Eddie Adcock

Among the major-league talent emerging from the folk music boom of the late '50s were the Country Gentlemen, a D.C.-based quartet that introduced bluegrass to a generation of city folks and college students, people who had never heard of Flatt & Scruggs or Bill Monroe or the Stanley Brothers. The Gentlemen, in playing the old bluegrass standards but playing them "different," were in a sense the first newgrass group. Eddie Adcock was the band's banjo player and he was a player of distinction — his style was as innovative as Don Reno's. Adcock's considerable talent spread to other stringed instruments when he left The Gentlemen in 1970 and began exploring new musical genres. For the next three decades, Eddie Adcock remained one of the most popular musicians in bluegrass.