New South was known as one of the best and most progressive bluegrass groups eventually adding drums and electric instruments to Rice's displeasure. When
Ricky Skaggs joined them in 1974, however, the band recorded ''
J. D. Crowe & the New South'', an acoustic album that became Rounder Records' top seller up to that time. At that point, the group was Rice on guitar and lead vocals, J.D. on banjo and vocals,
Jerry Douglas
Gerald Calvin Douglas (born May 28, 1956) is an American Dobro and lap steel guitar player and record producer. He is widely regarded as "perhaps the finest Dobro player in contemporary acoustic music, and certainly the most celebrated and prol ...
on
Dobro
Dobro () is an American brand of resonator guitars owned by Gibson and manufactured by its subsidiary Epiphone. The term "dobro" is also used as a generic term for any wood-bodied, single-cone resonator guitar.
The Dobro was originally a gui ...
, Skaggs on fiddle, mandolin, and tenor vocals, and Bobby Slone on bass and fiddle.
Around this time, Rice met mandolinist
David Grisman while recording for
Bill Keith's first album with
Rounder Records
Rounder Records is an independent record label founded in 1970 in Somerville, Massachusetts, by Marian Leighton Levy, Ken Irwin, and Bill Nowlin. Focused on American roots music, Rounder's catalogue of more than 3000 titles includes records by A ...
called ''Something Auld, Something Newgrass, Something Borrowed, Something Bluegrass''.
Grisman played with
Red Allen
Henry James "Red" Allen Jr. (January 7, 1908 – April 17, 1967) was an American jazz trumpeter and vocalist whose playing has been described by Joachim-Ernst Berendt and others as the first to fully incorporate the innovations of Louis Armst ...
and the Kentuckians during the 1960s after Frank Wakefield left and who was now working on original material that blended jazz, bluegrass, and classical music. Rice left the New South and moved to California to join Grisman's all-instrumental group, the
David Grisman Quintet. In order to broaden his expertise and make himself more marketable, Rice studied chord theory, learned to read charts, and began to expand his playing beyond bluegrass. Guitarist
John Carlini came in to teach Rice music theory, and Carlini helped him learn the intricacies of jazz playing and musical improvisation in general. The David Grisman Quintet's 1977 debut recording is considered a landmark of acoustic string band music.
In 1980, Rice, Crowe, fiddler
Bobby Hicks, mandolinist
Doyle Lawson and bassist
Todd Phillips
Todd Phillips (born Todd Philip Bunzl; December 19, 1970) is an American filmmaker. Phillips began his career in 1993 and directed films in the 2000s such as ''Road Trip'', '' Old School'', ''Starsky & Hutch'', and '' School for Scoundrels''. ...
formed the
Bluegrass Album Band and recorded several successful albums for
Rounder Records
Rounder Records is an independent record label founded in 1970 in Somerville, Massachusetts, by Marian Leighton Levy, Ken Irwin, and Bill Nowlin. Focused on American roots music, Rounder's catalogue of more than 3000 titles includes records by A ...
from 1980 to 1996.
Following that with the Tony Rice Unit, he pursued experimental "spacegrass" music on the ''Mar West'', ''Still Inside'', and ''Backwaters'' albums. Members of the Unit included
Jimmy Gaudreau (mandolin),
Wyatt Rice (guitar), Ronnie Simpkins (bass), John Reischman (mandolin), and
Rickie Simpkins (fiddle). In the late 1980s,
Alison Krauss
Alison Maria Krauss (born July 23, 1971) is an American bluegrass-country singer, fiddler and music producer. She entered the music industry at an early age, competing in local contests by the age of eight and recording for the first time at ...
regularly played with the group in concert for about a year though she never recorded with them.
Alison Brown also guested with the group during that time.
Collaborations

In 1980, he recorded a successful album of traditional bluegrass duets with Ricky Skaggs called ''
Skaggs & Rice''. He followed that with two albums alongside traditional instrumentalist and songwriter
Norman Blake both well received and two
Rice Brothers albums (1992 and 1994) that featured him teamed with his late elder brother, Larry, and younger brothers, Wyatt and Ronnie.
