Biography

Gerald Calvin “Jerry” Douglas is one of the most influential and widely recorded instrumentalists of the last half century. During a career that began in the middle 1970s with the Country Gentlemen, Douglas has seen membership in numerous cutting-edge groups including J. D. Crowe’s New South, Boone Creek, The Whites, Alison Krauss & Union Station, The Earls of Leicester, and his own Jerry Douglas Band. As a sought-after session musician, he has appeared on more than 2000 wide-ranging recorded projects. Douglas’s instrument of choice is the Dobro. As an exceptional player without peer, he has singlehandedly elevated the status of the instrument in bluegrass, mainstream country, and all genres.

Douglas entered the world surrounded by music. His father, West Virginia native John Douglas, played guitar and sang in a local Warren, Ohio, band, the West Virginia Travelers. It was only natural for young Jerry to follow in his father’s footsteps. At age five, he began learning to play mandolin. Experiments on guitar and banjo soon followed, but it was a 1963 concert that featured Flatt & Scruggs (with Dobro ace Josh Graves) and Roy Acuff (with Dobro veteran “Bashful Brother Oswald” Kirby) that excited the youth. Straightaway, he set up his six-string guitar so that it could be played like a Dobro. The makeshift instrument lasted for two years, at which point Douglas got his first real Dobro.

Douglas honed his craft as a member of The West Virginia Travelers. His first real break came in 1973 when he spent the summer touring with The Country Gentlemen. Upon graduation from high school the following spring, he joined the group full-time. He made one of his first trips to a recording studio to appear on The Country Gentlemen’s Remembrances and Forecasts album for the fabled Vanguard label.

In January of 1975 Douglas was invited to play as a guest musician on J. D. Crowe & The New South’s self-titled album that is known to many by its catalog number, Rounder 0044. Shortly thereafter, banjo player J. D. invited Jerry to become a full-time member of the band that included Tony Rice on guitar, Ricky Skaggs on mandolin and fiddle, and Bobby Slone on bass.

Ricky Skaggs had previously been Douglas’s bandmate in The Country Gentlemen. In 1976, the two conspired to form a cutting-edge contemporary band called Boone Creek. Over a two-year period, the group (with the addition of Terry Baucom and Wes Golding) recorded albums for Rounder (the self-titled Boone Creek) and Sugar Hill (One Way Track). Both met with critical acclaim.

New opportunity came to Douglas in 1979 when he was asked to join The Whites, a family group headed by patriarch Buck White and featuring his daughters Sharon and Cheryl. The band had a major label record deal with Curb and scored several Top 10 hits, worked an average of 200 dates per year, and joined the Opry in 1984.

During his tenure with the Whites, Douglas released his first solo album, Fluxology. He also lent his talent to a host of albums by other rising stars such as Tony Rice (Manzanita), Ricky Skaggs (Sweet Temptation), the David Grisman Rounder Album, Emmylou Harris (Roses in the Snow), Carl Jackson (Banjo Man, Tribute to Earl Scruggs), and Doyle Lawson (Tennessee Dream).

A pair of mid-1980s chart-topping singles by country singers Gary Morris (“Leave Me Lonely”) and Randy Travis (“Diggin’ Up Bones”) brought the Dobro and Douglas to the attention of mainstream country producers. The late 1980s and early ‘90s were filled with studio session work. Given the extensive amount of time Douglas spent as a studio musician, it was only natural for him to take the next step to that of producer.

He explained part of his process in a 1999 article for Bluegrass Now: “A good producer takes the pressure off of a band and therefore you get a better performance on tape. I especially wanted to help the sound sonically. I wanted to keep the essence of bluegrass, but make the recordings stand up to the full sound of country recordings. Using better equipment and paying attention to things like mic position are important.” Some of his early producing skills were put to use on albums by the Nashville Bluegrass Band and Alison Krauss. In time, demand for Jerry’s producing talents outpaced the available time he had for such endeavors.

To keep a hand in performing, Douglas performed in several trios, including one with fiddler Mark O’Connor and guitarist Peter Rowan, and another with Russ Barenberg and Edgar Meyer. Both collaborations resulted in well-received studio albums; Yonder highlighted Douglas and Rowan, while Skip, Hop and Wobble featured him with Barenberg and Meyer. In 1989 Douglas teamed up with Bela Fleck, Mark O’Connor, Sam Bush, and Edgar Meyer to record the landmark album entitled Strength In Numbers, informing and raising the bar for the next generation of bluegrass artists.

In 1998 Douglas brought a broad range of experience in recording, producing, and touring to IBMA when he signed on to serve as the organization’s vice president. Concurrent with his tenure with the trade organization, he added yet another important milestone to his resume.  After serving as producer and frequent guest musician, he became part of Union Station, with special billing: “Alison Krauss & Union Station featuring Jerry Douglas.” The band’s schedule of working six months on and six months off left plenty of spare time for Douglas’s studio work.

Douglas organized and produced award-winning Dobro-centric albums. The various artists collection titled The Great Dobro Sessions won a Grammy and IBMA awards in 1995 for Instrumental Recorded Performance of the Year and Recorded Event of the Year. Nearly a decade later, and on a more personal level, Douglas teamed up with mentor Mike Auldridge and Rob Ickes for sessions that were eventually released as Three Bells. The sessions for the disc were recorded as Mike Auldridge, an early mentor, was in the latter stages of terminal cancer. In assembling the project, which won the 2015 IBMA award for Instrumental Recorded Performance of the Year, Douglas wrote that “Mike was one of the foremost teachers of taste and technique. Taking the Dobro to new heights was his passion.”

In 2006, Jerry introduced the Jerry Douglas Band, which appears between Alison Krauss, Earls of Leicester, and producing gigs. The Jerry Douglas Band’s 2017 release, What If? was nominated for a Grammy. Recent members include Daniel Kimbro on bass, Christian Sedelmyer on fiddle and Mike Seal on guitar.

In 2014 Douglas gathered several of his musical contributors to form a group called The Earls of Leicester; it was a play on the names of bluegrass legends Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs (the English town of Leicester is pronounced “Lester”). The band name was very fitting, as the group strove to recreate the early 1960s sound of the classic Flatt & Scruggs band. It gave Douglas a chance to emulate the playing of his longtime idol Josh Graves. Nashville-based banjoist Charlie Cushman assumed the role of Earl Scruggs, while singer/songwriter Shawn Camp took on the persona of Lester Flatt. Other original members included fiddler Johnny Warren, son of longtime Flatt & Scruggs fiddler Paul Warren, mandolin player/tenor singer Tim O’Brien (as Curly Seckler), and bassist Barry Bales (as Jake Tullock). The group went on to win three IBMA Entertainer of the Year awards, and its debut album won a Grammy and was named IBMA Album of the Year.

Jerry Douglas has brought the Dobro from an instrument once primarily known mostly in bluegrass to a major role in modern country music as well as in other genres. He has earned numerous IBMA Awards, including ten for Dobro Player of the Year. He has won sixteen Grammy Awards, and was selected the Country Music Association’s “Musician of the Year” in 2002, 2005, and 2007.

Gary Reid is a bluegrass music historian, journalist, producer, and actor based in Roanoke, Virginia.