Edd Mayfield
Musician · Dawn, Texas
Best known for
Guitar
Edd Mayfield was a Texas-born guitarist and lead singer who served three separate stints with Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys in the 1950s, contributing distinctive timing and bass-runs lead-guitar style to roughly 20 Monroe sides before his sudden death from leukemia at age 32 cut his career short.
- Full name Thomas Edward "Edd" Mayfield; born April 12, 1926 in Dawn, Texas (Deaf Smith County, southwest of Amarillo).
- Played in the Mayfield Brothers Country Band in West Texas with brothers Smokey (Arlie) and Herbert before joining Bill Monroe.
- Joined Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys in 1951 after Carter Stanley's departure; first recording session October 28, 1951.
- Three separate tenures with the Blue Grass Boys spanning 1951–1958, with breaks for cattle ranching and rodeo work in Texas.
- Recorded approximately 20 sides with Monroe across sessions in 1951–52, 1953–54, and 1958, including the gospel album "I Saw the Light."
- Praised by contemporaries for distinctive timing and bass-runs lead-guitar style ahead of his peers; described as quiet and a skilled horseman.
- Married Jo Laverne McLain in 1948; sons Freddy (born 1950) and Carl (born 1953).
- Stricken with acute leukemia while on the road with Monroe in summer 1958 and died within three days at a hospital in Bluefield, West Virginia, age 32; buried in Dimmitt, Texas.