Buddy Emmons, an innovative pedal steel guitarist who toured with the Everly Brothers, Ray Price and Ernest Tubb and was one of the first to bring the instrument into the jazz and rock genres, died July 21 at his home in Hermitage, Tenn. He was 78.
A family friend, Ernie Renn, issued a statement to the Nashville Musicians Association confirming the death. He said the cause was a heart attack.
Emmons — commonly known in Nashville as “the Big E” — was known for fast and flashy string work. Dazzling instrumentals such as “Raising the Dickens” (1955) (credited to the Country Boys) and “Four Wheel Drive” (1957) influenced a generation of pickers.
However, it was the lyricism that he brought to slow songs that made him a popular accompanist. He backed Faron Young on “Sweet Dreams” (1955), Ray Price on the bluesy “Night Life” (1963) and folk singer Judy Collins on “Someday Soon” (1969).
He also graced recordings by Ray Charles, Bob Dylan, Arlo Guthrie, Linda Ronstadt, Rosemary Clooney and the Henry Mancini Orchestra.
With the album “Steel Guitar Jazz” (1963), recorded in New York with pianist Bobby Scott and reed player Jerome Richardson, Emmons interpreted standards by modern jazzmen such as Horace Silver and Sonny Rollins.
“Country musicians loved jazz’s easy swing, but their concept of harmony often needed an update,” NPR jazz critic Kevin Whitehead said in a 2012 review of the reissued album. “When Buddy Emmons plays something like a hip modern jazz lick, he can lean on it like a joke — as if it’s hard to take seriously. It’s an odd case of the ironic outsider clashing with earnest New Yorkers. He was ready for them.”
Emmons continued his excursions into jazzier terrain in the 1970s and 1980s with the band Redneck Jazz, a collaboration with Washington, D.C., guitarist Danny Gatton, and big-band recordings with vocalist Ray Pennington and the Swing Shift Band.
The pedal steel guitar had evolved from the Hawaiian lap steel guitar. With both types, the guitarist plays the melody by sliding a bar over the strings while picking with his other hand.
However, the pedal steel is also equipped with knee levers and foot pedals that loosen and tighten the strings to further alter the pitch. The devices create the crying steel sound most associated with country music. Emmons not only mastered this teary quality, but also used the technique to execute dazzling runs and complex jazz chord changes.
Throughout his career, Emmons created new designs for the instrument, including his signature model, the Emmons Guitar in 1963, which he sold through his Emmons Guitar Company.
“Just about every week I’d come up with some kind of change,” he told the magazine Country Music in 1978. “I’d take a metal neck off and replace it with wood to see if that would help the tone. I had a neck without a fret board; that was to keep other people from playing it. I had the only guitar in town with an ashtray on it.”
Emmons Guitar was his second company. Earlier, he had co-founded Sho-Bud Guitars with fellow steel guitarist Shot Jackson in 1956.
