John Hughey, the session pedal steel guitarist who pioneered the distinct “crying steel” playing style, was born on this day in 1933 in Elaine, Arkansas. Hughey would have ample opportunities to show off his skill, playing with the likes of Vince Gill and Conway Twitty during his five-decade career.
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How a Seventh-Grade Classmate Gave John Hughey His Start
John Hughey’s relationship with the “Hello Darlin’” crooner predated the duo’s time onstage together. At age 9, Hughey moved with his family to Horn Lake, Mississippi, where he received his first guitar—a Gene Autry flat-top from Sears—that Christmas.
Three years later, the family returned to Helena, Arkansas, where Hughey met and befriended a seventh-grade classmate named Harold Lloyd Jenkins.
“We became real close friends but not close enough to know that he sang and played a little guitar,” Hughey wrote of Jenkins, better known by his stage name, Conway Twitty.
One Thursday night, listening to local radio station KFFA with his family, a band called the Arkansas Cotton Choppers began to play. Hearing the broadcaster announce Harold Jenkins, “I jumped up and hollered to my parents, ‘I know that guy; he’s in my room at school!!!’”
He Was Known for His “Crying Steel” Style of Play
Another radio program, the Eddy Arnold Purina Chow Show, would also set the course for Hughey’s career. Influenced by Arnold’s steel guitarist, Little Roy Wiggins, he asked his father for a lap steel guitar. “I didn’t know that it was a steel; I just knew that I liked the sound of whatever it was I was hearing,” he recalled.
[RELATED: 3 of the Greatest Pedal Steel Guitar Solos in Country Music History]
After performing in a local band with Twitty called the Phillips County Ramblers, John Hughey would eventually join his childhood friend on the road, backing him from 1968 to 1988. Following a stint with Loretta Lynn in the ’80s, Hughey joined Vince Gill as his backing steel guitarist, a gig he held for 12 years.
Hughey earned a reputation for his “crying steel” method of playing, utilizing vibrato on the instrument’s higher range. Gill credited the Steel Guitar Hall of Famer with adding “definition” to his music, citing the 1991 single “Look At Us” off the album Pocket Full of Gold, whose “crying steel” intro “makes that song recognizable by what happens before any words even get sung.”
Hughey died from heart complications on Nov. 18, 2007, in Nashville. He was 73 years old.
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