While it takes some digging, there are published sources attesting that his 1937 birth certificate says James Dee Crowe, but for more than a half-century friends and fans of the iconic bluegrass banjo master have called him simply J. D.

And, in fact, it's an added measure of his status as one of the pioneers of the music that, despite the fact that there are others in the business with that name, if you just say "Crowe," everyone knows who you mean.

Icon though he is, Crowe has always been something of an iconoclast who does things his own way at his own pace, including not buying into the "album a year" way of doing business. So when word gets around that a new Crowe album - his first in seven years - is about to hit the streets, the buzz builds pretty quickly.

"Lefty's Old Guitar" continues his long association with Boston-area based Rounder Records, and as he relaxes at home in his native Lexington, Ky., Crowe is pleased with the reaction thus far.

"I hope the folks will like it. I've had a lot of good comments on it. Everybody who's heard it has raved about it. Of course, it's been a while since I've had one, and I think that might be part of the reason. But I think it's a good project, and I'm tickled at the job that the guys did on it. They did great on it, and they really like it, so hopefully (folks will) buy the CD and come out to see us."

By "the guys," of course, Crowe is referring to the current lineup of his legendary band of more than 30 years, the New South. Starting with an original cast that included Ricky Skaggs, Tony Rice, Jerry Douglas and Bobby Sloan, Crowe has always attracted top-rank pickers, and the current crew is no exception.

Handling the lead and tenor vocal duties respectively are Ricky Wasson and Dwight McCall, both of whom were on hand for 1999's "Come On Down To My World" and, with the exception of a year or so, have been with Crowe since.

"I've known Ricky since he was a kid. I know he...followed us real strong on the old New South stuff...Then Dwight McCall - whose dad was Jim McCall, a great singer in his own right - he had been living in Cincinnati for a while, and I didn't even know that. He had a little band up there, and people used to ask me, ‘You heard this guy in Cincinnati? Man, he's Jim McCall's son. He's a good singer.' Of course, I hadn't heard him, you know, but finally I got to hear him, and I wound up getting a CD, he was part of a band called Union Springs. I heard the CD and I said, ‘Man, (he) sounds an awful lot like his dad used to sound.' And, of course, he knew most of my material, but he worked with the Country Gentlemen for about a year. At that time, I needed somebody to sing tenor. So, one thing led to another, and we got acquainted, and he started working with me."

New to the band, and the youngest member is bassist Harold Nixon. Crowe didn't have to look any farther than his own back yard to find him.

"He lives close, he lives about 20 miles from me, and I've known about Harold for quite a few years. People would come up and ask me, ‘Have you heard this young bass player? Man, he can flat play some bass'...But he's really a phenomenal bass player. (He's) only about 23, but he plays like he's 50. He seems like he's that good."

"Myself, I like a kind of ‘heavy' bass, always have, that kind of ‘heavy' bass in there, and he is one that can really do that. He reminds me of some of the old bass players like Junior Huskey and Bob Moore and those kind of guys that used to play, that played on all the hit records in country and bluegrass and all kinds of records, and he's that kind of a bass player."

Rounding out the quintet, and also new to the band since the last album is Ron Stewart, a favorite among bluegrass audiences from his lengthy stint as fiddler and banjo player in Lynn Morris' band, and Crowe is thrilled to have him.

"He's an excellent musician, period. Whatever you want him to play, he can play," he says, though he laughs when asked if any "dueling banjo" moments are in the works. "He plays fiddle. We sit around and jam a lot, you know, and stuff like that, and he's a great picker, but two banjos? Naw, that don't git it."

Stewart's fiddle moves into the spot held for several years by Dobro ace Phil Leadbetter, and while some band leaders hesitate to change the instrumental makeup, Crowe says it's good to change things up now and then.

"For one thing, after Jerry (Douglas) left...you kind of get spoiled because he's the best. And, of course, I like Dobro, and I loved Uncle Josh's playing (a reference to the late Josh Graves). But after you have one a while, and they leave, you kind of think, ‘Well, I've had Dobro for a while, I need to change ‘cause I like fiddle, too, I love fiddle very much. Actually, I like fiddle better than I like Dobro. Of course, Bobby Sloan who used to be in my group played bass and also doubled on the fiddle. So, I've always loved fiddle with the band. But I decided this time, I'd just try to find a good fiddle player."

