The Musical Box

j.d. crowe. photo courtesy of KET.

One tends not to appreciate the full gravity of an artist’s lifelong career until confronted with it, even in a very condensed form, as a whole. Such a welcome and necessary overview is exactly what A Kentucky Treasure: The J.D. Crowe Story, which premieres 9 p.m. Nov. 8 on KET-TV, provides.

Sure, many in Central Kentucky know the highlights from the Grammy winning Lexington/Nicholasville banjo innovator’s 50-plus year career by heart, from his formative years with Jimmy Martin through the many incarnations of his New South band over the past 34 years. But the documentary, produced and directed by H. Russell Farmer, has obviously been designed as a primer for bluegrass enthusiasts nationwide. In doing so, though, Farmer offers a life story so complete that even Crowe’s most ardent regional admirers will discover much about an artistic giant they thought they knew well.

For novice fans, there are interviews with plenty of formidable names from successive bluegrass generations. Leading the pack is Earl Scruggs, the banjo colossus that essentially made Crowe forsake fantasies of playing electric guitar. There is also conversation with modern bluegrass empress Alison Krauss, who reveals her self-consciousness about meeting and playing with Crowe at a 1988 Lonesome Pine Special concert in Louisville. Video from that performance is also featured. But banjo torch bearer Bela Fleck, in a snippet of an interview at the beginning of the documentary, best sums up the appeal of his idol: “It’s the Crowe-ness.”

That national audiences might get exposure to A Kentucky Treasure is only appropriate. While Crowe’s career has long operated out of Central Kentucky, his story stretches out to such unlikely bluegrass locales as Detroit, where much of his work with Martin played out, and California, where Crowe cut the first of his acclaimed Bluegrass Album Band recordings alongside longtime pals Tony Rice, Doyle Lawson and others.

But even local Crowe fanatics will be fascinated by the attention afforded the Kentucky Mountain Boys, the band Crowe settled into very informally after leaving Martin and its initial performance tenure at a long lost Lexington music hall (or, as surviving Kentucky Mountain Boy Bob Joslin calls it, “a beer joint”). The venue’s name, quite ironically, was Martin’s. The film then traces Crowe’s move to the Holiday Inn North on Newtown Pike for what became Lexington’s most celebrated bluegrass residency.

The history of the New South follows, but the surprises don’t stop there. For example, who knew it took a dobro great like Jerry Douglas to sway Crowe enough to include the instrument, which he was long suspect of, within the New South’s instrumental makeup?

“I don’t think J.D. was too crazy about dobro players up to that point,” Douglas says in almost deadpan bemusement. But the feeling was hardly mutual, as Douglas states how eager he was to become a New South member, if only for a short period. “I would have done it for free.”

Crowe’s reaction in the documentary to the mid ‘70s New South split - which saw Rice heading West to join mandolin stylist David Grisman with Skaggs and Douglas departing to form Boone Creek, is especially telling. “I started looking around for other players,” he says with a wry smile. “And, of course, there they were,”

Indeed so, from the doomed country voice of the late Keith Whitley, a cornerstone member of the New South as it gravitated toward country music, to the incomparable string duo of dobroist Phil Leadbetter and bassist Curt Chapman, who reveal their mutual trepidation at having to tell Crowe of their New South departure.

While current New South singer/guitarist Rickey Wasson gets the film’s last word, Crowe, now 71, sums up his own story by describing, in typically plain-speaking terms, on what the future holds.

“I’m gonna play until I decide not to.”