Bluegrass legend and banjo player Doug Dillard died Wednesday at a Nashville hospital after a long illness, according to published reports.
Dillard, 75, a Dent County native, along with his brother, Rodney, are best known for their acoustic music popularity in the 1960s and their guest appearances on the Andy Griffith Show as the mountain family, “The Darlings.”
The Dillards, blazed a trail on the 1960s West Coast music scene for progressive bluegrass bands and The Lonesome Pine Fiddlers, the legendary string band formed in 1937 by Ezra Cline in West Virginia.
The Dillards were a driving force in modernizing and popularizing the sound of bluegrass in the 1960s and ‘70s. Rodney on guitar and Doug on banjo, Dean Webb on mandolin and bass, and the late Mitch Jayne, bass and master at storytelling.
Born March 6, 1937, in Salem, Doug was inducted into the SPBGMA Preservation Hall of Fame and in 2009, the Dillards were inducted in the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame.