George French

Musician

George French, also credited as George French Jr., was a piano player on the early records of the Bakersfield country scene. He played on Buck Owens’s and Wynn Stewart’s Capitol sessions, and from 1963 to 1970 he was Merle Haggard’s pianist and a member of his band, the Strangers.

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He was at the piano on Buck Owens’s Capitol sessions in Hollywood from 9 October 1958 to April 1962, with Ralph Mooney on steel. He also played on Wynn Stewart’s sessions from May 1960 to April 1965, and on Bonnie Owens’s records from 1960 to 1967.

His first session with Haggard was around October 1963, at Audio Arts in Hollywood, where they cut “Sing a Sad Song.” He stayed on Haggard’s sessions until July 1970, and on a few in July 1967 he played drums instead of piano. One of his sessions, on 8 April 1969 at Capitol’s Hollywood studio, produced “California Cotton Fields.” He also played on the Strangers’ own records, from the September 1968 sessions for The Instrumental Sounds of Merle Haggard’s Strangers (1969) to the band’s July 1970 sessions.

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