Archive for May 14th, 2015

Obit watch: May 14, 2015.

Thursday, May 14th, 2015

This seems to have been horribly buried in the Statesman, but noted Texas fiddler Johnny Gimble passed away over the weekend.

In the 1950s, he played with Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, the most popular Western swing band of the day, sometimes adding a fifth string to his fiddle to achieve a lower, rounder and louder sound. (Wills also played fiddle.) For a time he was part of the house band at a club Wills had opened in Dallas. He was featured on recordings by Marty Robbins, Lefty Frizzell and Ray Price, among others, and he was the host of a musical television show in Waco, Tex., “Johnny Gimble and the Homefolks” (for which he hired Willie Nelson to play bass in the band).

Then, in the late 1960s, he moved to Nashville, where he became one of country music’s most sought-after session players. He recorded with Chet Atkins, Merle Haggard, Conway Twitty and Dolly Parton, among others, and was a member of the Million Dollar Band, an all-star ensemble including Atkins, Roy Clark and Floyd Cramer that was featured on the television show “Hee Haw.”

I can’t embed it, but here’s a great version of “Take Me Back To Tulsa” with George Jones and Mr. Gimble.

And I can embed this: a profile of Mr. Gimble produced by a Waco TV station.