Beginning in 1984, Rice collaborated on four albums with bluegrass banjo phenom
Béla Fleck
Béla Anton Leoš Fleck (born July 10, 1958) is an American banjo player. An acclaimed virtuoso, he is an innovative and technically proficient pioneer and ambassador of the banjo, playing music from bluegrass, jazz, classical, rock and various ...
– ''
Double Time'' (1984), ''
Drive'' (1988), ''
Tales from the Acoustic Planet'' (1995), and ''
The Bluegrass Sessions: Tales from the Acoustic Planet, Vol. 2'' (1999).
Rice joined David Grisman and Jerry Garcia in 1993 to record ''
The Pizza Tapes''. In 1994, Rice and Grisman recorded ''
Tone Poems'', an original collection of material where they used historical, vintage mandolins and guitars, different ones for each track.
In 1994, Rice joined
Mark Johnson to record ''Clawgrass, Mark Johnson with the Rice Brothers and Friends'' which featured Tony and his late brother
Larry Rice
Larry Rice (24 March 1946 – 20 May 2009) was an American auto racing, racing driver in the United States Automobile Club, USAC and Champ Car, CART Championship Car series. He was the 1973 USAC National midget driver's champion and won the USAC S ...
along with his other brothers, Wyatt and Ronnie.
In 1995, Rice recorded a duo album with John Carlini who also played with the
David Grisman Quintet.
In 1997, Rice, his brother Larry,
Chris Hillman
Christopher Hillman (born December 4, 1944) is an American musician. He was the original bassist of the Byrds. With frequent collaborator Gram Parsons, Hillman was a key figure in the development of country rock, defining the genre through his w ...
(formerly of the
Flying Burrito Brothers and
the Byrds
The Byrds () were an American Rock music, rock band formed in Los Angeles, California, in 1964. The band underwent multiple lineup changes throughout its existence, with frontman Roger McGuinn (known as Jim McGuinn until mid-1967) being the so ...
) and banjoist
Herb Pedersen
Herbert Joseph Pedersen (born April 27, 1944, in Berkeley, California) is an American musician, guitarist, banjo player, singer-songwriter, and actor who has played a variety of musical styles over the past fifty years including country, blueg ...
founded the so-called anti-supergroup
Rice, Rice, Hillman & Pedersen and produced three albums between 1997 and 2001.
In the 2000s and 2010s, he performed in a quartet with guitarist/singer-songwriter
Peter Rowan, bassist
Bryn Bright (later known as
Bryn Davies
Brinley Howard Davies, Baron Davies of Brixton (born 17 May 1944), known as Bryn Davies, is a British trade unionist, actuary and politician who was Leader of the Inner London Education Authority in the early 1980s.
Early life
Davies graduat ...
), and mandolinist
Billy Bright (replaced by
Sharon Gilchrist).
Solo career
In 1979, Rice left Grisman's group to record ''Acoustics'', a jazz inspired album followed by ''
Manzanita'', a bluegrass and folk album. On albums that followed, ''Cold on the Shoulder'', ''Native American'', and ''Me & My Guitar'', he combined bluegrass, jazzy guitar work and the songwriting of
Ian Tyson
Ian Dawson Tyson (25 September 1933 – 29 December 2022) was a Canadian singer-songwriter who wrote several folk songs, including " Four Strong Winds" and " Someday Soon", and performed with partner Sylvia Tyson as the duo Ian & Sylvia.
Ea ...
,
Joni Mitchell
Roberta Joan Mitchell (née Anderson; born November 7, 1943) is a Canadian and American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and painter. As one of the most influential singer-songwriters to emerge from the 1960s folk music circuit, Mitch ...
,
Phil Ochs
Philip David Ochs (; December 19, 1940 – April 9, 1976) was an American songwriter, protest song, protest singer (or, as he preferred, "topical singer"), and Political Activist, political activist. Ochs was known for his sharp wit, sardonic h ...
,
Tom Paxton
Thomas Richard Paxton (born October 31, 1937) is an American folk singer-songwriter whose career spans more than sixty years. In 2009, Paxton received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. ,
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan; born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Described as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture over his nearly 70-year ...
,
Gordon Lightfoot
Gordon Meredith Lightfoot Jr. (November 17, 1938 – May 1, 2023) was a Canadian singer-songwriter who achieved worldwide success and helped define the singer-songwriter era of the 1970s. Widely considered one of Canada's greatest songwriters, ...
and
Mary Chapin Carpenter.
