Kenny Edwards

Musician · 1946–2010
Best known for Bass

Kenny Edwards was a guitarist, bass player, singer, songwriter and producer from the Los Angeles folk-rock scene. He was a founding member of the Stone Poneys with Linda Ronstadt and Bobby Kimmel, played bass and sang in Ronstadt’s bands from the mid-1970s, produced Karla Bonoff’s first album, and co-founded the group Bryndle with Bonoff, Andrew Gold and Wendy Waldman.

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He was born on 10 February 1946. In Los Angeles in the mid-1960s he met Kimmel, Ronstadt’s friend from Tucson, and the two began writing folk-rock songs together; when Ronstadt arrived, the three became the Stone Poneys, with Edwards on lead guitar. Nik Venet signed them to Capitol in the summer of 1966, and they made The Stone Poneys and Evergreen, Volume 2 in 1967. The second album included “Different Drum,” their only hit, which Venet had recorded with an arranger and session players rather than the band, and its success turned the group into a backdrop for Ronstadt. Edwards left for India in early 1968, during work on the third album.

Back in Los Angeles he joined Bonoff, Gold and Waldman in Bryndle, which recorded an album for A&M in 1970 with Chuck Plotkin producing; it was never released, and only one single, Bonoff’s “Woke Up This Morning,” came out of the sessions. All four went on to work closely with Ronstadt. Edwards played bass and sang harmony on her Heart Like a Wheel (1974), and he recorded and toured with her for about a decade from then on. He produced Bonoff’s debut album, Karla Bonoff (Columbia, 1977), and played guitar, bass and mandolin on it, and he was the main bass player on Trio (1987), Ronstadt’s album with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris, playing acoustic bass on most tracks. His session and touring work also took in Stevie Nicks, Don Henley, Brian Wilson, Warren Zevon, Art Garfunkel and Vince Gill.

Bryndle re-formed in the early 1990s, released its first album, Bryndle, in 1995 and toured the United States and Japan. Edwards also wrote music for television and film, among it work for Miami Vice and Crime Story, and his songs were recorded by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (“Mother of Love”) and Doug Stone (“Small Steps”). In 1997 he moved to Santa Barbara, where he toured as Bonoff’s accompanist, opened her shows with sets of his own and began a solo career, releasing Kenny Edwards (2002) and Resurrection Road (2009). He fell ill on tour with Bonoff in Colorado in August 2010 and died on 18 August, aged 64.

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