Jerry Reed

Jerry Reed Brought Country Music to a Wider Audience

His Death at Age 71 Is Another Major Loss for Country Music

September 2, 2008; Written by Calvin Gilbert

Jerry Reed

Jerry Reed starred with Burt Reynolds in several blockbuster movies, recorded three No. 1 country singles, wrote one of Elvis Presley's biggest hits and developed a fingerstyle guitar technique that other musicians are still analyzing to this day. When he died Monday (Sept. 1) at age 71, the entertainment world lost a genuine original who helped take country music and the country lifestyle to a larger mainstream audience.

Born Jerry Reed Hubbard on March 20, 1937, in Atlanta, he began playing guitar at age 9 and was just a teenager when he began performing in the Atlanta area on shows featuring Ernest Tubb, Faron Young and others. At age 17, Capitol Records producer Ken Nelson saw him perform and signed him to a recording contract. Although his early records were not successful, he also became a staff songwriter for Atlanta music publisher Bill Lowery. Reed's "Crazy Legs" was recorded by rock pioneer Gene Vincent in 1958. Brenda Lee scored a Top 10 pop hit with Reed's "That's All You Gotta Do."

Following a two-year stint in the military, Reed moved to Nashville in 1962 and began work as a session musician while writing songs such as Porter Wagoner's "Misery Loves Company," a No. 1 single in 1962. In 1964, he joined RCA Nashville's artist roster at the urging of label executive Chet Atkins, one of Reed's biggest supporters.

In 1967, Reed landed his first single on Billboard's country chart. Although the track, "Guitar Man," peaked at a dismal No. 53, the song got the attention of Presley, who recorded the song and wanted Reed to recreate the funky guitar riff he used on his original version.

In a 2005 interview with CMT.com, Reed said he didn't recall being nervous when he showed up for Presley's "Guitar Man" session in Nashville.

"I'd have been nervous if I had to do something I didn't know how to do," Reed said. "Elvis had heard my album cut, and he wanted it to sound like that. His producer was an old friend of mine from Atlanta, Felton Jarvis, who said, 'Well, you're gonna have to get Reed in here to play on it then. He's a fingerpicker, and these guys don't have any idea what he's doing because he does all this weird stuff anyway. He tunes them strings weird.' So I got in there and I turned that E-string down and that B-string up and hit that intro. I wasn't worried about playing that."

At the same session, steel guitarist Pete Drake urged him to pitch another song to Presley.

"Pete and I knew each other in Atlanta, when I was working at a cotton mill and he was driving a Merita bread truck," Reed noted. "He said, 'Have you got anything else?' I said, 'No, man. Listen, this is enough for me, believe me.' Then Elvis said, 'Yeah, have you got any other songs?' I said, 'Well ... uh ... yeah.'"