The title song of the new disc refers, of course, to Lefty Frizzell, a musical hero from Crowe's teen years.

"I saw Lefty when I was like 12, 13 years old. I saw him when he was like, in his 20s and he had 4 or 5 top songs in the top 10. I saw him, at that time, in the early 50s."

By the late 1950s, Crowe had gotten his big break as a member of Jimmy Martin's Sunny Mountain Boys.

"When I was with Jimmy, we were at the Louisiana Hayride at the time, and we were working a gig out in Texas, and Lefty came to the show. And, of course, Jimmy knew him from being on the Opry. Jimmy was with (Bill) Monroe for a while, you know, and Jimmy knew Lefty and all those guys, and so...we went out at a restaurant or something. I remember sitting and talking, and that was before he made his comeback in the ‘60s. This was like ‘58, ‘59 when this happened. And then in ‘60, in this comeback he did ‘Saginaw, Michigan' and some other stuff. Lefty's always been one of my favorite singers."

Another song on the album that hearkens back to that "Golden Era" of country music is "Bluebonnet Lane," written by Cindy Walker, one of the great writers of the ‘50s and ‘60s in Nashville.

"I heard Jim and Jesse do that years ago. They recorded that, I mean, I guess back in the ‘60s, and I've always liked that song. And it lends itself to do just a straight lead, or you can do a high lead on it, and on this with Dwight singing tenor I thought it would be a good solo for him to sing that particular song."

The pairing of McCall and Wasson, possibly the strongest in the New South's long run, hits its stride on McCall's "I Only Wish You Knew," nearly reaching the kind of "brother duet" sound of the Louvins and the aforementioned Jim and Jesse. Crowe says that wasn't intentional. It's just how they do it.

"It's just kind of natural, Whatever we do, you know, it just kind of works out to sound that way. With Dwight doing the high lead, and then he went ahead and did the tenor, and Ricky did the low tenor on it. We went ahead and did that, because (Dwight) wrote the song, and he had the feel for it."

Looking back on his years with the mercurial Martin, Crowe laments that more than a few of today's talents haven't learned the same lessons he did about professionalism.

"I worked with Jimmy for five years, and I learned a lot from Jimmy. Jimmy knew the way to entertain, the way to act on stage."

He pauses and laughs in acknowledgment of Martin's occasional tempestuousness and continues, "Of course, sometimes in his later years he got a little away from it. But I mean, basically, back in the days I was with him, he was very serious about the music, and he didn't pull those antics that he did in later years."

"But I learned a lot from him, you know - stage presence, and above all, do the music as good as you can, and keep it solid, and look like you know what you're doing. Be professional about it. Don't stand on the stage and tune all the time and all that stuff. I notice a lot of them do that, and it just drives me up the wall. He always said, ‘Get the instrument to where it stays in tune,' and he said a lot of it is a habit, and it is. A lot of it is a habit, and it's easy to fall into that."

Bluegrass fans have long talked about the "Jimmy Martin sound," a melding of banjo and mandolin timing and rhythm that, when combined with Martin's signature "sock" rhythm guitar playing produced music with an irresistible feel and drive. Crowe takes more than a little pride at pointing out that he was in on the ground floor.

"Myself and Paul Williams (mandolin), when we were with Jimmy, we rehearsed. We started that style. Jimmy knew what he wanted, and we just happened to be with him, so we learned what he wanted to hear, and so that was what his favorite thing was, that trio right there, and he wanted everybody to sound like that that came with him. That was his big thing, and, of course, you can't get people to do that. You have to let them sound a little bit like their own selves. But his thing was he wanted it to sound as close to that sound as you could get. And nobody else really got that sound that Paul and I did with him because we were the originators. We started with him with that stuff. We learned it with him, see."

He quickly notes, though - as New South fans of 30 years and counting are well aware - he's moved on and will in all likelihood continue doing things his own way as he forges into his 70s.

"I'm not doing Jimmy Martin now. I'm doing my own thing. It's the material I'm doing, that's what you've got to work with."