A man that touched my life, in many ways, passed away yesterday - Jerry Reed. He was 71 and died from complications with emphysema.
I first met Jerry when I was about five or six years old in Baton Rouge. You see, my Dad was a HUGE Jerry Reed fan and we were always listening to his albums when I was a kid, so I really knew his music. Dad also did some concert promoting on the side and would bring a few of his heroes into town for shows every once in a while. And, this led to me getting to meet Jerry for the first time. He and Dad kept up over the years off and on and I was able to meet him again a few times more. More on that in a sec.
Most people don’t have any idea how influential a guitar player Jerry was. Ask any guitar player in Nashville and he’ll be on their top 3 list. He built a style of his own based on the finger picking techniques of Merle Travis and Chet Atkins combined with banjo techniques from Earl Scruggs. He was also a great songwriter with numerous hits for both himself and others. It’s not too shabby of a career when Elvis records two of your songs!
Then we get to his movie career - where most people knew Jerry. His breakthrough role came opposite of Burt Reynolds in “Gator”. He was great in that movie - catch it if you haven’t seen it. And from there the world came to know “The Snowman” in “Smokey and the Bandit” for which he won a People’s Choice Award for his role. He made several movies over the years after and ended up in Adam Sandler’s “Waterboy” in the mid-90’s and was great opposite of Fonzie.
On a personal note I got to spend a little bit of time with Jerry when the last album that he and Chet Atkins came out called “Sneakin’ Around.” My Dad and I went to see him in Iowa at a show and ended up having dinner with he and his wife, Prissy, after the show. But it was on the bus that afternoon that I was fortunate to be part of something that Jerry didn’t do that often. He handed me his famous Baldwin guitar and asked me to play him something. I can’t remember what I played, but he corrected me on a few things and then gave me a lesson and some pointers. His wife later told me that she had never seen him give a guitar lesson before. So, I was pretty excited to learn from a master.
I got to tend his guitar a few more times, once at a show for the Chet Atkins Appreciation Society in Nashville. I even wrote an instrumental on that guitar - something I still play today.
I still listen to his music and wish that all of his catalog would resurface. You can find a few albums here and there. My favorite was a live album he recorded here in Nashville at the Exit/In. There’s a song on there called “I’m You Guitar” that is a masterpiece and then leads into a killer version of “Guitar Man.”
My hope is that he’ll one day make it into the Country Music Hall of Fame where he belongs. The things he’s done on stage, on screen, in the studio and in the writing room all add up to an amazing career as an entertainer. I remember seeing something a few years back that called him “The Entertainer” - very fitting.
Here’s the link to his obituary at Tennessean.com: Musician, actor Jerry Reed dies at 71
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