Jerry Reed
Classic Country
Jerry Reed was a guitarist, singer, songwriter, and actor whose fingerpicked “claw style” and manic, comic energy made him one of the defining personalities of 1970s country music. He wrote hits for Elvis Presley and Brenda Lee, cut a string of crossover novelty smashes under his own name, and became a movie star as Burt Reynolds’ sidekick in the Smokey and the Bandit films—all while quietly earning a reputation as one of the most influential guitarists Nashville ever produced.
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- Born Jerry Reed Hubbard on March 20, 1937, in Atlanta, Georgia, he grew up in poverty amid the city’s cotton-mill neighborhoods and largely raised himself between foster homes. He took up guitar as a boy and was performing on local radio and package shows alongside acts such as Faron Young and Ernest Tubb by his mid-teens.
- At eighteen he caught the ear of Capitol Records producer Ken Nelson and cut his first sides for the label in 1955. The records went nowhere commercially, but they marked him early as a rockabilly-tinged songwriter and picker of unusual drive.
- His songs found success in other artists’ hands first: Brenda Lee took his “That’s All You Gotta Do” into the pop Top 10 in 1960, and Porter Wagoner scored a No. 1 country hit with Reed’s “Misery Loves Company” in 1962. A stint in the U.S. Army interrupted, but songwriting royalties kept his name alive in Nashville.
- Guitar legend Chet Atkins, then head of RCA Victor’s Nashville operation, signed Reed to the label in the mid-1960s and became his lifelong mentor and duet partner. Reed quickly became a first-call session guitarist as well as a recording artist.
- He wrote and played the searing lead guitar on Elvis Presley’s 1967 recording of “Guitar Man,” and Presley returned the following year to cut Reed’s “U.S. Male”—with Reed again on guitar. The sessions cemented Reed’s standing as one of the most distinctive stylists in town.
- Reed’s syncopated, thumb-and-fingers “claw style” became his signature—a percussive, harmonically dense attack that guitarists still study. Chet Atkins reckoned him one of the finest pickers he knew, and admirers have compared his rhythmic invention to Django Reinhardt’s.
- His own breakthrough came with “Amos Moses” (1970), a swamp-funk novelty that reached No. 8 on the pop chart and went gold, followed by “When You’re Hot, You’re Hot” (1971), a No. 1 country and Top 10 pop hit that won the Grammy Award for Best Male Country Vocal Performance.
- His instrumental partnership with Atkins yielded the acclaimed albums Me and Jerry (1970), which won the 1971 Grammy for Best Country Instrumental Performance, and Me and Chet (1972). The two would reunite decades later for Sneakin’ Around (1992), which earned a third Grammy in 1993.
- He piled up hits and standards through the early 1970s, including “Ko-Ko Joe,” the No. 1 “Lord, Mr. Ford” (1973), and “Alabama Wild Man,” while “A Thing Called Love,” another Reed composition, became a hit for Johnny Cash.
- Reed’s big personality carried him to Hollywood. After roles in W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings (1975) and Gator (1976), he co-starred with Burt Reynolds as bootlegging trucker Cledus “Snowman” Snow in Smokey and the Bandit (1977) and its sequels.
- His self-written theme for that film, “East Bound and Down,” became one of his best-loved recordings and a trucker-culture anthem, tying his music and screen careers together at their commercial peak.
- He returned to the top of the country chart with the divorce-comedy hit “She Got the Goldmine (I Got the Shaft)” in 1982, his third and final No. 1, drawn from the album The Man with the Golden Thumb.
- Chet Atkins later bestowed on Reed the rare honorary title CGP—“Certified Guitar Player”—a distinction Atkins reserved for only a handful of players he considered peers. Reed introduced younger fans to his comic touch with a supporting turn as football coach Red Beaulieu in The Waterboy (1998).
- Jerry Reed died of complications from emphysema on September 1, 2008, in Nashville, Tennessee, at age 71. He was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and, in 2017, into the Country Music Hall of Fame, where Bobby Bare formally welcomed him that October.
- His legacy endures on two fronts: as a hitmaking entertainer who blurred the lines between country, pop, and comedy, and as a guitarist’s guitarist whose recordings remain a proving ground for pickers from Tommy Emmanuel and Steve Wariner on down.
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Smokey and the Bandit – Music from the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack1977 · MCA Records
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Jerry ReedPlayed on recordings with Jerry Reed
