Throughout his over-30-year career, Keith Urban has been known more as a songwriter than a guitarist. Here, he shares about his new release, High, and sheds light on all that went into the path that led him to becoming one of today’s most celebrated country artists.
There are superstars of country and rock, chart-toppers, and guitar heroes. Then there’s Keith Urban. His two dozen No. 1 singles and boatloads of awards may not eclipse George Strait or Garth Brooks, but he’s steadily transcending the notion of what it means to be a country star.
He’s in the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He’s won 13 Country Music Association Awards, nine CMT video awards, eight ARIA (Australian Recording Industry Association) Awards, four American Music Awards, and racked up BMI Country Awards for 25 different singles.
He’s been a judge on American Idol and The Voice. In conjunction with Yamaha, he has his own brand of affordably priced Urban guitars and amps, and he has posted beginner guitar lessons on YouTube. His 2014 Academy of Country Music Award-winning video for “Highways Don’t Care” featured Tim McGraw and Keith’s former opening act, Taylor Swift. Add his marriage to fellow Aussie, the actress Nicole Kidman, and he’s seen enough red carpet to cover a football field.
Significantly, his four Grammys were all for Country Male Vocal Performance. A constant refrain among newcomers is, “and he’s a really good guitar player,” as if by surprise or an afterthought. Especially onstage, his chops are in full force. There are country elements, to be sure, but rock, blues, and pop influences like Mark Knopfler are front and center.
Unafraid to push the envelope, 2020’s The Speed of Now Part 1 mixed drum machines, processed vocals, and a duet with Pink with his “ganjo”—an instrument constructed of a 6-string guitar neck on a banjo body—and even a didgeridoo. It, too, shot to No. 1 on the Billboard Country chart and climbed to No. 7 on the pop chart.
His new release, High, is more down-to-earth, but is not without a few wrinkles. He employs an EBow on “Messed Up As Me” and, on “Wildfire,” makes use of a sequencerreminiscent of ZZ Top’s “Legs.” Background vocals in “Straight Lines” imitate a horn section, and this time out he duets on “Go Home W U” with rising country star Lainey Wilson. The video for “Heart Like a Hometown” is full of home movies and family photos of a young Urban dwarfed by even a 3/4-size Suzuki nylon-string.
Born Keith Urbahn (his surname’s original spelling) in New Zealand, his family moved to Queensland, Australia, when he was 2. He took up guitar at 6, two years after receiving his beloved ukulele. He released his self-titled debut album in 1991 for the Australian-only market, and moved to Nashville two years later. It wasn’t until ’97 that he put out a group effort, fronting the Ranch, and another self-titled album marked his American debut as a leader, in ’99. It eventually went platinum—a pattern that’s become almost routine.
The 57-year-old’s celebrity and wealth were hard-earned and certainly a far cry from his humble beginnings. “Australia is a very working-class country, certainly when I was growing up, and I definitely come from working-class parents,” he details. “My dad loved all the American country artists, like Johnny Cash, Haggard, Waylon. He didn’t play professionally, but before he got married he played drums in a band, and my grandfather and uncles all played instruments.
One of Urban’s biggest influences as a young guitar player was Mark Knopfler, but he was also mesmerized by lesser-known session musicians such as Albert Lee, Ian Bairnson, Reggie Young, and Ray Flacke. Here, he’s playing a 1950 Broadcaster once owned by Waylon Jennings that was a gift from Nicole Kidman, his wife.
“For me, it was a mix of that and Top 40 radio, which at the time was much more diverse than it is now. You would just hear way more genres, and Australia itself had its own, what they call Aussie pub rock—very blue-collar, hard-driving music for the testosterone-fueled teenager. Grimy, sweaty, kind of raw themes.”
A memorable event happened when he was 7. “My dad got tickets for the whole family to see Johnny Cash. He even bought us little Western shirts and bolo ties. It was amazing.”
But the ukulele he was gifted a few years earlier, at the age of 4, became a constant companion. “I think to some degree it was my version of the stuffed animal, something that was mine, and I felt safe with it. My dad said I would strum it in time to all the songs on the radio, and he told my mom, ‘He’s got rhythm. I wonder what a good age is for him to learn chords.’ My mom and dad ran a little corner store, and a lady named Sue McCarthy asked if she could put an ad in the window offering guitar lessons. They said, ‘If you teach our kid for free, we’ll put your ad in the window.’”
Yet, guitar didn’t come without problems. “With the guitar, my fingers hurt like hell,” he laughs, “and I started conveniently leaving the house whenever the guitar teacher would show up. Typical kid. I don’t wanna learn, I just wanna be able to do it. It didn’t feel like any fun. My dad called me in and went, ‘What the hell? The teacher comes here for lessons. What’s the problem?’ I said I didn’t want to do it anymore. He just said, ‘Okay, then don’t do it.’ Kind of reverse psychology, right? So I just stayed with it and persevered. Once I learned a few chords, it was the same feeling when any of us learn how to be moving on a bike with two wheels and nobody holding us up. That’s what those first chords felt like in my hands.”
Keith Urban's Gear
Urban has 13 Country Music Association Awards, nine CMT video awards, eight ARIA Awards, and four Grammys to his name—the last of which are all for Best Country Male Vocal Performance.
Guitars
For touring:
- Maton Diesel Special
- Maton EBG808TE Tommy Emmanuel Signature
- 1957 Gibson Les Paul Junior, TV yellow
- 1959 Gibson ES-345 (with Varitone turned into a master volume)
- Fender 40th Anniversary Tele, “Clarence”
- Two first-generation Fender Eric Clapton Stratocasters (One is black with DiMarzio Area ’67 pickups, standard tuning. The other is pewter gray, loaded with Fralin “real ’54” pickups, tuned down a half-step.)
