Danny Jones

He was born Danny Lee Jones on 3 June 1939 in Caneyville, in Grayson County, Kentucky, and taught himself mandolin and guitar. In the early 1960s he played in the Grayson County Boys. In 1968 the Bluegrass Alliance, then a new band in Louisville, invited him to join after its first lead singer left, and he stayed until 1970, playing mandolin and guitar and singing lead. The guitarist Dan Crary, the band’s other Dan, remembered him as the most professional member of the group. Jones took part in recording the band’s two American Heritage LPs, The Bluegrass Alliance and Newgrass, and played mandolin on Crary’s American Heritage album Bluegrass Guitar (1970), twelve instrumentals such as “Reuben,” “Salt Creek” and “Forked Deer,” with Wayne Stewart on rhythm guitar, Buddy Spurlock on banjo, Lonnie Peerce on fiddle and Ebo Walker on bass.

From June to August 1971 he played guitar with Bill Monroe as a Blue Grass Boy, which took him to the Grand Ole Opry. He also worked in Roland White’s band. In the 1970s he played with the Bluegrass Generation, which recorded the album Carolina in the Pines for Zeus, and from about 1980 to 1985 he was with the Goins Brothers, Melvin and Ray. He is on their Old Homestead albums At Their Best (1981) and Sweet Sunny South (1985); on the second he played mandolin and sang baritone and some leads alongside Melvin Goins’s guitar and lead, Ray Goins’s banjo and tenor, Art Stamper’s fiddle and Dave Skeens’s bass.

Over the following years he played with Art Stamper, Melvin Goins, Joe Isaacs, the Cumberland Highlanders, Butch Robins and Jim Smoak, performed twice in Europe, and traveled to Australia for the Harrietville festival with Lonnie Hoppers, Joe Isaacs and Stacey York. He remained part of the Louisville bluegrass scene, and he died at his home there on 3 February 2017, at the age of 77.