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Fiddle player Gordon Terry, who recorded with Country Music
Hall of Famers Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Ray Price, Bill
Monroe and Lefty Frizzell, died one year ago at his daughter’s
home in Spring Hill, where he had been in hospice care. He was
74, and had long battled emphysema.
One
of country music’s most prominent instrumentalists, the
Decatur, Ala., native’s talents were not limited to fiddling.
He was an actor in Western movies and on the television show
Sky King, an entertainer whose musical virtuosity and
movie-star looks charmed audiences from Las Vegas to the Grand
Ole Opry and an artist who made records for labels including
Columbia, Cadence, Liberty and RCA/Victor.
During one Opry appearance in the 1950s, Ernest Tubb
introduced Terry as “a mighty handsome young fellow that I’m
sure all you folks are going to enjoy.” The young man appeared
onstage with a “G.T.” belt buckle and a custom-made outfit,
sawing away on the fiddle and singing the comedy number
Johnson’s Ole Grey Mule. As he fiddled, a cooing June Carter
rolled his pants legs up to his knees. “I wanted you to show
your good-looking legs,” she said. That performance was
typical for Mr. Terry, who possessed impressive musical
credentials and an affable stage presence.
He
was serious enough about his craft to win jobs in the bands of
Cash, Haggard, Monroe (he played a standout fiddle part on
Monroe’s classic holiday cut Christmas Time’s A-Comin’) and
Faron Young.
Mr.
Terry’s first professional job came at age 20. He was working
at an Alabama chicken-processing plant when Bill Monroe asked
him to join the Blue Grass Boys. Mr. Terry dropped what he was
doing, quit the job, walked over to his wife, who also worked
at the plant, and hollered, “Honey, I just quit, and you’re
quitting, too. We’re going to Nashville!”
Mr.
Terry lived mainly in Los Angeles from 1958 through 1969,
though he and his family lived in Nashville for stretches
during that period. For three years, he operated the Terrytown
amusement complex in Loretto, Tenn.
Hoedown! The Fantastic Fiddles of Felix Slatkin blended Mr.
Terry’s old-time fiddling with a 48-piece orchestra,
pre-dating by decades the work of genre-bending Grammy-winning
fiddler Mark O’Connor.
Mr. Terry also made contributions long after
his recording career ended. He was a president of the Reunion
of Professional Entertainers (R.O.P.E.).
Peter Cooper
The Tennessean
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