- John Bolin Telecaster (has a Babicz bridge with a single humbucker and a single volume control. Standard tuning.)
- PRS Paul’s Guitar (with two of their narrowfield humbuckers. Standard tuning.)
- Yamaha Keith Urban Acoustic Guitar (with EMG ACS soundhole pickups)
- Deering “ganjo”
Amps
- Mid-’60s black-panel Fender Showman (modified by Chris Miller, with oversized transformers to power 6550 tubes; 130 watts)
- 100-watt Dumble Overdrive Special (built with reverb included)
- Two Pacific Woodworks 1x12 ported cabinets (Both are loaded with EV BlackLabel Zakk Wylde signature speakers and can handle 300 watts each.)
Effects
- Two Boss SD-1W Waza Craft Super Overdrives with different settings
- Mr. Black SuperMoon Chrome
- FXengineering RAF Mirage Compressor
- Ibanez TS9 with Tamura Mod
- Boss BD-2 Blues Driver
- J. Rockett Audio .45 Caliber Overdrive
- Pro Co RAT 2
- Radial Engineering JX44 (for guitar distribution)
- Fractal Audio Axe-Fx XL+ (for acoustic guitars)
- Two Fractal Audio Axe-Fx III (one for electric guitar, one for bass)
- Bricasti Design Model 7 Stereo Reverb Processor
- RJM Effect Gizmo (for pedal loops)
(Note: All delays, reverb, chorus, etc. is done post amp. The signal is captured with microphones first then processed by Axe-Fx and other gear.)
- Shure Axient Digital Wireless Microphone System
Strings & Picks
- D’Addario NYXL (.011–.049; electric)
- D’Addario EJ16 (.012–.053; acoustics)
- D’Addario EJ16, for ganjo (.012–.053; much thicker than a typical banjo strings)
- D’Addario 1.0 mm signature picks
He vividly remembers the first song he was able to play after “corny songs like ‘Mama’s little baby loves shortnin’ bread.’” He recalls, “There was a song I loved by the Stylistics, ‘You Make Me Feel Brand New.’ My guitar teacher brought in the sheet music, so not only did I have the words, but above them were the chords. I strummed the first chord, and went, [sings E to Am] ‘My love,’ and then minor, ‘I'll never find the words, my,’ back to the original chord, ‘love.’ Even now, I get covered in chills thinking what it felt like to sing and put that chord sequence together.”
After the nylon-string Suzuki, he got his first electric at 9. “It was an Ibanez copy of a Telecaster Custom—the classic dark walnut with the mother-of-pearl pickguard. My first Fender was a Stratocaster. I wanted one so badly. I’d just discovered Mark Knopfler, and I only wanted a red Strat, because that’s what Knopfler had. And he had a red Strat because of Hank Marvin. All roads lead to Hank!”
He clarifies, “Remember a short-lived run of guitar that Fender did around 1980–’81, simply called ‘the Strat’? I got talked into buying one of those, and the thing weighed a ton. Ridiculously heavy. But I was just smitten when it arrived. ‘Sultans of Swing’ was the first thing I played on it. ‘Oh my god! I sound a bit like Mark.’”
“Messed Up As Me” has some licks reminiscent of Knopfler. “I think he influenced a huge amount of my fingerpicking and melodic choices. I devoured those records more than any other guitar player. ‘Tunnel of Love,’ ‘Love over Gold,’ ‘Telegraph Road,’ the first Dire Straits album, and Communiqué. I was spellbound by Mark’s touch, tone, and melodic choice every time.”
Other influences are more obscure. “There were lots of session guitar players whose solos I was loving, but had no clue who they were,” he explains. “A good example was Ian Bairnson in the Scottish band Pilot and the Alan Parsons Project. It was only in the last handful of years that I stumbled upon him and did a deep dive, and realized he played the solo on ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Kate Bush, ‘Eye in the Sky’ by Alan Parsons, ‘It’s Magic’ and ‘January’ by Pilot—all these songs that spoke to me growing up. I also feel like a lot of local-band guitar players are inspirations—they certainly were to me. They didn’t have a name, the band wasn’t famous, but when you’re 12 or 13, watching Barry Clough and guys in cover bands, it’s, ‘Man, I wish I could play like that.’”
On High, Urban keeps things song-oriented, playing short and economical solos.
In terms of country guitarists, he nods, “Again, a lot of session players whose names I didn’t know, like Reggie Young. The first names I think would be Albert Lee and Ray Flacke, whose chicken pickin’ stuff on the Ricky Skaggs records became a big influence. ‘How is he doing that?’”
Flacke played a role in a humorous juxtaposition. “I camped out to see Iron Maiden,” Urban recounts. “They’d just put out Number of the Beast, and I was a big fan. I was 15, so my hormones were raging. I’d been playing country since I was 6, 7, 8 years old. But this new heavy metal thing is totally speaking to me. So I joined a heavy metal band called Fractured Mirror, just as their guitar player. At the same time, I also discovered Ricky Skaggs and Highways and Heartaches. What is this chicken pickin’ thing? One night I was in the metal band, doing a Judas Priest song or Saxon. They threw me a solo, and through my red Strat, plugged into a Marshall stack that belonged to the lead singer, I shredded this high-distortion, chicken pickin’ solo. The lead singer looked at me like, ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ I got fired from the band.”
