Bluegrass icon treasures his memories from appearing on “The Andy Griffith Show.” He appears in Gainesville Thursday evening as part of the city's Jewel Box concert series.
Rodney Dillard returns to Mayberry every chance he gets.
The Missouri-born musician treasures his memories from appearing on “The Andy Griffith Show,” and loves to take audiences back to a simpler time. Dillard, his brother Doug on banjo, bassist Mitch Jayne and mandolin player Dean Webb played the deadpan musical Darling Brothers on the popular 1960s TV show.
The show has been on the air for over 55 years and new generations of fans continue to discover the black-and-white treasure. In this era of high-tech disconnection, the show offers a refreshing return to rural life in an idyllic small town.
“Some of these younger people will bring their kids all dressed in the outfits. It’s kind of fun to watch,” Dillard said in a recent phone interview from his home in Branson, Missouri. “I think it’s because of the inherent values that the show had and a lot of people want to cling to that.”
Dillard, 75, loves to tell behind-the-scenes stories from his time in Hollywood. He also will revisit the music of the Darling Brothers in a show tonight in Gainesville, featuring Florida’s talented Walker Brothers — Cory on banjo, Jarrod on mandolin and Tyler on bass.
“I’m excited because they’re very hot pickers and they know all the tunes, they know all the arrangements,” he said. “It’s going to be like revisiting the youth and energy of the Dillards because we’ll be doing all those songs that we always did.”
That includes bluegrass classics he and his brother wrote, like “Dooley,” “The Old Homeplace,” “There is a Time,” “Ebo Walker” and the instrumental “Doug’s Tune.”
The role
The journey that landed he and his bandmates on “The Andy Griffith Show” was an arduous one. In 1962, the Dillards worked their way from the Ozarks to Hollywood. The journey took three months.
“We worked our way across the country and we were fighting for crackers people would throw away in the waste cans,” he said.
The Dillards arrived at the historic Ash Grove theater, which is now called the Comedy Store. The 1960s counterculture of Joan Baez and Pete Seeger flourished there and it was a mystery to the country boys, some of whom had grown up without electricity in the mountains.
“I remember walking in there and somebody walked up to me and said, 'What do you think of the existentialist dilemma?’ ” Dillard said. “I said, ‘I don’t know. I was raised Baptist.’ ”
The group got out their stringed instruments and commenced to playing in the foyer of the club. A manager ran out and told them they couldn’t jam there. Do it on stage, he said.
So they played their peculiar mountain music on stage at the Ash Grove in Hollywood. In the audience that night was a producer for Elektra Records, who signed them to a record deal. An announcement ran in the paper about Hollywood’s “newest weird thing,” as Dillard described the band.
Andy Griffith saw the announcement and was looking to cast a bluegrass band for a script he had titled, “The Darlings are Coming.” He invited the Dillards to audition for the role. When the band showed up at Desilu Studios, Griffith stopped taping and walked over with producer Bob Sweeney.
“Andy sat down and said, ‘OK, show us what you’ve got,’” Dillard said. “We started in on a number, got halfway through it. He slapped his knee and said, ‘That’s it!’ Of course, I thought we were getting kicked out but we’d already got the job.”
The Darlings were only supposed to appear in one episode, but the act proved so popular that the group appeared on six musical episodes. Actor Denver Pyle as patriarch Frisco Darling uttered a line that is still revered in bluegrass circles: “Got time to breathe, you got time for music.”
While timing and luck to contributed to his big show business break, Dillard is thankful for the life-changing opportunity.
“In retrospect, I look at the whole thing and know it was guided by providence,” he said. “From then on, I’ve never done anything else but work within the arena of entertainment.”
Hall of Fame career
While the Dillards were best known nationally for the TV role, their music was revered in folk and bluegrass circles. The band was inducted in the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame in 2009. Rodney and brother Doug Dillard are credited with writing nearly 130 songs, according to the Bluegrass Museum.
The Dillards’ song “The Darlin’ Boys” was nominated for a Grammy in 1991. Rodney Dillard was named an Outstanding Missourian for his contributions to music and to preserving the Ozark culture.
Dillard said it was a battle in the early days to fight Hollywood’s “hillbilly” stereotype. The band refused to do performances with hay bales, painted-on freckles and blacked-out front teeth. One episode on CBS’ “Johnny Cash Show” was so demeaning that they asked to be cut out of it.
“It was an insult at the time to people of the mountains, thinking all they do is lay around and chase their sister and sleep with dogs. It’s a real insult to the values and the honor of the people of the mountains,” he said. “I grew up there. Folks aren’t like that.
“You have to fight for every inch of integrity that you have and we were just really blessed to be able to do the Andy Griffith Show.”
Griffith played guitar with the Dillards on the show. He was always respectful of the music and concerned about how it was being presented.
“It was really fun to be there. There was no tenseness on the show, ever,” Dillard said. “We’d sit around and pick. Andy loved music and he loved musical instruments and he loved musicians. He was so kind to us.”
It’s that comfortable, homey feel that still draws viewers to the show decades afterward. Griffith as Sheriff Andy Taylor treated everyone with dignity, including the criminals in his jail and the moonshining Darlin’ family.
“The Andy Griffith show, it’s like looking into a campfire. There’s some sort of sense of security and peace in that. I know that’s a weird analogy but it’s really true.”
Vicki Dean is a freelance writer based in Venice.