Rice’s music ranges from traditional bluegrass to jazz-influenced modern acoustic music to songwriter-oriented folk. Over the course of his career, he played alongside J. David Grisman and Jerry Garcia, D. Crowe and the New South, led their own Tony Rice Team, worked with Norman Blake, recorded with their brothers Wyatt, Ron, and Larry, and co-founded the Bluegrass Album Band. He’s been recording with drums, piano, soprano sax, and traditional bluegrass instruments. So what was Tony Rice net worth? How much did he earned from his professional career?
David Anthony Rice aka Tony Rice wiki: earlier life, parents, family
On June 8, 1951, David Anthony Rice aka Tony Rice was born and died on Christmas Day, December 25, 2020. He was a guitarist and bluegrass singer from America. Rice was born in Danville, Virginia, grew-up in Los Angeles, where he was introduced to bluegrass by his aunt, Herb Rice. L.A. learned the basics of bluegrass and country music from Tony and his brothers. Musicians like the Colonels of Kentucky, headed by Roland and Clarence White. In particular, Clarence White had an immense influence on rice. The strength of the music he had learned from his father was strengthened by crossing paths with fellow enthusiasts including Ry Cooder, Herb Pedersen and Chris Hillman.
He has been an influential bluegrass, progressive bluegrass, newgrass and flattop acoustic jazz acoustic guitar musician. He was inducted in 2013 into the International Hall of Fame for Bluegrass Music.
Tony Rice net worth and earnings: Career with different groups
Rice moved to Louisville, Kentucky in 1970, where he performed with the Bluegrass Alliance, and soon after that, J.D. Fresh South by Crowe. The New South was considered to be one of the greatest and most advanced bluegrass groups, gradually adding drums and electric instruments (to the disappointment of Rice). When Ricky Skaggs joined them in 1974, however, the band recorded J. D. Crowe & the New South, an acoustic album that until that point had been the biggest seller for Rounder Records. At this point, the group consisted of guitar and lead vocals by Rice, banjo and vocals by Crowe, Dobro by Jerry Douglas, fiddle, mandolin and tenor vocals by Skaggs, and bass and fiddle by Bobby Slone.
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In 1980, the Bluegrass Album Band was founded by Rice, Crowe, Bobby Hicks, Doyle Lawson and Todd Phillips and recorded from 1980 to 1996. The same year, with Ricky Skaggs, he released an album of bluegrass duets called Skaggs & Rice. Two albums were acclaimed by traditional instrumentalist and songwriter Norman Blake, as well as two Rice Brothers albums (1992 and 1994) that featured him with his late elder brother, Larry, and Wyatt and Ronnie, the younger brothers.
He collaborated with guitarist/singer-songwriter Peter Rowan, bassist Bryn Bright, and mandolinist Billy Bright as a quartet in the 2000s and 2010s.
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Rice stopped singing, Cancer diagnosis
The singing voice of Rice was a distinctive baritone. He was diagnosed with a condition known as muscle tension dysphonia in 1994. He was forced to stop singing in live performances as a consequence. A 2014 diagnosis of lateral epicondylitis (“tennis elbow”) made guitar playing difficult and his induction into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame in 2013 was Rice’s last appearance playing guitar live.
In 2015, Rice was saying,
“I am not going to go back out into the public eye until I can be the musician that I was, where I left off or better. I have been blessed with a very devout audience all these years, and I am certainly not going to let anybody down. And I am not going to risk going out there and performing in front of people again until I can entertain them in a way that takes away from them the rigors and the dust, the bumps in the road of everyday life.”