Maestro Jerry Reed

Jerry Reed playing an astonishing guitar medley (try to pick out the songs!) on The Porter Wagoner Show. Reed was one of the greatest guitar players who ever lived.

I love the stories of him being called in from the swamp where he was cat-fishing to play on a couple of Elvis tracks in 1969, I think it was. “Big Boss Man.” “Monkey Business.” “U.S. Male.” Reed was M.I.A., literally out in the swamp, but somehow someone got word to him and he rushed to the studio from the swamp, appearing like some Alabama Wild Man. He had never met Elvis in person. He played it cool. You listen to the tracks of those sessions, as they work songs out, nearing them to completion, and you can hear the rapport between Reed and Elvis. It’s Jerry Reed running that session. Not Elvis or the producer. Ultimately, it was Elvis’ talent in charge, his intuitive sense of the moment (Reed discusses one such instance here. That post also has clips of all the Elvis songs Reed played guitar on. An unmistakable sound.) When the session ended, a hard day’s work done, Jerry Reed said, the instant Elvis left the room, “He is more beautiful than any woman I have ever seen.” He had been holding that back for the entire session.

There’s so much Jerry Reed stuff out there, but I tripped over this one and fell in love. What a hot pairing. Jerry Reed’s song “She Got the Goldmine. I Got the Shaft” (one of my favorite song titles) is a litany of complaints about how much the dude has to pay in alimony. Dolly Parton introduces him to the stage, Reed takes over, and then she joins him, to tell her side of the story.

Pure pleasure watching these two perform together.

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4 Responses to Maestro Jerry Reed

  1. Myrtle says:

    Ha, was just listening to him last night. My favourite is House of the Rising Sun. He often lends this chipper edge to songs he was playing, like his version of Shanendoah. Which makes it rather weird to me, lol. My aural idea of that song is mournful, and I couldn’t quite get past it (but bless him for doing it in the way it spoke to him). But I really like it in House of the Rising Sun. It just makes it sound all the more irretrievably dissipated.

  2. Carolyn Clarke says:

    Great singer and pretty good actor. Smokey and The Bear, of course, but also Bat21 and a great episode in a little known series called Evening Shade.

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