Jerry Byrd

Gerald "Jerry" Byrd ( born March 9, 1920 in Ohio; † April 11, 2005 in Honolulu) was an American country music singer and musician. He is considered a pioneer of the Hawaiian steel guitar in country music since he was next to Cliff Carlisle, the first country musician who used them successfully.

Life

Childhood and youth

Jerry Byrd was the first child of Harley and Lauretta Byrd. Born and raised in Lima, Ohio, he heard for the first time in 1932 a steel guitar in a Tent show. The young Byrd was completely fascinated by this instrument, so he got himself to play guitar. At fifteen, he was already playing professionally and stepped on the evening in bars. According to his own statement, he earned a dollar a gig. In 1939 he successfully completed high school.

Shortly thereafter, he became acquainted with the music studio owner Ron Dearth. Dearth offered him a plate to take him to his studio. However, this plate had only moderate success. Then he moved to Kentucky, where he performed regularly in the Refro Valley Barn Dance show. In 1941 he fell ill with pneumonia, which had almost cost him his life. Due to his illness he escaped conscription into the army. After he had recovered his parents Lima him, he moved to Detroit, Michigan. While he appeared at the radio station WJR, he was a member of Ernest Tubb 's Texas Troubadors. After that, he took on various boards with the backing band Red Foley, the Cumberland Valley Boys.

Breakthrough

Slowly Byrd's popularity increased. Through the film Hollywood Barn Dance, in which he played the lead role, he managed the national breakthrough. He was a member of the Grand Ole Opry, the most famous radio show in America. His records sold as of himself, and his concerts were always sold out. In the following three years, he participated in over one hundred recording sessions.

1949 Byrd moved to Cincinnati, Ohio. There he stood beside his appearances in the Opry in Nashville in the weekly radio show, Midwestern Hayride on. Every Friday night, when he arrived in Nashville in order to appear in the Opry on Saturday, he and Chet Atkins, a radio show, which was called The Two Guitars. 1954 Byrd then went all the way to Nashville, where he was to live and work for the next 20 years. He entered at this time regularly as an acoustic guitarist in the band of the TV show National Life Grand Ole Opry on. Mid-1970s, he then sat down to rest, but took another publicly. In 1978 he was inducted into the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame.

Jerry Byrd died on 11 April 2005 at the age of 85 years.

Work

Although the steel guitar nowadays is so popular, Jerry Byrd exerted a not inconsiderable influence on other country musician. That Hawaiian music in the 1930s and 1940s was so extraordinarily popular, largely due to Byrd, with other performers such as Frank Ferera, Sol Hoopii, Roy Smeck, or oriented at the Blues had Cliff Carlisle share.