Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 2,216

This is the grave of Walter Haynes.

Haynes was born in 1928 in Kingsport, Tennessee. He got interested in the fiddle and then the steel guitar, one of the great innovations of the country music world to global music. Yes, the steel guitar came out of Hawaiian music, after the Spaniards introduced the guitar to Hawaiians and they did their own thing with it. That’s absolutely important. But the steel guitar’s history is a lot like the banjo in this case. The banjo was an African instrument that slaves brought over. While traditions of black banjo did hang on–and similar instruments are still played in Africa–whites took the banjo and did something entirely different with it in Appalachia, creating the classic instrument of old-time music and then bluegrass. The steel guitar came to the U.S. in a slightly different manner–it was also through the expansionist tendencies of Americans to dominate the world. This time it was imperialism, but the rise of America’s expansion into Asia and Latin America brought with it exoticism that extended into popular culture. So there was a little boom in Hawaiian-based productions and plays and music and the steel guitar came with that and stuck, even as the Hawaiian influences soon became less obvious. These are always interesting stories.

Haynes became a steel guitarist only after he moved to Nashville. That happened in 1949, when he decided to take a shot in Nashville. You think it’s tough in Nashville as an aspiring songwriter–and it is. But try making into Nashville as a session musician. This was almost impossible. The so-called Nashville A Team, a group of truly fantastic musicians, though really a set of good but somewhat interchangeable musicians rather than a band, had the sessions totally locked up, especially by the years shortly after Haynes arrived. These were the folks who producers such as Harold Bradley and Chet Atkins used to make their countrypolitan sounds that would dominate Nashville radio by the early 50s.

Haynes was one of the few guys to really make it work. He got hired as the fiddle player in Paul Howard and His Arkansas Cotton Pickers. This was a band that got a lot of slots on the Grand Ole Opry, even if they didn’t have tons of hits. This was the band that took what people such as Bob Wills were doing in what became known as western swing and brought it into mainstream country music. So it was a good gig. Haynes roomed with Billy Bowman, who played lap steel in the band. Now, at this very time, Bowman was working up how to play the new models of steel guitar–pedal steel. Haynes learned with him, as he was fascinated with this great instrument and its sounds. And have you ever not been happy to hear a steel guitar in a band? I always love to see it.

Bowman wanted to play with Wills and then did. Meanwhile, Haynes had a stint in the military, though he was out by 1951. While in the military, he switched his focus from fiddle to steel. He came back and soon got a job with Little Jimmy Dickens, one of the big hitmakers of the early 50s. Haynes’ pedal steel became a big part of Dickens’s sound on a lot of his classic recordings, most notably “We Could.”

Haynes basically became a Nashville insider, a member of the A-Team, and someone who could write a song too. He was in the Grand Ole Opry house band and that was a steady of work as existed in country. Not bad. He worked not only with Dickens but also as the steel guitarist for such stars as Ferlin Husky and Webb Pierce. Eventually, he allowed Buddy Emmons, widely considered to be the most important steel guitarist in country music history, to replace him with Dickens, but by this time, Haynes was working so consistently with the Opry that it doesn’t seem to have mattered too much to him, or at least from the limited sources I can find.

If we know Haynes for two things at this point–and we don’t, I’d be surprised if any readers of this site have even heard of him–is for his work on Patsy Cline’s recordings and one truly great song he wrote. Owen Bradley had Haynes on his recordings of many of Cline’s hits, including “Crazy,” “She’s Got You,” and “San Antonio Rose.” The first two are among the greatest songs in country music history. People who festishize A Man And His Guitar have long complained about what Bradley did to the industry with his lush sounds, but these are just perfect recordings that work in part because of the recordings. Haynes is critically important to them. In fact, Bradley hired Haynes as his assistant and in 1969, Haynes took over Bradley’s job at Decca when the latter decamped for a new label, though by 1969, that style of country was beginning to get a bit stale.

The other thing that we should know Haynes for is writing “Girl on a Billboard,” one of the classic country songs of the mid 60s, which was a huge hit for Del Reeves in 1965. Wylie and Wild West does a great version of this as well on the fantastic 1997 album Way Out West, which I definitely recommend. “Girl on a Billboard” really is a fun song.

Eventually, Haynes became such an insider that he was named VP of MCA. Now, MCA had a lot of vice presidents, sure, but this was someone so in touch with what was going on in Nashville that he could have that kind of power in the record industry. Later, Haynes did a lot of recording work for Bill Monroe, working with him fairly consistently from 1970 to 1983. That wasn’t Monroe’s most fertile period, but he was becoming a senior figure (and accepting it, which was the problem for the irascible bluegrass pioneer) and releasing albums to a small but dedicated audience who wanted them.

In 1981, Haynes decided to give up Nashville. He stepped down from MCA and moved to Tyler, Texas, for reasons I don’t quite get. But that’s where he chose to retire. He taught a lot of music down there. I mean, if you wanted to be a country musician and you were in east Texas, who better to learn from? Haynes died there in 2009. He was 80 years old.

Let’s listen to a bit of Haynes’ work, even if he’s never the lead:

Walter Haynes is buried in Cathedral in the Pines Cemetery, Tyler, Texas.

If you would like this series to visit other members of the Nashville A-Team, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Ray Edenton is in Mineral, Virginia and Hank Garland is in Orange Park, Florida. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.