James Burton

He was born on August 21, 1939, in Dubberly, Louisiana, and grew up in nearby Shreveport, where as a boy he watched Hank Williams on the Louisiana Hayride. By thirteen he was teaching himself on a Fender Telecaster his parents had bought him, and by fourteen he was in the Hayride’s house band. An instrumental he played in local clubs became “Susie-Q” once bandleader Dale Hawkins put words to it, and the record was a national hit for Hawkins and Burton in 1957.

He then backed Bob Luman on the Hayride and on the road, and in Southern California played on the television show Town Hall Party. While he and Luman were rehearsing at Imperial Records in Hollywood, Ricky Nelson heard him and hired him for his band on the family’s television series, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. Burton played rhythm behind Joe Maphis at first and then took over lead, and he stayed with Nelson, on television and on many recordings, for eight years. In 1965 he joined the house band of the rock & roll show Shindig!, the Shindogs, and he joined the Wrecking Crew, the Los Angeles studio players behind Phil Spector’s productions, the Beach Boys and Sonny & Cher.

Burton adapted Merle Travis’s picking, which he had watched on Town Hall Party, and restrung his Telecaster with banjo strings on the top four strings so he could bend notes further; the result was the percussive style known as chicken pickin’. He also played slide guitar and dobro, recording an instrumental, “Swamp Surfer,” under the name Jimmy Dobro in 1963. He cut “Roll Out the Red Carpet” and “Open Up Your Heart” with Buck Owens in 1966 and played on Merle Haggard’s “Swinging Doors” (1966), “Branded Man” and “Lonesome Fugitive” (1967), “Sing Me Back Home” and “Mama Tried” (1968), and “Workin’ Man Blues” (1969). Haggard’s sessions with him were held at Capitol’s studio on North Vine Street in Hollywood; on April 8, 1969, he played dobro alongside Norman Hamlet’s steel and dobro on “California Cotton Fields,” produced by Ken Nelson.

In 1969 Elvis Presley asked him to put together and lead a band for his engagement at the International Hotel in Las Vegas, and Burton played in Presley’s TCB Band until Presley’s death in 1977. He played on Gram Parsons’s albums GP (1973) and Grievous Angel (1974), and afterward was a key member of Emmylou Harris’s Hot Band through the 1970s, while also playing in John Denver’s band. In the 1980s and 1990s he played shows with Jerry Lee Lewis and recorded and toured with Elvis Costello.

Keith Richards inducted him into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2001, in the Musical Excellence category, and he won a Grammy in 2009 for Best Country Instrumental Performance as one of the players on Brad Paisley’s “Cluster Pluck.” The Musicians Hall of Fame inducted him with the Wrecking Crew at its first ceremony in 2007, and the Country Music Hall of Fame inducted him in 2024. As of 2024 he was devoting much of his time to the James Burton Foundation, which supports music education.

• 2001: Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (Musical Excellence)
• 2007: Musicians Hall of Fame, with the Wrecking Crew
• 2009: Grammy, Best Country Instrumental Performance (“Cluster Pluck,” with Brad Paisley and others)
• 2024: Country Music Hall of Fame