Don Helms
Musician · 1927–2008 · New Brockton, Alabama
Best known for
Songwriter
Don Helms was Hank Williams’s steel guitarist and the high, piercing voice behind ten of Williams’s eleven No. 1 country singles. His 1948 Gibson Console Grande — a double-neck non-pedal instrument — defined the postwar honky-tonk steel sound, and after Williams’s death he carried that sound through sessions for Patsy Cline, the Louvin Brothers, Lefty Frizzell, Loretta Lynn, and a long list of others.
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- Born Donald Hugh Helms on February 28, 1927, in New Brockton, Alabama.
- Joined Hank Williams’s Drifting Cowboys and played on more than one hundred Williams recordings, including ten of his eleven country No. 1 hits.
- Played a double-neck 1948 Gibson Console Grande non-pedal steel; the bright tone of that instrument is the signature sound of postwar honky-tonk steel guitar.
- After Hank Williams’s 1953 death, worked as a Nashville session musician across two decades.
- Session credits include Patsy Cline’s “Walkin’ After Midnight,” Stonewall Jackson’s “Waterloo,” the Louvin Brothers’ “Cash on the Barrelhead,” Lefty Frizzell’s “Long Black Veil,” and Loretta Lynn’s “Blue Kentucky Girl.”
- Inducted into the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame in 1984.
- Died August 11, 2008, in Nashville, Tennessee, of complications from heart surgery and diabetes.
