John Hughy Steel Guitar legend
busgal
known for his work behind Conway Twitty and Vince Gill but also did a
lot of session work.
tr...@iwvisp.com
IIRC, Hughy played steel with Conway from "Next in Line," Conway's
second of 55 #1 hits, until Conway's death in 1993 then backed up Gill
for about 10 years. He was the best and a very nice guy.
Ray Arthur
tr...@iwvisp.com
I was off on some dates. Here's a bio...
John Hughey Bio
I was born: John Robert Hughey
December 27, 1933
Elaine, Arkansas
When I was 9 years old, my family moved to Horn Lake, Mississippi. Our
first year there I got my first guitar for Christmas. It was a Gene
Autry flat-top from Sears. A friend of ours that lived down the road
from us played a little rhythm. He showed me a few chords.
To make a long story kinda short,we moved back to Helena, Arkansas
when I was 12 years old. I had passed to the 7th grade in school. When
school started back, there was a boy in my class named Harold Jenkins.
We became real close friends but not close enough to know that he sang
and played a little guitar.
There was a band that played on KFFA, a local radio station. They were
called "The Arkansas Cotton Choppers," and they played every Thursday
night. One night we were listening to them, and I heard them announce
Harold Jenkins' name, and he sang a song. I jumped up and hollered to
my parents, "I know that guy; he's in my room at school!!!"
So the next day at school, I told him that I didn't know that he sang
and played and that I had heard him on the radio. So our friendship
got tighter. We started getting together at each other's house and
pickin' and singin'. I made a rack from a coat hanger to put around my
neck to hold a harmonica, and I started doin' some intros and
turnarounds to some of the songs we were doin'.
In the meantime, there was a syndicated radio show on our local
station every afternoon about 4 o'clock. I used to hear it everyday
when I got home from school. It was the Eddy Arnold "Purina Chow
Show." "Little" Roy Wiggins was playing steel. I didn't know that it
was a steel; I just knew that I liked the sound of whatever it was I
was hearing. Time rocked on, and one thursday night my Daddy took me
to the radio station to watch the Arkansas Cotton Choppers play and
sing. To my amazement, there was a little guy sittin' over in the
corner with this thing layin' on his lap.
When they started to play, I knew instantly that it was the same thing
that I was hearing on the Eddy Arnold show. When we left the station,
I told my Dad that was what I wanted. He said,"No, Son; you don't want
one of those things." I kept telling him that I wanted a guitar like
the one that guy at the station was playing.
During this time I put a pencil under the strings up by the nut on my
old Gene Autry guitar and used a glass doorknob for a bar. I tuned it
up to "E", and here I went, trying to play like "Little" Roy. After
about a year of begging, my Dad finally went to Montgomery Ward and
ordered me a little "Sherwood Deluxe" lap steel and amp. $85.00 for
both of them.
There are a lot of details and things that went on during this time
period, but it would take forever to write about them, so I'm going to
save them for my book.
Harold Jenkins and I got our own little radio show on KFFA and called
ourselves the "Phillips County Ramblers." We had a couple of our
friends playing with us, Wesley Pickett and James Henry. We continued
to play at school and church until we graduated from high school.
There was a band in Memphis, Tennessee called "Slim Rhodes And The
Mother's Best Mountaineers." Their steel player "Rocky Caple" had
gotten called into the Army in 1953. Harold and I always watched their
TV show every week. After "Rocky" left for the Army, "Slim" started
advertising on TV for a steel player. Harold started in on me trying
to get me to go and audition for the job, and I kept saying, "I'm not
good enough to play with those guys." After about 2 months he talked
me into it. Harold called Slim and made an appointment to go up and do
an audition. Harold carried me to Memphis, and I played a few
instrumentals and Harold sang a couple of songs.
That was on a Monday night, and the following Thusday they called and
told me to pack my suitcase and guitar and meet them at some little
town in Mississippi. I forgot the name of the town. That was March the
12th in 1953.
I travelled all over the mid-south and played every schoolhouse and
grocery store opening in the area. After a while I left Slim and
started playing nightclubs. I got tired of that and called Slim and
asked for my job back. He said O.K. so I went back to work for him. I
would get tired of that and quit again. I went back and forth between
the two for a long time.
During this time, Harold had gone into the Army. While he was in the
Army, Elvis made a big "Splash" and got real hot on the "rock & roll"
scene. When Harold got out of the Army, he decided that he could sing
"rock and roll", so that's what he did. While he was singing rock, he
acquired the name "Conway Twitty."