Although at 15 he “floated around different kinds of music and bands,” when he was 21 he saw John Mellencamp. “He’d just put out Lonesome Jubilee. I’d been in bands covering ‘Hurts So Good,' ‘Jack & Diane,’ and all the early shit. This record had fiddle and mandolin and acoustic guitars, wall of electrics, drums—the most amazing fusion of things. I saw that concert, and this epiphany happened so profoundly. I looked at the stage and thought, ‘Whoa! I get it. You take all your influences and make your own thing. That’s what John did. I’m not gonna think about genre; I’m gonna take all the things I love and find my way.’
“Of course, getting to Nashville with that recipe wasn’t going to fly in 1993,” he laughs. “Took me another seven-plus years to really start getting some traction in that town.”
Urban’s main amp today is a Dumble Overdrive Reverb, which used to belong to John Mayer. He also owns a bass amp that Alexander Dumble built for himself.
Photo by Jim Summaria
When it comes to “crossover” in country music, one thinks of Glen Campbell, Kenny Rogers, Garth Brooks, and Dolly Parton’s more commercial singles like “Two Doors Down.” Regarding the often polarizing subject and, indeed, what constitutes country music, it’s obvious that Urban has thought a lot—and probably been asked a lot—about the syndrome. The Speed of Now Part 1 blurs so many lines, it makes Shania Twain sound like Mother Maybelle Carter. Well, almost.
“I can’t speak for any other artists, but to me, it’s always organic,” he begins. “Anybody that’s ever seen me play live would notice that I cover a huge stylistic field of music, incorporating my influences, from country, Top 40, rock, pop, soft rock, bluegrass, real country. That’s how you get songs like ‘Kiss a Girl’—maybe more ’70s influence than anything else.”
“I think [Mark Knopfler] influenced a huge amount of my fingerpicking and melodic choices. I devoured those records more than any other guitar player.”
Citing ’50s producers Chet Atkins and Owen Bradley, who moved the genre from hillbilly to the more sophisticated countrypolitan, Keith argues, “In the history of country music, this is exactly the same as it has always been. Patsy Cline doing ‘Walking After Midnight’ or ‘Crazy’; it ain’t Bob Wills. It ain’t Hank Williams. It’s a new sound, drawing on pop elements. That’s the 1950s, and it has never changed. I’ve always seen country like a lung, that expands outwards because it embraces new sounds, new artists, new fusions, to find a bigger audience. Then it feels, ‘We’ve lost our way. Holy crap, I don’t even know who we are,’ and it shrinks back down again. Because a purist in the traditional sense comes along, whether it be Ricky Skaggs or Randy Travis. The only thing that I think has changed is there’s portals now for everything, which didn’t used to exist. There isn’t one central control area that would yell at everybody, ‘You’ve got to bring it back to the center.’ I don’t know that we have that center anymore.”
Stating his position regarding the current crop of talent, he reflects, “To someone who says, ‘That’s not country music,’ I always go, “‘It’s not your country music; it’s somebody else’s country music.’ I don’t believe anybody has a right to say something’s not anything. It’s been amazing watching this generation actually say, ‘Can we get back to a bit of purity? Can we get real guitars and real storytelling?’ So you’ve seen the explosion of Zach Bryan and Tyler Childers who are way purer than the previous generation of country music.”
Seen performing here in 2003, Urban is celebrated mostly for his songwriting, but is also an excellent guitarist.
Photo by Steve Trager/Frank White Photo Agency
As for the actual recording process, he notes, “This always shocks people, but ‘Chattahoochee’ by Alan Jackson is all drum machine. I write songs on acoustic guitar and drum machine, or drum machine and banjo. Of course, you go into the studio and replace that with a drummer. But my very first official single, in 1999, was ‘It’s a Love Thing,’ and it literally opens with a drum loop and an acoustic guitar riff. Then the drummer comes in. But the loop never goes away, and you hear it crystal clear. I haven’t changed much about that approach.”
On the road, Urban utilizes different electrics “almost always because of different pickups—single-coil, humbucker, P-90. And then one that’s tuned down a half-step for a few songs in half-keys. Tele, Strat, Les Paul, a couple of others for color. I’ve got a John Bolin guitar that I love—the feel of it. It’s a Tele design with just one PAF, one volume knob, no tone control. It’s very light, beautifully balanced—every string, every fret, all the way up the neck. It doesn’t have a lot of tonal character of its own, so it lets my fingers do the coloring. You can feel the fingerprints of Billy Gibbons on this guitar. It’s very Billy.”
“I looked at the stage and thought, ‘Whoa! I get it. You take all your influences and make your own thing. I’m gonna take all the things I love and find my way.’”
Addressing his role as the collector, “or acquirer,” as he says, some pieces have quite a history. “I haven’t gone out specifically thinking, ‘I’m missing this from the collection.’ I feel really lucky to have a couple of very special guitars. I got Waylon Jennings’ guitar in an auction. It was one he had all through the ’70s, wrapped in the leather and the whole thing. In the ’80s, he gave it to Reggie Young, who owned it for 25 years or so and eventually put it up for auction. My wife wanted to give it to me for my birthday. I was trying to bid on it, and she made sure that I couldn’t get registered! When it arrived, I discovered it’s a 1950 Broadcaster—which is insane. I had no idea. I just wanted it because I’m a massive Waylon fan, and I couldn’t bear the thought of that guitar disappearing overseas under somebody’s bed, when it should be played.
“I also have a 1951 Nocaster, which used to belong to Tom Keifer in Cinderella. It’s the best Telecaster I’ve ever played, hands down. It has the loudest, most ferocious pickup, and the wood is amazing.”
YouTube
Urban plays a Gibson SG here at the 2023 CMT Music Awards. Wait until the end to see him show off his shred abilities.
Other favorites include “a first-year Strat, ’54, that I love, and a ’58 goldtop. I also own a ’58 ’burst, but prefer the goldtop; it’s just a bit more spanky and lively. I feel abundantly blessed with the guitars I’ve been able to own and play. And I think every guitar should be played, literally. There’s no guitar that’s too precious to be played.”
