Neil Levang

Neil Levang ( born January 3, 1932 in Adams, North Dakota) is an American guitarist, violinist and banjo player.

Life

Levang grew up on a farm in North Dakota, as a younger son of a family with Swedish and Norwegian roots. His family moved to Riverside, California, when he was 13 years old. He then began to play in local bands and performed in 1948 among others as a sideman Jimmy Wakely. In 1951, he joined the United States Coast Guard and was stationed in the sequence in Seattle. There he played in the country band Texas Jim Lewis and his Lonestar Cowboys and moderated on local radio. In 1959 he was nominated as the best mandolin player at the Country Music Association Awards. In the same year he was hired as a guitarist and banjo player for Lawrence Welk's television show The Dodge Dancing Party in which he played until the last mission in 1982.

Throughout his career Levang worked as a studio musician for a number of well-known artists, including Elvis Presley, Frank Zappa, Dean Martin and Neil Diamond.