In 1964 Conway decided that he wanted to go back to singing country,
which he did, but he also wanted to keep the name "Conway Twitty."
After about 4 years he and his band were playing at his club at Moon
Lake, Mississippi. He called me and asked if I would like to come down
and sit in with them. Well, I did, and the following Thursday he
called and asked if I would go out with them that weekend. Well, I
did, and it lasted 20 years and 3 &1/2 months.
I left Conway in 1988 and stayed off the road for about 1 year, and
then I went to work for Loretta Lynn. While I was with Loretta, Vince
Gill's song "When I Call Your Name" started getting hot. Vince decided
to put a band together and offered me a job. I took it, and the rest
is history as far as my career is concerned. The 12 years with Vince
were the "GREATEST."
busgal
John Hughey, who made his musical reputation as a steel guitar player
for Conway Twitty and Vince Gill, died Sunday evening (Nov. 18) in
Nashville. The native of Elaine, Ark., was 73. According to details
posted on his website, Hughey got his first guitar-a Gene Autry model
from Sears-when he was nine. In the seventh grade, he became friends
with classmate Harold Jenkins, who would later adopt the name Conway
Twitty. Inspired by the sounds of Little Roy Wiggins, Eddy Arnold's
steel player, Hughey persuaded his father to buy him a lap steel.
While still in high school, he and Jenkins formed the Phillips County
Ramblers and briefly starred in their own radio show on a small local
station. In 1953, Hughey joined Slim Rhodes & The Mother's Best
Mountaineers out of Memphis. For the next several years, Hughey
alternated between playing in Rhodes' band and performing in
nightclubs. In 1968, Jenkins-by then appearing as Conway Twitty and
aspiring to switch from fledgling rock star to country crooner-drafted
Hughey into his band. Hughey toured and recorded with Twitty for the
next 20 years. After that, he worked with Loretta Lynn for nearly two
years before joining Gill's band, where he remained for 12 seasons. He
was inducted into the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame in 1996. In recent
years, he was a member of the Time Jumpers, an ad hoc band of studio
and touring musicians that plays each Monday night at Nashville's
Station Inn bluegrass club. An active session musician, Hughey's work
was also featured in movies, television series and specials,
commercials and music videos. Details of his funeral have not been
announced.
Hoodude
Please insert the correct surname for a decedent in the subject line of
follow-up messages when the initial mention of that person contains an
incorrect spelling.
I searched message headers for "Hughey", found none, and subsequently
posted an obit article (associated with the brief header data pasted
immediately below) which is fairly redundant due to the amount of
information y'all posted regarding Mr. "Hughey".
Newsgroups: alt.obituaries
Subject: John Hughey, 73, steel guitar player toured with Conway Twitty,
recorded with Elvis and many others
Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2007 00:45:38 -0600
Message-ID: <47428292...@newnorth.net>
Expounding a bit further:
Quite often I post additional information or obit articles regarding
decedents into this newsgroup as follow-up messages rather than as new
stand-alone initial messages.
I believe that posting content as a follow-up is beneficial for all
newsgroup participants because it provides a thread of related content
which is easy to follow, or, allows toggling among individual posts
pertaining to one decedent or topic.
Certain folks who participate in this newsgroup almost exclusively post
new stand-alone messages regarding an already established topic or obit
announcement rather than post via follow-up. Doing that only fragments
the cumulative data pertaining to a decedent or topic and makes
interaction within this newsgroup more time consuming for everyone.
I admit I have operated here in the manner of the preceding paragraph
but prefer to add to an established topic by posting in follow-up for
the benefit of all participants as stated in the paragraph preceding the
previous one.
tr...@iwvisp.com said the following:
> On Nov 18, 8:57 pm, "t...@iwvisp.com" <t...@iwvisp.com> wrote:
>> On Nov 18, 7:30 pm, busgal <busga...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> IIRC, Hughy played steel with Conway from "Next in Line," Conway's
>> second of 55 #1 hits, until Conway's death in 1993 then backed up Gill
>> for about 10 years. He was the best and a very nice guy.
>>
>> Ray Arthur
>
> I was off on some dates. Here's a bio...
>
> John Hughey Bio
> I was born: John Robert Hughey
> December 27, 1933
> Elaine, Arkansas
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