Speaking of precious, there are also a few Dumble amps that elicit “oohs” and “aahs.” “Around 2008, John Mayer had a few of them, and he wanted to part with this particular Overdrive Special head. When he told me the price, I said, ‘That sounds ludicrous.’ He said, ‘How much is your most expensive guitar?’ It was three times the value of the amp. He said, ‘So that’s one guitar. What amp are you plugging all these expensive guitars into?’ I was like, ‘Sold. I guess when you look at it that way.’ It’s just glorious. It actually highlighted some limitations in some guitars I never noticed before.”
“It’s just glorious. It actually highlighted some limitations in some guitars I never noticed before.”
Keith also developed a relationship with the late Alexander Dumble. “We emailed back and forth, a lot of just life stuff and the beautifully eccentric stuff he was known for. His vocabulary was as interesting as his tubes and harmonic understanding. My one regret is that he invited me out to the ranch many times, and I was never able to go. Right now, my main amp is an Overdrive Reverb that also used to belong to John when he was doing the John Mayer Trio. I got it years later. And I have an Odyssey, which was Alexander’s personal bass amp that he built for himself. I sent all the details to him, and he said, ‘Yeah, that’s my amp.’”
The gearhead in Keith doesn’t even mind minutiae like picks and strings. “I’ve never held picks with the pointy bit hitting the string. I have custom picks that D’Addario makes for me. They have little grippy ridges like on Dunlops and Hercos, but I have that section just placed in one corner. I can use a little bit of it on the string, or I can flip it over. During the pandemic, I decided to go down a couple of string gauges. I was getting comfortable on .009s, and I thought, ‘Great. I’ve lightened up my playing.’ Then the very first gig, I was bending the crap out of them. So I went to .010s, except for a couple of guitars that are .011s.”
As with his best albums, High is song-oriented; thus, solos are short and economical. “Growing up, I listened to songs where the guitar was just in support of that song,” he reasons. “If the song needs a two-bar break, and then you want to hear the next vocal section, that’s what it needs. If it sounds like it needs a longer guitar section, then that’s what it needs. There’s even a track called ‘Love Is Hard’ that doesn’t have any solo. It’s the first thing I’ve ever recorded in my life where I literally don’t play one instrument. Eren Cannata co-wrote it [with Shane McAnally and Justin Tranter], and I really loved the demo with him playing all the instruments. I loved it so much I just went with his acoustic guitar. I’m that much in service of the song.”
The king of the intro hook helped author the 6-string sound of Memphis soul with his classic licks, and crystallized country guitar in the ’70s and ’80s, with his trusty ’57 Strat, ’69 Tele, and Gibson ES-335.
The world lost one of the greatest session guitarists who ever lived, on Thursday, January 17: Reggie Young. Although he didn’t record an album of his own until age 80, by that time Young had been helping other artists, from Elvis Presley to Bing Crosby to Willie Nelson to Martina McBride, make records for more than half a century. Young died at his home outside of Nashville. He had suffered through surgeries in recent years and never fully recovered, and is survived by his wife, Jenny, who he met while they were both in Waylon Jennings’ touring band in 1999. Young was 82.
Reggie Young, Jr. was born in 1936 in Osceola, Arkansas. When he was 13, his family moved to Memphis. His first guitar was a National flattop that he fitted with a DeArmond pickup and ran through a Rickenbacker amp. He was soon learning the licks of Chet Atkins and fellow Memphis resident B.B King.
As a teenager, his band Eddie Bond & the Stompers had a regional hit and found themselves touring with Elvis, where Young met Presley bassist Bill Black. Black started him on his studio career and employed him in his own Bill Black’s Combo, which led to Young playing on his first national hit, the Combo’s “Smokie Part 2.” Young’s unique sound on that record was created by tuning his Gibson ES-335 down two whole-steps and tapping on the strings with a pencil.
Drafted right after the song hit the charts, the guitarist spent most of his military tour in Ethiopia, where he played a newly acquired Fender Duo-Sonic at the enlisted men’s club. Back in Memphis, Young began working at Hi Records’ Royal Studios, and again with Bill Black’s Combo. Though mostly a studio band, they made an exception to tour with the Beatles in 1964. After the first concert, George Harrison began questioning Young about gear. He told the Beatle he played through a Standel amp, and schooled Harrison on the use of an unwound third string for easier bending. The Combo also toured Europe, where Young met young Eric Clapton.
Back at Royal Studios, Young was dissatisfied with the meager pay, so when former Stax producer Chips Moman asked him to start doing sessions at his new American Sound Studio, the guitarist was happy to jump ship. There, they put together the legendary band of Tommy Cogbill, Gene Chrisman, and Bobby Emmons. The Memphis Boys, as they would come to be known, went on to record a perhaps-unparalleled string of hit records, including Elvis Presley’s “Suspicious Minds” and “In the Ghetto” (recorded with Young’s 1967 Garcia nylon acoustic), Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline,” Merrilee Rush’s “Angel of the Morning,” and Dusty Springfield’s classic Dusty in Memphis—to name but a few. Young’s iconic riff for the intro to Springfield’s “Son of a Preacher Man” was only one of many signature licks he would provide over the years to lift already great songs into the stratosphere. The Memphis Boys created the sound of the Box Tops’ hits “The Letter” and “Cry Like a Baby”—the latter showcasing Young’s first work with the electric sitar. It was at American Studios that Young met Clarence Nelson and Bobby Womack, two guitarists who would greatly influence his style.
