The 1996 nominees for the Country Music Association’s Video of the Year award included some familiar names: George Strait, Vince Gill, Jeff Foxworthy, Brooks & Dunn. To the surprise of many, however, a much lesser-known artist named Junior Brown took home the trophy for “My Wife Thinks You’re Dead”, an absurdist black-and-white affair featuring 6-foot, 7-inch former University of North Carolina Tar Heels basketball standout Gwendolyn Gillingham.
The song and music video are as unique as Brown himself, who needed to build an entirely new instrument to match his one-of-a-kind sound. Today, we’re taking a look at the life and career of Jamieson “Junior” Brown, born in Cottonwood, Arizona, on this day (June 12) in 1952.
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Who is Junior Brown?
Country music was a constant fixture in Junior Brown’s rural Kirksville, Indiana upbringing. “It was everywhere. Growing up out of the ground like the crops, coming out of cars, houses, gas stations and stores,” he recalled in a 2023 interview.
Brown’s father taught him to play piano before he could speak. At age 7, he discovered an old guitar in his grandparents’ attic and was instantly hooked. As a child, Brown honed his skills at parties and school functions.
He put his first band together at age 13. After dropping out of high school, the 17-year-old landed a gig playing six nights a week in honky-tonks. During the 1960s and 1970s, Brown cut his teeth singing and playing pedal steel and guitar for groups like the Last Mile Ramblers, Dusty Drapes and the Dusters, Billy Spears, and Asleep at the Wheel.
Creating Old Yellar
By the mid-1980s, Junior Brown was teaching guitar at the Hank Thompson School of Country Music at Rogers State University in Claremore, Oklahoma. Around this time, in 1985, a brilliant invention arrived to him in a dream—literally.
“I was playing both steel and guitar, switching back and forth a lot while I sang, and it was kinda awkward,” Brown recalled. “But then I had this dream where they just kinda melted together. When I woke up, I thought, ‘You know, this thing could work!’ They made double necked guitars and double necked steels, so why not one of each?”
With some assistance from legendary guitar builder Michael Stevens, Brown crafted what he dubbed the “guit-steel” double-neck guitar, a hybrid of electric guitar and lap steel guitar. He named the first instrument “Old Yellar,” with “Big Red” following shortly after.
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Junior Brown has released 12 albums and charted two singles: “Highway Patrol” (1993) and “My Wife Thinks You’re Dead” (1995).
Featured image by Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images