Buddy Harman
Musician · 1928–2008 · Nashville, Tennessee
Buddy Harman was the most-recorded drummer in country music history and a cornerstone of the Nashville A-Team, the session crew that built the smooth, propulsive sound of Music Row from the late 1950s through the early 1970s. His steady, understated backbeat anchored thousands of hits across country, pop, and rockabilly.
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- Born Murrey Mizell Harman Jr. on December 23, 1928, in Nashville; his mother was a drummer, and he trained at the Roy C. Knapp School of Percussion in Chicago.
- Began Nashville studio work in 1952 and became a first-call session drummer, eventually playing on a reported 18,000-plus recording sessions.
- Core member of the Nashville A-Team, the session players who backed artists from Elvis Presley and Patsy Cline to Bob Dylan.
- Became the first regular house drummer at the Grand Ole Opry in 1959, initially playing behind a curtain because drums were not yet allowed in view on the Opry stage.
- Played drums on Roy Orbison’s “Oh, Pretty Woman” (1964, Monument) and “Only the Lonely” (1960), and on Patsy Cline’s Decca sessions of the early 1960s.
- Recorded with Elvis Presley in the early 1960s, including “It’s Now or Never” and “Stuck on You,” alongside sessions for Johnny Cash, Marty Robbins, Brenda Lee, Dolly Parton, and many others.
- Named “Drummer of the Year” by the Academy of Country Music in 1981 and won the Nashville NARAS chapter’s “Super Picker” award for drums on the most No. 1 records in 1975 and 1976.
- Died August 21, 2008, in Nashville of congestive heart failure at age 79.