After five years, Chips Moman moved his operation to Atlanta, Georgia. Unhappy there, Young headed back to Memphis, fatefully stopping off in Nashville. He ran into pianist David Briggs and bassist Norbert Putnam, musicians he had met doing sessions in Muscle Shoals in 1963, and who had a Nashville studio called Quadrafonic Sound. Young began working with them. He commuted back and forth from Memphis to Nashville for a while, but by the early ’70s was firmly settled in Music City. Around 1973, Putnam and Briggs used him on a session for Dobie Gray, where Young laid down the legendary guitar intro to “Drift Away.” When the song became a hit, country acts started requesting the guitarist who played the unforgettable parts on that record. Another classic identifying lick was his harmonized whole-tone intro to Billy Swann’s 1974 hit “I Can Help.” It wasn’t long before the transplant was earning double-scale and working three sessions a day.
Young was soon called to play for country legends like Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, George Jones, and Willie Nelson. His soloing on Haggard’s “I Think I’ll Just Stay Here and Drink,” played on his 1957 Stratocaster, is a textbook for would-be country guitarists. He cut records with artists who would currently be labeled Americana, like J.J. Cale and Tony Joe White, and in the ’80s added a new generation of country legends to his list: George Strait, Reba McEntire, John Anderson, Travis Tritt, Clint Black, and Hank Williams, Jr.
That decade saw studio work falling off, even for a master of Young’s stature, so the guitarist returned to the road, backing Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, and Kris Kristofferson, who were known collectively as the Highwaymen, and later he toured as a member of Waylon Jennings’ Waymore Blues Band. His studio schedule slowed further, but the guitarist still turned in stellar work into the ’90s, for Martina McBride, Boz Scaggs, and others.
The upside to this downslide was that, in 2017, the octogenarian Young finally had the time and inclination to make his first solo album, Forever Young. The recording began in Muscle Shoals, with Chad Cromwell on drums, David Hood on bass, and Clayton Ivey on keyboards, and Young added horns at his home studio in Leiper’s Fork, Tennessee. Unhappy with the guitar sound from Muscle Shoals, Young rerecorded the parts at home on his black ’69 Fender Telecaster through a ’65 Fender Deluxe Reverb amp. Forever Young’s tunes are rife with the tone, taste, and time that made him the first-call guitarist for many producers, songwriters, and artists through the decades. And fortunately, Young lived long enough to enjoy the plaudits of peers and acolytes, who welcomed this recorded distillation of his brilliance.
As long as the talent of session guitarists is required, generation after generation will study the work of Reggie Young as a how-to template. But on a larger scale, everyone—musicians and non-musicians alike—who hears “Son of a Preacher Man,” “In the Ghetto,” “Hooked on a Feeling,” and “Drift Away” will be instantly drawn into those songs through the art of Young’s intros, and he will live on in his brilliant music.
YouTube It
Re-experience the classic Memphis guitar sound that Reggie Young played a major role in developing at the American Sound and Royal studios in the Bluff City, in this tribute to the era, “Memphis Grease,” from his lone solo album, 2017’s Forever Young.
On working with Elvis, opening for the Beatles, and playing with the cream of the crop as a session ace in Memphis and Nashville.
Booker T. and the M.G.’s, the Wrecking Crew, the Swampers, and the Funk Brothers are legendary rhythm sections, known, loved, and studied by musicians through the decades. Less familiar are the Memphis Boys—keyboardists Bobby Emmons and Bobby Wood, bassists Tommy Cogbill and Mike Leech, drummer Gene Chrisman, and guitarist Reggie Young—the musicians who formed the foundation of American Sound Studio in Memphis between 1967 and 1972. This group cut more than 100 Top 40 hits in that five-year period. Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin, Neil Diamond, Dusty Springfield, B. J. Thomas, Petula Clark, Joe Tex, and the Box Tops all benefited from their ability to create on-the-spot head arrangements that resulted in top sellers.
Reggie Young was at the heart of this team and continued contributing his creativity to hit after hit long after the Memphis Boys went their separate ways and he moved to Nashville. Although the average guitarist may be more familiar with names like Steve Cropper or Tommy Tedesco, ask any Nashville session player about Reggie Young and then try to get them to stop raving (see sidebar: “Reggie Raves”). The first to admit he hasn’t made his career on shredding solos, Young’s heroic status is based instead on decades of indelible licks, like the intros to Dusty Springfield’s “Son of a Preacher Man” and Billy Swan’s “I Can Help,” and the classic chicken pickin’ in Joe Tex’s “Show Me.” King Curtis’ Live at the Fillmore West may lead you to believe Cornell Dupree coined the guitar lick in the band introduction of “Memphis Soul Stew,” but Dupree is merely aping Young’s work on Curtis’ studio version. Heck, if Young had never come up with anything but the intro to Dobie Gray’s “Drift Away,” his status as a legendary session guitarist would be safe.
Fortunately, Young is still alive and well in Nashville, where he was kind enough to sit down with one of his biggest fans to tell some amazing stories about his life at American Studios, and in American music.
Country Soul
Born in 1936, Reggie Young Jr. lived in Osceola, Arkansas, until age 13, when his father got a job in Memphis and moved the family there. Like many players, his first guitar was a Christmas present. “It was a National flattop,” he recalls. “The strings were an inch off of the frets. I wanted to be electrified, so I went down to the pawnshop on Beale Street and bought a DeArmond pickup that would fit in the hole. I got an old metal Rickenbacker amp and I was electrified.”
His father played Hawaiian guitar and showed him some chords. Young further honed his craft learning licks off of records and the radio. “I listened to Chet Atkins a lot,” says the guitarist. “He used to have a radio show with [lap steel guitarist] Jerry Byrd on WSM in Nashville called ‘Two Guitars.’ Weather permitting, I could pick it up in Memphis most afternoons.” Another influence was local guitarist B.B. King, cementing Young’s style as a mixture of blues and country.
