Biography

As an elite musician and a mentor, Jerry Douglas continually redefines his role in a career of recording and live performance spanning more than fifty years. A 2024 inductee into the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame, Douglas is widely admired as a resophonic guitarist, solo artist, bandleader, producer, composer, arranger, collaborator, and curator. Few artists have made as deep an impact on modern music as Jerry Douglas.

Growing up in Warren, Ohio, and recording with bluegrass group The Country Gentlemen while still a teenager, Douglas took early inspiration from his guitarist father, John, and his bluegrass band, The West Virginia Travelers. Early in his career, Douglas toured and recorded with J.D. Crowe & The New South, Boone Creek, The Whites, The Dreadful Snakes, The Bluegrass Album Band, and Strength in Numbers. He is a founding member of The Telluride House Band, which got its start at the famed Telluride Bluegrass Festival in 1987. A member of Alison Krauss & Union Station since 1998, Douglas has also toured with James Taylor, Lyle Lovett, Elvis Costello, and Paul Simon, and with his own bands, The Jerry Douglas Band and The Earls of Leicester.

Douglas presented and performed at the first International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) awards show in 1990. He composed the show’s theme, “Shoulder to Shoulder,” with Mark Schatz. In addition, Douglas received 1994’s GRAMMY Award for Best Bluegrass Album for The Great Dobro Sessions, a multi-artist collection he recorded and produced. By 1998, he had released eight solo albums for Rounder Records, MCA Master Series, and Sugar Hill Records.

Throughout his wide-ranging career, Douglas has accrued dozens of IBMA trophies, as well as multiple awards from the Country Music Association (a three-time Musician of the Year), the Academy of Country Music (a ten-time recipient in the Specialty Instrument category), and the Americana Music Association (Lifetime Achievement Award). He has also received a multitude of industry awards as a member of Alison Krauss & Union Station, and for his contributions to the O Brother, Where Art Thou? film and soundtrack (2000).

Douglas serves as co-musical director of The Transatlantic Sessions, an international troupe of musicians who perform roots music from North America, England, Ireland, and Scotland on the namesake BBC series and on tour. In 2014 Douglas formed the band The Earls of Leicester to honor pioneering bluegrass duo Flatt & Scruggs, reintroducing their historic catalog to a modern audience. As a studio musician, he has played on more than two thousand albums and tracks. He has served on the Boards of the National Council for Traditional Arts, NARAS, and IBMA. In 2020, contributions to the IBMA Trust Fund were generated via donations during his Flux Friday livestream program. He also raised funds for and awareness of the Earl Scruggs Center (Shelby, North Carolina) with an all- star concert at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium in 2024.

Douglas has won a career sixteen Grammy Awards, most recently as a producer of two albums for Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway. He has also produced albums for Alison Krauss, The Del McCoury Band, The Gibson Brothers, John Hiatt, Steep Canyon Rangers, The Whites, Jesse Winchester, and Maura O’Connell. He gives longtime listeners and new fans alike an overview of his remarkable career on his newest album, The Set.

As a bluegrass ambassador, Douglas has twice traveled the world on U.S. State Department tours. In 2004, he was named a National Heritage Fellow by the National Endowment for the Arts. It is without hyperbole The New York Times deemed Douglas “Dobro’s matchless contemporary master.”