J.D. Crowe and the Kentucky Mountain Boys

Crowe left Jimmy Martin’s band in 1961 and went back to Lexington, where he took a day job at an equipment dealer and teamed with other part-time musicians to play weekends in local taverns. They took the name Kentucky Mountain Boys, and Doyle Lawson, on guitar and mandolin, and Bobby Slone, on bass and fiddle, soon joined. Martin still called Crowe back during these years for two Decca sessions, in September 1963 and November 1966.

In 1968 the band was asked to play five nights a week at the Red Slipper Lounge in Lexington’s Holiday Inn North. It was one of the first times a bluegrass group had played an upscale room for a mostly college-educated audience, and crowds lined up in the parking lot to get in. Crowe brought in Red Allen on guitar and lead vocals, and in December 1968 Allen, Crowe, Lawson on mandolin and Slone on bass recorded Bluegrass Holiday (Lemco LLP 609) at Lemco Studios in Lexington. Its tracks include “Little Girl in Tennessee,” “Will You Be Satisfied That Way,” “Philadelphia Lawyer,” “Orange Blossom Special” and “Dark Hollow,” and Rebel later reissued it.

Allen left in 1969. Lawson moved to guitar, and Larry Rice, Tony Rice’s older brother, came from California to play mandolin and sing lead. With that lineup the band became a headline act at early-summer bluegrass festivals while keeping its nightly club dates in Lexington, Louisville and southern Indiana, and Crowe, Lawson, Rice and Slone made the two later Lemco albums, both in 1971. Ramblin’ Boy (Lemco LLP 610) includes Chris Hillman and Gram Parsons’s “Sin City,” Tom Paxton’s title song, “Bear Tracks,” credited to Crowe and Jimmy Martin, and “Black Jack,” credited to Crowe and Lawson; Rebel reissued it in 1978 as Blackjack. The Model Church (Lemco 611), a gospel album by the same four, was also reissued by Rebel in 1978.

When Lawson left for the Country Gentlemen in late summer 1971, Tony Rice came in on guitar and the band was renamed the New South. Its early direction under the new name was an electrified mix of bluegrass, country and folk, which can be heard on the Starday album Bluegrass Evolution.