The guitarist met someone in junior high who could sing and play rhythm, and within a year they had a band. “I was playing more melodies than chord changes,” he says. “I would pick hot, as they called it back then. When Elvis came out, a lot of little bands who could play three chords would have hit records.” While still a teenager in 1956, his band Eddie Bond & the Stompers went into a radio station and recorded a song called “Rockin’ Daddy.” It was released on Mercury Records, became a regional hit, and launched Young’s career in the music business. Though he denies being into rockabilly, Young’s work on the Eddie Bond sides show a familiarity with the idiom.
In 1955, local disc jockey Bob Neal was promoting package tours and hired Eddie Bond & the Stompers to join a lineup that included Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash. “Whoever had the biggest record where we played would be the star that night,” says Young. After the tour, Johnny Horton’s manager asked if the teenage guitarist would play in Horton’s band. This led to a weekly gig with the singer on the famed Louisiana Hayride television show.
But it was Young’s time on those package tours that led to his shift from travelling musician to session player. “Elvis was on a few of the tours,” Young recalls. “I already knew Scotty Moore and Bill Black, the bass player.” Black recorded artist demos at Hi Records’ Royal Studios in Memphis, and would then get someone from London Records to listen to them. Only if the acts were signed would a session fee be paid. It was into this world that he invited the eager Young.
First Hit
After a day of uninspiring sessions, unlikely to result in a deal or payment, Young tuned his guitar down two whole steps and started tapping it with a pencil that was lying on the music stand. “It was like the old club trick, where the drummer would play on the upright bass player’s strings,” he reveals. Black’s house band cut an instrumental shuffle fueled by Young’s tinkering that the London rep liked. Released as a single, “Smokie Part 2” became a number one R&B hit and rose to No. 17 on the pop charts, launching Bill Black’s Combo. The band members were all equal partners but named the group after Black, who was the best known for his work with the now-famous Elvis.
“We got booked on Dick Clark’s show, but I got drafted,” says Young. “When I went to take the oath, I told the company commander there was something I’d like to do before basic training. He let me have a 30-day leave, so before I went into the service we went to New York for the Dick Clark Christmas show.”
Young was in the Army a little over two years, serving much of his time in Ethiopia. There, he went to the enlisted men’s club where the guitarist in the band asked him to sit in. “I did, and he sold me his guitar—a Fender Duo-Sonic,” he says. Young played with the band through his service. For much of his time overseas, “Smokie Part 2” was on the charts. Fortunately, this member of Bill Black’s Combo had made a wise decision when the tune was recorded. “The guy that owned the studio offered to pay us scale or let us have a piece of the record,” says Young. “We all took a piece except for the saxophone player. He got scale, $41.25, and we made a lot of money.”
Hi Records became known for R&B music and Young expanded his repertoire there, intermingling with future Al Green producer Willie Mitchell’s band. “We did an instrumental named ‘2075’ that was a mediocre hit, with Al Jackson on drums,” Young recalls. “This was before Booker T. and the M.G.’s.” Like the M.G.’s and much of the Memphis music scene, Mitchell’s studio band was integrated, though there were still racial issues at the time. “There was a place across the river, in West Memphis, called the Plantation Inn,” says Young. “When B.B. King was in town, his band played here. A white guy couldn’t sit in with that band; the crowd wouldn’t go for it. I’d do it, but I’d be behind the curtain.”
The Other Fab Four
In 1962, Bill Black’s Combo was recording largely instrumentals, but took time out to cut “Haunted House” (later recorded by Roy Buchanan) with singer “Jumpin” Gene Simmons, who then became a frontman for the band. Though Reggie and the original members were cutting the records, they didn’t tour. “We didn’t do road work,” he explains. “There was a band on the West Coast, one in the Midwest, and one on the East Coast, all using the Bill Black’s Combo name, but we just stayed in the studio.”
Young made an exception to the no-road-work rule once. When the Beatles did their first U.S. tour in 1964, they contacted Bill Black to be their opening act. “We went by Trailways bus to San Francisco to join the tour,” he says. “I didn’t have a clue who they were until we got to San Francisco. The first night we played the Cow Palace. I’d never heard that much screaming and carrying on. They had barricades so the kids wouldn’t jump up on the stage. We went on first, and then backed up some of the other acts: Jackie DeShannon, the Righteous Brothers, and a guy named Clarence ‘Frogman’ Henry from New Orleans. We played about an hour of music.” In each city, the local DJ would work the crowd into a frenzy about seeing the Beatles and then announce, “First, here’s Bill Black’s Combo.”
“They would boo and start throwing stuff,” recalls Young. “Later, the DJs learned to wait to build them up after we were through.”
Soon after the first concert, George Harrison came on the plane and asked who the guitar player with Bill Black was. Young admitted it was he. “George asked what I was playing through,” recalls Young. “I told him it was an old Standel. He complimented me and asked, ‘How are you bending those strings like that?’ He was using a wound 3rd string. I told him to get an unwrapped 3rd string. I probably stole that from Chet Atkins, who used an unwrapped 3rd string.”
Legendary session guitarist Reggie Young plays his black ’69 Fender Telecaster in Nashville at Summer NAMM circa 2009.
On the way to Jacksonville, Florida, a hurricane caused the two bands to be rerouted to Key West, where they took over a motel, played music, and waited out the storm. While there, Young got called to Memphis to record his first instrumental feature, a version of “Ebb Tide.” “They thought it could sell because I was on tour with the Beatles,” says Young. “I flew back, recorded it, and flew back to Key West.”
