Noah Crase

Noah Crase's father, fiddler James Crase, was recorded in the '60s for the Folkways collection entitled Mountain Music of Kentucky. With such a noble old-time music background, the banjoist was at first drawn toward appropriate banjo styles such as frailing and clawhammer. But that was over from the moment he heard Earl Scruggs motor his way through the "Foggy Mountain Breakdown." After this, it was nothing for bluegrass for Crase, except for a few lean years when he had to play electric lead guitar in a country band. It was the Elvis Presley era and many other bluegrass and country pickers were in the same boat. Crase apparently always brought his banjo to these gigs, keeping it hidden on the bandstand until it was almost the end of the evening and too late for the band to be fired. Then he would take out his beloved "five-banger" and play a few numbers for the crowd country music scholar Lenny Kaye immortalized as "the late-night hipster set." In the '70s, Crase was active with the NuGrass Pickers and in 1975, joined the lineup of the Boys From Indiana for three albums. Still going strong in 2001, he was performing as a member of the Bluegrass Legends with Carlos Brock, a fellow graduate of Bill Monroe's Bluegrass Boys. ~ Eugene Chadbourne, Rovi