Jerry Douglas has always been determined. Even in the face of music storekeepers who didn’t know what a Dobro® was, much less how to order one, he kept sight of his dreams. In his own words, “Nobody even knew what a Dobro was – if I asked about buying one at a music store, they just looked at me like I had some awful disease.” Armed with a brochure, he ordered one – even though it didn’t come until six months later.

Today, Jerry is the undisputed master of the Dobro, having recently been nominated for a Grammy for frenetic bluegrass track, “Who’s Your Uncle” from his new album, The Best Kept Secret. This brings his tally of nominations to an incredible twenty-one, of which he has won nine. More than just a talented Dobroist for Alison Krauss and Union Station or the catalyst behind the Great Dobro Sessions that won Best Bluegrass Album in 1994, Jerry has done a lot of work behind the scenes, such as working as a producer on albums for The Nashville Bluegrass Band and Ricky Skaggs’ Don’t Get Above Your Raising.

If there’s one thing Jerry learned from appearing on more than 1500 albums, it is how important determination is for any bluegrass artist. He explains, “There was a band around for a while, who was quite good, called Daydream. They were going strong, but they just didn’t have the capital to keep going. It’s hard for new bluegrass bands to get out there. They have to do lots of hard work and work for nothing a lot of the time, or just to make their expenses, so that everybody in the band has to stick to it. I think it’s harder now than it was for me when I started out.”

Even before he was a boy peering excitedly against the glass of music stores looking for an elusive Dobro, Jerry’s dad exposed him to the magic of bluegrass and, more importantly, Josh Graves’ Dobro playing. “Every morning, when he’d get up to go to work, he’d put on a record or the radio or something and so I’d be getting ready to get up and go to school listening to Flatt and Scruggs and Josh playing the Dobro. Like a lot of other people, my dad came out of the south to the north and went to work in a steel mill for a while. He kinda missed the music that he was playing back where he came from and found a bunch of other people who felt the same way so he started a band. I grew up with live music, listening to some really good musicians – I think they could have been professional, but they had families and commitments. They used to come over to the house to practice their songs and they let me plunk along as I didn’t know how to play until I got old enough to start playing Dobro. They were really nice fellows and taught me how to play with them. This was the best way to learn you know - instead of sitting in a room somewhere trying to play tablature or anything like that – I had all of this right in front of me.”

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