Mike Auldridge earned recognition across a lengthy career for his command of the dobro, also known as the resonator guitar, thanks to both technical prowess and an expansive view of what bluegrass could encompass. Born and raised in Kensington, Maryland, he picked up guitar at age 12, turned to banjo four years later, and focused on Dobro by 17. His initial radio broadcast came in 1954 on a local program, where he performed alongside his brother Dave in a band. After earning a degree from the University of Maryland in 1967, he worked as a commercial artist yet kept performing in area venues. In 1969 he became a member of the New Shade of Green, a band whose growing popularity soon drew attention to his distinctive, expressive Dobro approach.
He entered the Seldom Scene in 1971 and stayed through repeated lineup shifts until the mid-1990s, returning part-time in 2002. The ensemble helped pioneer the newgrass style by weaving jazz, folk, and rock elements into classic bluegrass vocal harmonies, drawing on both original material and reinterpretations that stretched from J.J. Cale’s “After Midnight” to Eric Clapton’s “Lay Down Sally.” That same openness shaped Auldridge’s solo recordings, which benefited early on from contributions by several Seldom Scene colleagues. His debut pair of Takoma releases, Dobro and Blues & Bluegrass, combined unexpected covers such as Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly” with deeply felt playing and appearances by notable guests including Ricky Skaggs and Linda Ronstadt.
Throughout the 1970s he issued further albums on Flying Fish while supplying session work for Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris, Jonathan Edwards, and Jimmy Arnold. His Sugar Hill output from the late 1980s and early 1990s, particularly Eight String Swing, pushed his cross-genre explorations even farther. By the mid-1990s he shifted focus from the Seldom Scene to Chesapeake, a smaller, steadier group that released several Sugar Hill projects and led to two trio albums with Jimmy Gaudreau and Richard Bennett: This Old Town in 2000 and Blue Lonesome Wind the following year. Following a ten-year struggle with prostate cancer, Mike Auldridge passed away in late December 2012, a day before turning 74.