A Bill Black tour was set for Europe, where the headliner was to be Billy J. Kramer. In order for the unions to allow Bill Black’s Combo to play in Europe, a British band had to play in the United States. “We were the trade band for the Beatles,” says Young. On the European tour, Young met Eric Clapton, who was playing with the Yardbirds. “Eric and I hit it off, because we were both blues players,” Young says. “We spent many nights sitting around playing backstage.”
The Sound of American
Back in the States, Young returned to Royal Studios. Unfortunately, it was difficult for musicians to get properly paid in Memphis, where producers would brag about getting a band for $15 a side, with no time limit. Young’s agreement with Hi Records’ owner Ray Harris was $60 for a 3-hour session, but the guitarist was usually paid $15 a side—no matter how long it took. Even when Young was actually paid the full $60, he would often have to kick back $30 to the producer. When Harris called one night and tried to cut the fee back to $10 a side, Young quit.
Fortunately, former Stax producer Chips Moman asked him to start doing sessions at Moman’s studio, across town in a funky area of Memphis. The two talked about putting a studio band together and soon recruited Tommy Cogbill, Gene Chrisman, and Young’s friend Bobby Emmons. The four-piece band began recording at Moman’s place at 827 Thomas Street, which became known as American Sound Studio. They recorded a spate of hit records in surroundings that were far from fancy. “When Elvis walked in, he looked around and just said, ‘Man’,” recalls Young. “But we cut some of the biggest records he ever had: ‘Suspicious Minds’ and ‘In the Ghetto.’”
Other hits cut there include Neil Diamond’s, “Sweet Caroline,” Merrilee Rush’s “Angel of the Morning,” and the classic Dusty Springfield album, Dusty in Memphis, to name just a few. Young remembers coming up with the riff for the intro to Springfield’s hit “Son of a Preacher Man.”
“I was just sitting there goofing off,” he says. “It’s sort of a Chet Atkins lick, because it uses an open string. They call them ‘identifying licks.’ That’s what you used to do to make records sound different. It seems like nowadays there’s none of that.”
Young and the Memphis Boys were literally instrumental in the sound of the Box Tops hits, “The Letter” and “Cry Like a Baby.” Writer/ producer Dan Penn liked Alex Chilton’s voice, but used Young & Co. to replace the rest of the band in the interest of expediency in the studio.
While working at American, Young met a guitarist who would greatly influence his style: Clarence Nelson. “We all stole him silly,” says Young. “I know I did, and I think [Steve] Cropper did, too. He was James Carr’s guitarist and they worked at American.”
Young, who’s cradling a guitar while we speak, demonstrates a low-string Clarence Nelson lick heard dozens of times on recordings by him and Cropper. You can hear Young employ versions of the lick on the verses of “Son of a Preacher Man” as well as the fade solo on “Drift Away.” Cropper hits it for the opening of Otis Redding’s recording of “Ol’ Man River” and turned it into the signature riff of Rufus Thomas’ “Walking the Dog” by moving it up an octave.
Another guitarist working at American was Bobby Womack. “He influenced me more than anybody,” says Young. “We sat across from each other and each tried to see what the other one was doing. He would show me something, or get me to show him something. Just about everything I play today has some Bobby Womack in it. Not exactly like him though; you try to make it your own.”
Young worked at American a little over five years, until Chips Moman felt that Memphis had dried up musically and moved his operation to Atlanta, Georgia. Moman built a new studio there but failed to reignite the Memphis magic. “One of the hardest things I ever had to do was tell Moman and the rest of the guys I was going back to Memphis,” says Young.
As fate would have it, the guitarist traveled through Nashville on his way home, where he ran into David Briggs and Norbert Putnam. He’d met them doing sessions in Muscle Shoals back in1963, where Putnam was a bassist and Briggs a keyboard player. “They moved to Nashville and had a studio called Quadrafonic that was pretty hot back then,” relates Young. “David said, ‘How long are you going to be here? You want to work some?’ I said, ‘Yeah,’ and have been working in Nashville ever since.”
Nashville Cat
Young went back and forth between Memphis and Nashville for a while, but by 1972 was firmly established in Music City, living and working there full time. Putnam and Briggs used him on sessions for Joan Baez and Dobie Gray. When Gray’s “Drift Away” became a hit, country acts began to ask for the guitar player who played the unforgettable parts on that record. Another classic Reggie Young “identifying lick” was the harmonized whole tone intro to Billy Swann’s 1975 hit “I Can Help.”
Throughout his career, Reggie Young has been known for his guitar introductions to hit songs, or, as he calls them, identifying licks. “That’s what you used to do to make records sound different,” he says. “It seems like nowadays there’s none of that.” Photo courtesy of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum
“I was just noodling around and [producer] Chip Young said it would make a good intro,” he recalls. “I thought he was kidding. I said, ‘Let me put a part with it to see what that sounds like.’”
Young found the working conditions in Nashville a vast improvement over Memphis. “They would set everything up for me. I would just walk in, sit down, and start playing,” he says. “Three hours later I would get paid whatever the scale was.” Soon after moving to Nashville in the ’70s, the Memphis expat was earning double-scale and working three sessions a day. He was called to play with country legends like Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, George Jones, and Willie Nelson. Young also cut records with artists who are now considered Americana, like J.J. Cale, Tony Joe White, and Gary Stewart. In the ’80s he added a new generation of country legends to the list of artists who needed the Reggie Young touch: George Strait, Reba McEntire, John Anderson, Travis Tritt, Clint Black, and Hank Williams Jr.