Rice's singing voice was a rich, distinctive baritone. In 1994, he was diagnosed with a disorder known as
muscle tension dysphonia and as a result was forced to stop singing in live performance. A 2014 diagnosis of
lateral epicondylitis
Tennis elbow, also known as lateral epicondylitis is an enthesopathy (attachment point disease) of the origin of the extensor carpi radialis brevis on the lateral epicondyle. It causes pain and tenderness over the bony part of the Lateral epic ...
("tennis elbow") made guitar playing painful and his last performance playing guitar live was when he was inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame in 2013. In 2015, he said "I am not going to go back out into the public eye until I can be the musician that I was, where I left off or better. I have been blessed with a very devout audience all these years and I am certainly not going to let anybody down. I am not going to risk going out there and performing in front of people again until I can entertain them in a way that takes away from them the rigors and the dust, the bumps in the road of everyday life."
The authorized biography of Tony Rice, called ''Still Inside: The Tony Rice Story'', written by
Tim Stafford and Hawaii-based journalist Caroline Wright, was published by Word of Mouth Press in
Kingsport, Tennessee, United States in 2010. The book's official release was at
Merlefest in
North Carolina
North Carolina ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, South Carolina to the south, Georgia (U.S. stat ...
that year.
Death
Rice died at his home in
Reidsville,
North Carolina
North Carolina ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, South Carolina to the south, Georgia (U.S. stat ...
, on December 25, 2020, at age 69.
Influence
Tony Rice "redefined bluegrass guitar playing and left a lasting imprint on the genre."
David Grisman called Rice "a complete musician of the highest caliber"
and Ricky Skaggs said he was "the single most influential acoustic guitar player in the last 50 years."
Although Rice's guitar playing was colorful and recognizable, flash was not his aim. His rhythm playing was driving and clear, while his solos were strategic and melodic. Rice stepped outside of what any other guitarist was doing at the time. Doing this, he raised the bar of what a bluegrass guitar player could do. Tony Rice was one of the most influential bluegrass guitar players of all time.
In a lesson exploring Rice's style, guitarist
Molly Tuttle said "the beauty of Tony's playing is that there's something for everyone to learn from. I've been playing guitar for a long time and I still go back to this and just want to listen to him strum the guitar." Rice was a big influence on the bluegrass band
Punch Brothers who devoted their album ''
Hell on Church Street'' as a tribute to Rice and to his 1983 album ''
Church Street Blues''.
[Margaret Quamme, February 10, 2022, The Columbus Dispatch]
Punch Brothers' setlist at the Southern to include 'thank you' to late bluegrass legend
Retrieved February 14, 2022, "... latest album by the Punch Brothers ... a tribute to one of the most famous bluegrass albums of all time...." Members of the Punch Brothers band said that Rice's earlier albums had a huge impact on their music.
In addition, guitarist
Chris Eldridge was a student of Rice's.
The group had intended that their album be a surprise gift to Rice but he died before they could finish it.
Discography
Awards
Grammy
* Best Country Instrumental Performance: The New South, Fireball (1983)
IBMA
* Instrumental Group of the Year: Bluegrass Album Band (1990)
[
* Instrumental Performer of the Year, Guitar (1990, 1991, 1994, 1996, 1997, 2007)][
* Instrumental Group of the Year: The Tony Rice Unit (1991, 1995)]
* Instrumental Album of the Year: Bluegrass Instrumentals, Volume 6 (Rounder); Bluegrass Album Band (1997)[
* Hall of Fame Inductee, 2013][
]
References
External links
*
Tony Rice discography at Deaddisc.com
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rice, Tony
1951 births
2020 deaths
People from Danville, Virginia
Singers from Virginia
American acoustic guitarists
American male guitarists
American bluegrass guitarists
American jazz guitarists
Grammy Award winners
American male singers
Rebel Records artists
Rounder Records artists
Country musicians from Virginia
Songwriters from Virginia
Songwriters from California
Guitarists from Los Angeles
Guitarists from Virginia
20th-century American guitarists
Jazz musicians from Virginia
Jazz musicians from California
Country musicians from California
20th-century American male musicians
American male jazz musicians
David Grisman Quintet members
Bluegrass Album Band members
New South (band) members
Bluegrass musicians from North Carolina
American male songwriters