Mike Auldridge, born on December 30, 1938, in Washington, D.C., was an American dobro player. Raised in Kensington, Maryland, he started playing guitar at age 13, inspired by his uncle Ellsworth T. Cozzens and influenced by Josh Graves, who sold him his first dobro. He graduated from the University of Maryland in 1967 and worked as a graphic artist for a commercial art firm in Bethesda, Maryland, and for the Washington Star-News. After the newspaper folded in 1981, he focused on music full-time. Auldridge was a founding member of the bluegrass group The Seldom Scene, with which he recorded albums that include Act I (1972) and Old Train (1973). He also performed with bands such as The Country Gentlemen, Emerson and Waldron, and Chesapeake, and collaborated on the album Tony Rice – Plays And Sings Bluegrass (1993). He was inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame twice: first in 2014 as a member of The Seldom Scene, and posthumously in 2019 as a solo artist. He died on December 29, 2012, in Silver Spring, Maryland, after battling prostate cancer.