The ’80s also saw the guitarist return to the road, backing Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, and Kris Kristofferson, known collectively as the Highwaymen. He helped them cut their self-titled record and they wanted him for a 30-day tour. “I lost money the first tour we did, although they were paying really well,” says Young, who was still working a heavy session schedule. “We did the Highwaymen for about five years,” he says. “When that ended, I was still doing studio stuff, but not as much because the business was changing. Then Waylon called me and said, ‘Would you be interested in going out maybe two or three times a month.’ We did his band, the Waymore Blues Band, for a couple of years, until he passed away.”
Young worked sessions steadily through the ’90s, but with the apocalyptic shift in the music business through downloading, streaming, and competition from other media, studio work has since slowed down. Still, as recently as last year, he was adding his 6-string magic to records by Martina McBride, Boz Scaggs, and others.
Young has a home studio but, as of yet, doesn’t want to do remote sessions. However, the studio has seen action in creating his new solo record, Forever Young. “The basic tracks were done in Muscle Shoals with Chad Cromwell on drums, David Hood on bass, and Clayton Ivey on keys,” he says. “I got it home and hated the guitar sound, so it stayed in the closet for a couple of years. Then, I got an engineer and we sat right in here while I redid the guitar parts. I had my Deluxe Reverb in the other room. I replaced everything I had on there. I talked to [saxaphonist] Jim Horn; he wrote the horn parts and we recorded them in the bedroom.”
Young had some health issues early this year, which held up the release of Forever Young, but he is on the mend and hopes to have the album out soon. Forever Young lifts the guitarist’s playing out of the background and sets his gorgeous tone, perfect time, and classic licks front and center. Listening to the opener, “Coming Home to Leiper’s Fork,” you won’t hear anything that requires digit-twisting dexterity or shred-like speed, but each note sounds pure and soulful and lays perfectly in the groove. That said, you may find the hybrid-picked head to the aptly named “Memphis Grease” does take some fancy finger work. Throughout, as you hear licks you’ve heard through decades of American popular music, remember that this is the man who originally played more than his share of them. Here’s hoping he will continue to enhance the musical endeavors of another generation of artists.
Reggie Young’s Gear
With Bill Black’s Combo, Reggie Young played a Gibson ES-335. Since moving to Nashville, Young’s main guitar has been a black ’69 Fender Telecaster with body binding and a maple neck. At one time, the pickup in the neck was changed to a mini-humbucker but is now a Bill Lawrence single-coil Strat-style. The bridge pickup is a Ron Ellis. It has a Seymour Duncan rail-type Strat pickup in the middle that can be switched on with a mini-toggle or blended in with a knob. “I mainly blend it with the bridge, because the bridge pickup alone will cut your head off,” Young explains. He uses a Fender Relic Tele with a similar setup as a backup guitar for touring overseas.
Young’s other go-to guitar is a ’57 Fender Stratocaster. Once equipped with EMGs for quiet performance in the studio, it’s now fitted with Bill Lawrence pickups. Young was one of the first to record a Coral electric sitar. It appeared on “Cry Like a Baby” and B.J. Thomas’ “Hooked on a Feeling.” The 1967 Garcia nylon acoustic he played on tunes like “In the Ghetto” resides in the Musicians Hall of Fame in Nashville. Young’s guitars are strung with D’Addario strings (.0095–.044) and picked with a Fender medium pick using the round side for a fatter sound.
Amps
Young used a Standel amp in the early days, primarily because it only had one input. “If somebody sitting in wanted to plug in the amp along with you—that stopped that,” he says. “That was a killer amp.” At American Sound Studio he began using the ’65 Fender Deluxe Reverb he still employs. He now has two, and a Little Walter 50-watt head and cabinet. Live, he uses Fender Twins or 4x10 Fender Bassmans.
Effects
In the ’50s and early ’60s, Young might pull one power tube out to create distortion. Later he used a Garnet Herzog unit from Canada designed for Randy Bachman. The Herzog was a small tube amp that could distort the main amp. It can be heard on the fade of “Drift Away.” In the psychedelic era, he used an early Bosstone fuzz. For pedal steel-style swells, Young uses an Ernie Ball volume pedal. “When I moved to Nashville no one was using volume pedals, so that got me a lot of work,” he recalls.
He has a Whirlwind compressor on his current pedalboard, though he doesn’t use compression anymore, and a Boss GE-7 EQ. “I get my amp sounding as good as I can and then use the equalizer to tweak it a little more and add a little boost,” he says. The board also contains a Boss TU-2 tuner, Boss DD-6 Digital Delay, a Voodoo Lab Sparkle Drive, a TC Electronic chorus, and a Voodoo Lab Tremolo. “The board sounded so good on the road that I started bringing it into the studio. It sounded better than my rack,” he says.
Reggie Raves
Some of the top session players in Nashville today give props to the man who influenced them.Brent Mason
I’ve always been in awe of Reggie Young. His unique style and sound set the bar not just for country, but popular music in general. I constantly find myself playing Reggie’s guitar licks or hear someone I’m working with say, “Give me a Reggie Young solo and fills in this song.” I know exactly what they mean. His style will always remain hip and cool. There’s no other guitar player on earth that has his taste, soul, and expertise at making a song shine just by adding his parts to it. Simply the best!
Photo by Ckuhl
Richard Bennett
I was a fan of Reggie’s long before I knew his name, going back to his ’50s work with Eddie Bond, Bill Black’s Combo, and Johnny Horton. They caught my attention as a kid, and you try to emulate things you like. Reggie’s playing in the ’60s and beyond is so creative and enjoyable—no other guitar part would or could be any better for those records. He elevates the quality of every recording he’s been part of. I played on loads of records with Reggie and always considered it an honor and pleasure to share a studio floor with him. Reggie Young is all that, much more, and a hell of a good guy as well.