Dudley Connell

He was born on 18 February 1956 and raised in Rockville, Maryland, by parents who were bluegrass enthusiasts. He first played banjo, as his father did, and later turned to guitar when he realized his voice was his strongest asset; Carter Stanley of the Stanley Brothers was a major influence on his singing. In 1975, still on banjo, he started a duo with the guitarist Ron Welch. They called it the Johnson Boys, after a band his father had played in, and added “Mountain” when they found another band using the name. Much of their repertoire came from the Stanley Brothers. The group grew with the mandolinist Eddie D’Zmura, the bassist Gary Reid and the fiddler David McLaughlin, and when Welch left, Connell moved to guitar and lead vocals.

Eddie Stubbs joined on fiddle in the fall of 1978, and with the banjo player Richard Underwood, D’Zmura and the bassist Larry Robbins, who came in 1979, that was the line-up for most of the early and middle 1980s. Their first Rounder album, The Johnson Mountain Boys, came out in April 1981, followed by Walls of Time (1982), Working Close (1983), Live at the Birchmere (1984), We’ll Still Sing On (1985) and Let the Whole World Talk (1987). The title song of that last album, a J. D. Miller song first recorded by Jimmy C. Newman in 1956, became the band’s breakthrough, carried by Connell’s lead vocal and twin fiddles from Stubbs and McLaughlin. In the early 1980s the band played about 150 dates a year; in 1984 it toured Africa for the United States Information Agency, and it played the White House, Madison Square Garden, Lincoln Center and the Grand Ole Opry.

On 20 February 1988, citing the difficulty of making a living as a five-piece band, the Johnson Mountain Boys played what was billed as a farewell show at the Lucketts Community Center in Lucketts, Virginia. Rounder released it as the double LP At the Old Schoolhouse, which was nominated for a Grammy and named Album of the Year by the IBMA. The band later regrouped with Connell, McLaughlin, Stubbs, the banjo player Tom Adams and the bassist Earl Yeager, working 25 to 30 dates a year, and recorded Blue Diamond (1993), also nominated for a Grammy, before breaking up for good in November 1996. From 1989 to 1998 Connell managed the Smithsonian Folkways office in Rockville. He recorded with Hazel Dickens and toured with her in 1992, and in 1993 he took part in the Masters of the 5-String Banjo tour organized by Joe Wilson.

Longview grew out of a 1994 festival jam with James King and Don Rigsby, and in December 1995 he, King, Rigsby, Marshall Wilborn, Joe Mullins and Glen Duncan met to record its first album; the group recorded Longview (1997) and High Lonesome (1999) for Rounder and Lessons in Stone (2002) for Rebel. Around the same time he joined the Seldom Scene as guitarist and lead singer, while the founding mandolinist John Duffey was still in the band. With Rigsby he also made two albums in the brother-duet style of the Blue Sky Boys and the Monroe Brothers, Meet Me by the Moonlight (Sugar Hill, 1999) and Another Saturday Night (Sugar Hill, 2001), and in 2000 the IBMA named him Male Vocalist of the Year.

He sings with the gospel group the Stony Point Quartet, with David McLaughlin, Linda Lay and Billy Lux, which recorded Band of Angels in 2003. In 2006 he formed Seneca Rocks! with three former Johnson Mountain Boys, Tom Adams, David McLaughlin and Marshall Wilborn, and with his wife, Sally Love Connell. As of 2014 he worked as an audio archivist at the National Council for the Traditional Arts.

With the Seldom Scene he recorded Dream Scene (1996), Scene It All (2000), Scenechronized (2007), Long Time... Seldom Scene (2014), Changes (2019) and Remains to Be Scene (2025). He retired from the band at the end of 2024, and Clay Hess took his place.