Walter Louis Garland better known as
Hank Garland, was a
NashvilleNashville is the capital of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Davidson County. It is located on the Cumberland River in Davidson County, in the north-central part of the state. The city is a center for the health care, publishing, banking and transportation industries, and is home...
studio musician who performed with
Elvis PresleyElvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....
,
Patsy ClinePatsy Cline , born Virginia Patterson Hensley in Gore, Virginia, was an American country music singer who enjoyed pop music crossover success during the era of the Nashville sound in the early 1960s...
,
Roy OrbisonRoy Kelton Orbison was an American singer-songwriter, well known for his distinctive, powerful voice, complex compositions, and dark emotional ballads. Orbison grew up in Texas and began singing in a rockabilly/country & western band in high school until he was signed by Sun Records in Memphis...
and many others.
Biography
Born in
Cowpens, South CarolinaCowpens is a town in Spartanburg County, South Carolina, United States. The population was 2,162 at the 2010 census.-Geography:Cowpens is located at ....
, Garland began playing the
guitarThe guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
at the age of 6. He appeared on local radio shows at 12 and was discovered at 14 at a South Carolina record store. He moved to Nashville at age 16, staying in Ma Upchurch's boarding house, where he roomed with upright bassist
Bob MooreBob Loyce Moore is an American session musician, orchestra leader, and bassist who was a member of the legendary Nashville A-Team during the 1950s and 60s.-Biography:...
and fiddler Dale Potter.
At age 19, Garland recorded his million-selling hit "Sugarfoot Rag", although some attribute the song to Bernie B. Smith, Jr., published two years earlier by M.M. Cole/BMI as "Bernie's Reel". An instrumental version was the opening theme for ABC-TV's
Ozark JubileeOzark Jubilee is the first U.S. network television program to feature country music's top stars, and was the centerpiece of a strategy for Springfield, Missouri to challenge Nashville, Tennessee as America's country music capital...
from 1955–1960. Garland appeared on the
Jubilee with
Grady MartinThomas Grady Martin was one of the most renowned, inventive and historically significant American session musicians in country music and rockabilly....
's band, and on
Eddy ArnoldRichard Edward Arnold , known professionally as Eddy Arnold, was an American country music singer who performed for six decades. He was a so-called Nashville sound innovator of the late 1950s, and scored 147 songs on the Billboard country music charts, second only to George Jones. He sold more...
's
networkThe Eddy Arnold Show is the name of three similar American network television summer variety programs during the 1950s hosted by Eddy Arnold and featuring popular music stars of the day...
and
syndicatedEddy Arnold Time is an American musical television series syndicated to local stations from 1955 through 1957. The show consisted of 26 half-hour filmed episodes starring Eddy Arnold in different roles within a musical narrative...
television shows.
He is best known for his work on Elvis Presley's recordings from 1957 to 1961 which produced such
rockRock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
hits as "Little Sister", "I Need Your Love Tonight" and "A Big Hunk O' Love". However, Garland also worked with many
country musicCountry music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...
as well as rock 'n roll stars of the late 1950s and early 1960s including Patsy Cline,
Brenda LeeBrenda Mae Tarpley , known as Brenda Lee, is an American performer who sang rockabilly, pop and country music, and had 37 US chart hits during the 1960s, a number surpassed only by Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Ray Charles and Connie Francis...
,
Mel TillisLonnie Melvin Tillis , known professionally as Mel Tillis, is an American country music singer. Although he recorded songs since the late 1950s, his biggest success occurred in the 1970s, with a long list of Top 10 hits....
,
Marty RobbinsMartin David Robinson , known professionally as Marty Robbins, was an American singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist...
,
the Everly BrothersThe Everly Brothers are country-influenced rock and roll performers, known for steel-string guitar playing and close harmony singing...
,
Boots RandolphHomer Louis "Boots" Randolph III was an American musician best known for his 1963 saxophone hit, "Yakety Sax"...
, Roy Orbison and
Conway TwittyConway Twitty , born Harold Lloyd Jenkins, was an American country music artist. He also had success in early rock and roll, R&B, and pop music. He held the record for the most number one singles of any act with 55 No. 1 Billboard country hits until George Strait broke the record in 2006...
. He also played with jazz artists such as
George ShearingSir George Shearing, OBE was an Anglo-American jazz pianist who for many years led a popular jazz group that recorded for MGM Records and Capitol Records. The composer of over 300 titles, he had multiple albums on the Billboard charts during the 1950s, 1960s, 1980s and 1990s...
and
Charlie ParkerCharles Parker, Jr. , famously called Bird or Yardbird, was an American jazz saxophonist and composer....
in New York and went on to record
Jazz Winds From a New Direction, showcasing his evolving talent.It is also believed that he is the first to explore the use of the Power chord in popular music.
At the request of
Gibson GuitarThe Gibson Guitar Corporation, formerly of Kalamazoo, Michigan and currently of Nashville, Tennessee, manufactures guitars and other instruments which sell under a variety of brand names...
company president,
Ted McCartyTed McCarty was a pioneer of electric guitar design and production. This began when he was chosen as vice president of the of Gibson Guitar Corporation in 1949, then later as president in 1950. He remained president until 1966. This period became known as Gibson's golden age of electric guitars...
, Garland and fellow guitarist Billy Byrd strongly influenced the design of the
ByrdlandThe Byrdland is an electric guitar, made by Gibson. Its name derives from the names of guitarists Billy Byrd and Hank Garland for whom the guitar was originally custom built by Gibson.-Thinline series:...
guitar (seen in the photograph).
In September 1961, he was playing for the soundtrack of Presley's movie,
Follow That Dream when a car accident left Garland in a
comaIn medicine, a coma is a state of unconsciousness, lasting more than 6 hours in which a person cannot be awakened, fails to respond normally to painful stimuli, light or sound, lacks a normal sleep-wake cycle and does not initiate voluntary actions. A person in a state of coma is described as...
that lasted for a week. With the help of his wife, he re-learned how to walk, talk, and play the guitar though he never recovered sufficiently to return to the studios. It was believed
electroconvulsive therapyElectroconvulsive therapy , formerly known as electroshock, is a psychiatric treatment in which seizures are electrically induced in anesthetized patients for therapeutic effect. Its mode of action is unknown...
, prescribed by his doctors, may have caused more damage to his brain, but little evidence exists to support this theory. Garland's brother, Billy, claimed the crash was actually an attempted murder by someone in the Nashville music scene, but there is no evidence of that. Garland was widely respected by his peers and Nashville producers such as
Chet AtkinsChester Burton Atkins , known as Chet Atkins, was an American guitarist and record producer who, along with Owen Bradley, created the smoother country music style known as the Nashville sound, which expanded country's appeal to adult pop music fans as well.Atkins's picking style, inspired by Merle...
, Don Law and
Owen BradleyOwen Bradley was an American record producer who, along with Chet Atkins and Bob Ferguson, was one of the chief architects of the 1950s and 1960s Nashville sound in country music and rockabilly.-Before the fame:...
.
Garland died on December 27, 2004 of a staph infection in Orange Park,
FloridaFlorida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
. He is survived by two daughters, Cheryl and Debra.
His life and times was the subject of the partially fictional independent film
Crazy.
Discography
- After the Riot at Newport (with The Nashville All-Stars) (1960)
- Velvet Guitar (1960)
- Jazz Winds From a New Direction (1961)
- The Unforgettable Guitar of Hank Garland (1962)
- Holiday for the Harp (with the Daphne Hellman Quartet)
External links