Lewis Talley

Talley was the guitarist in the house band at the Blackboard, a Bakersfield nightclub, where Owen played steel guitar. With Owen and Billy Barton he wrote “A Dear John Letter,” first recorded by Owen and Bonnie Owens; that small-label record went nowhere, but Talley and Owen bought the rights to the song, and on 19 May 1953 at Capitol’s Hollywood studio Jean Shepard and Ferlin Husky recorded it with Owen, Tommy Collins and Talley on guitars. The same circle backed Shepard through 1955, with Talley now on steel guitar, and he was one of the guitarists on Tommy Collins’s Capitol sessions from June 1953 to June 1955, alongside Owen, Husky and Buck Owens.

Talley and Owen founded Tally Records in 1955 and soon built Bakersfield’s first recording studio. Owen signed Haggard to the label, which issued his early singles “Sing a Sad Song,” “Sam Hill” and “(My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers,” and the cousins sold Haggard’s Tally recordings to Capitol in 1964. Talley stayed with Haggard. From August 1965 he played guitar on most of Haggard’s Capitol sessions, among them “California Cotton Fields” (8 April 1969), “Workin’ Man Blues” (16 May 1969) and the studio “Okie from Muskogee” (17 July 1969), alongside Roy Nichols, Norman Hamlet and, on the 1969 dates, James Burton.

In 1981 Talley and Haggard co-produced the Hollywood sessions for Haggard’s Epic album Big City, and in 1982 Talley was again co-producer on Nashville sessions including “Going Where the Lonely Go.” That November he played guitar on Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard’s “Pancho and Lefty,” in a band with Grady Martin, Reggie Young and Chips Moman. He also drove Haggard’s tour bus.