Roy Lanham
Roy Lanham was a Kentucky-born guitarist whose career ran from Knoxville radio in the late 1930s through session work for King and Bullet in postwar Cincinnati to a quarter-century with the Sons of the Pioneers. He led the Whippoorwills, a swing-minded vocal and string group, played electric guitar on Delmore Brothers sessions for King, and made his own instrumental albums for NRC, Dolton and Sims.
Roy Howard Lanham was born on 16 January 1923 in Corbin, Kentucky. His brother Arvil gave him his first guitar, and at twelve he and a cousin took second place in a talent contest at the Renfro Valley Barn Dance. In 1939, while still in high school, he auditioned for a touring show led by Archie Campbell and left town with it the next day.
In Knoxville he worked at WNOX radio with the Stringdusters, a group that included Homer Haynes and Jethro Burns, later known as Homer and Jethro. The two were accomplished jazz players, and through them Lanham took up jazz standards and the playing of Charlie Christian, Django Reinhardt and George Barnes. He then formed the Fidgety Four with the mandolinist Doug Dalton, a group that worked a great deal with Hank Penny. When the band was hired to back the singer Gene Austin, Austin renamed it the Whippoorwills after the opening line of his hit “My Blue Heaven.” With Lanham on lead guitar and Dalton on mandolin, the Whippoorwills sang four-part harmony and mixed western swing, jazz and popular songs.
The group broke up for several years after the Second World War, and Lanham moved to Cincinnati, home of King Records, where he became a session guitarist. On 2 October 1946, at the E. T. Herzog studio, he played electric guitar for the Delmore Brothers alongside Jethro Burns, Homer Haynes, the bassist Roy Starkey and the harmonica player Wayne Raney; the session produced “Goin’ Back to the Blue Ridge Mountains” and “Freight Train Boogie.” He was back with the Delmores at King’s own studio in October 1947, with Merle Travis on second guitar, and again on 14 October 1949, with Raney and Lonnie Glosson on harmonicas. He also played on Wayne Raney’s records and on many Bullet sessions at Herzog, including rhythm guitar on Chet Atkins’s first record, “Guitar Blues.” Around November 1950 he cut a single for London with Dalton and the Tennessee Jaybirds, “Lanham Git Boogie.”
By 1951 the Whippoorwills were working in Hollywood, where they recorded transcriptions for radio, and on 21 April 1952 they backed Roy Rogers and Dale Evans at RCA Victor’s Hollywood studio. On the West Coast he kept up his session work: he played with Speedy West on the Browns’ 1955 recordings for Fabor, and he is credited on the Fleetwoods’ “Mr. Blue” and “Come Softly to Me.” His album Sizzling Strings (NRC), made with the Whippoorwills, dates from 1959, and the same year he recorded The Most Exciting Guitar at Western Recorders with Red Wootten on bass and Earl Palmer on drums; Dolton issued it in 1961. In 1960 and 1961 he played on Gordon Terry’s RCA Victor sessions, and from 1962 to 1964 he recorded fiddle-band singles with Harold Hensley, Jimmy Bryant and the banjo player Don Parmley. The Fabulous Roy Lanham, for Sims, followed from a session on 14 February 1963.
When the Sons of the Pioneers’ guitarist Karl Farr died in 1961, Lanham took his place, and the Western harmony group occupied the last twenty-five years of his career; he stayed until 1986. His style combined fast single-string solos played with a pick and chord melodies played with the thumb and fingers. Merle Travis and the jazz guitarist Barney Kessel both spoke admiringly of his playing, and Bear Family later reissued Sizzling Strings, The Fabulous Roy Lanham and The Most Exciting Guitar. He died on 14 February 1991, at 68.
