Legendary Nashville “A-Team” musician Jerry Kennedy, whose guitar licks stand out on Jeannie C. Riley’s “Harper Valley PTA” and Roy Orbison’s “Oh, Pretty Woman,” died Wednesday, Feb. 11. He was 85 years old.
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“Jerry Kennedy was soft-spoken and understated, but his permanent impact on American music was anything but quiet,” wrote Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum CEO Kyle Young in a tribute post on the institution’s website and social media.
How Jerry Kennedy “Built a Sonic Platform for Giants To Stand On”
Kennedy’s vast repertoire included Tammy Wynette’s “Stand By Your Man” and Bob Dylan’s 1966 double album Blonde on Blonde. As a first-call session musician, he created signature licks that were as recognizable as song titles, according to Young.
Through his work as a producer and record label executive, he “built a sonic platform for giants to stand on,” Young wrote. Some of those giants included Tom T. Hall and Reba McEntire, both of whom Kennedy signed.
“He carried a spiritual understanding of music’s power to reach beyond social and stylistic boundaries, and he spent his career making it better and bigger,” Young wrote.
[RELATED: The Story Behind Roy Orbison’s Repeat Hit “Oh, Pretty Woman”]
He Began Recording at Age 11
Born Aug. 10, 1940, in Shreveport, Louisiana, Jerry Glenn Kennedy grew up awash in a unique blend of country, blues, R&B and Cajun music.
Eventually, his parents grew tired of hearing the young boy “beating on broomsticks and other things” to make his own music. So they bought him his first Silvertone guitar when he was 8 or 9. The instrument was “a real piece of junk hangin’ around my neck, but it was enough to get me interested,” Kennedy later recalled.
Soon, Jerry Kennedy was learning guitar from Tillman Franks, bassist and guitarist on the storied Louisiana Hayride program. At age 11, he inked a contract with RCA Records.
After working around his hometown for a few years, Irving Green, president of Mercury Records, convinced Kennedy to move to Nashville. He arrived on the crest of the city’s country music boom in the 1960s, working with names like Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Cash, Ringo Starr, Stonewall Jackson and George Jones. Working his way up, Kennedy eventually took the reins at Smash Records, a subsidiary of Mercury, in 1969.
“I had a lot of good songs I couldn’t get recorded,” Tom T. Hall said in 1974. “Jerry Kennedy of Mercury Records asked me to record them, so I did.”
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