Correction:
An earlier version of this article incorrectly reported that Mr. Auldridge was a 1967 graduate of Wheaton High School. He was a 1967 graduate of the University of Maryland.
(Matt McClain/THE WASHINGTON POST) - Mike Auldridge poses for a portrait at his Silver Spring home in January 2011.
Mike Auldridge, a bluegrass musician whose broad knowledge of many musical forms helped redefine and modernize the steel guitar known as the Dobro, died Dec. 29 at his home in Silver Spring. He died a day before his 74th birthday.
He had prostate cancer, said a daughter, Michele Auldridge.
Mr. Auldridge was a founding member of the Washington-based bluegrass group the Seldom Scene and, in a career spanning six decades, he recorded with Linda Ronstadt, Lyle Lovett and Emmylou Harris, among others.
He was renowned for his mastery of the Dobro, a guitar with a metal resonator instead of a sound hole. The Dobro, a trademarked name for a resophonic guitar, is held flat and played with a slide over the strings. Unlike other types of steel guitars, it does not rely on electric amplification. The resonator functions as an amplifier and gives the instrument a distinctively warm tone.
Although the instrument was popular in bluegrass music — Dobro player Josh Graves was a featured soloist in the group Flatt and Scruggs — Nashville musicians regarded its sound as clunky and archaic.
Mr. Auldridge’s work in bluegrass helped change that perception as he borrowed ideas from other musical idioms, including blues, jazz and rock, and helped design and pioneer a model of the instrument with eight strings instead of the usual six.
“He phrased differently,” Jerry Douglas, a Dobro player with Alison Krauss & Union Station, said of Mr. Auldridge in a 2011 Washington Post interview. “He was the first guy to use the Dobro in a more modern way, to phrase it more like a saxophone or some other instrument.”
In 1971, Mr. Auldridge formed the Seldom Scene with banjoist Ben Eldridge, guitarist John Starling and two former members of the Country Gentlemen, mandolin player John Duffey and bassist Tom Gray.
The name Seldom Scene was an inside joke, reflecting the fact that all the members were working day jobs. Mr. Auldridge was a graphic artist for the old Washington Star newspaper.
“We initially had three restrictions on what we would do with the Seldom Scene,” recalled Gray, the bass player. “We would only play one night a week, festivals on the weekends and would only record when we were ready. We would not tour, we would not have a band vehicle. It worked well for those of us who had to keep our day jobs.”
With a style often described as “newgrass,” the group broadened the standard bluegrass repertoire with selections from contemporary folk singer-songwriters Bob Dylan and Steve Goodman, rockers such as Eric Clapton and the group’s songwriter, Starling.
“We liked James Taylor as much as we liked Ralph Stanley,” Mr. Auldridge once said. “And we attracted an audience of like-minded people. We were contemporary and urban. We weren’t singing about mother and log cabins because that’s not where we came from.”
The group first held a Tuesday night residence at the Red Fox Inn, a rowdy neighborhood bar in Bethesda. As their following increased, they started work at the Birchmere in Alexandria, a restaurant with a sound system and posted signs that discouraged talking during performances.
