Chip Young obit

Chip Young, Legendary Nashville Session Guitarist and Producer, Dies at 76

 

He was not on the list.

More sad news out of Nashville this weekend: Legendary country session guitarist, producer and engineer Chip Young, famous for his thumb-style picking chops heard on recordings such as Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” and Elvis Presley’s “Guitar Man,” has died. Nearly a month after undergoing triple-bypass surgery, Young (aka Jerry Stembridge) died Saturday night at St. Thomas hospital in Nashville, his former son-in-law, local singer-songwriter Bobby Bare Jr. tells the Scene. He was 76.

“Just try and imagine Dolly Parton's ‘Jolene’ without Chip Young's thumb,” Bare Jr. says. “It's impossible. Chip was one of the best, hardest-working session picker/producer/engineers Nashville has ever seen. But he was even better at being a Granddad, family man and a Christian. His family will miss him dearly.”

"Chip Young was a quintessential Nashville Cat and a true southern gentleman,” guitarist Chris Scruggs tells the Scene. “He was a master of his craft yet was without any hint of ego or self-importance, which made him an invaluable asset in the studio, both behind the board and in the band. Younger players could learn a lot from him, both musically and on a personal level, too. His superb musicianship and warm smile be sorely missed."

Many of Young’s other fellow musicians posted remembrances on social media as word of his passing spread Sunday.

“So sad to learn we lost another great guitar player, Chip Young. Chip played on tons of my records. This is such a sad day,” guitarist, producer and singer-songwriter Steve Wariner tweeted.

“[Chip] played on a bunch of records in my collection and he was one of the nicest guys I've had the pleasure of meeting in this business,” Long Players leader and Music City renaissance man Bill Lloyd wrote in a Facebook post. “Even with his health issues, he came out to see Radney Foster and I play a local gig at Grimey's Record store a couple years back.”

“I'm so sad to have to post this, but Chip Young passed away last night,” fellow thumb-style great Eddie Pennington wrote of Young on Facebook. “He was one of the best people I've ever [known] in my life, and was a super guitar player. He played on so many hit records that there is no way Facebook would hold all of it.”

Indeed. Born Jerry Marvin Stembridge in Atlanta in 1938, Young got his start as a prodigy of Jerry Reed and Chet Atkins. He went on to amass an arms-spanning list of recording credits — one of the most extensive in all of country music — starting with appearances on Bob Morrison’s Home Again and Elvis Presley’s second album, Elvis, in 1956, and stretching all the way until the last decade, during which he appeared on recordings by Todd Snider, Candi Staton and My Morning Jacket. Young backed MMJ on the band's cover of Shel Silverstein's "Lullabies, Legends and Lies," from the Bare Jr.-produced 2010 Silverstein tribute album Twistable, Turnable Man. The track was recorded at RCA Studio B.

In between, Young, famous for his thumb-style (or Travis-picking style) put his nimble fingerprints on records by Willie Nelson, Jerry Lee Lewis, Charlie Louvin, Tony Joe White, Bobby Bare, Nancy Sinatra, Leon Russell, Carl Perkins, Waylon Jennings, Charlie McCoy, Kris Kristofferson, Earl Scruggs, George Jones, Guy Clark, Ronnie Milsap, The Oak Ridge Boys, Tanya Tucker, Skeeter Davis, J.J. Cale, Eddy Arnold and many others. Among his most famous performances, in addition to Parton’s “Jolene” and the many recordings he cut as a member of Elvis’ studio band from 1965 to 1977, are Charley Pride’s “Kiss an Angel Good Morning” and Vern Gosdin’s 1983 feel-good classic “Way Down Deep.”

Young also built an impressive studio discography in the control room, as producer or engineer on records by Delbert McClinton, Jimmy Buffett, Joe Ely, Larry Gatlin, Tom T. Hall, Reba McEntire and the Statler Brothers. In 1974, he produced and played on Billy Swan’s Farfisa-slathered classic “I Can Help” at his Murfreesboro studio, Young’un Sound. He was also a member of the late ’60s/early ’70s country-psych-pop ensemble The Neon Philharmonic.

“Chip was my employer for over twenty years, but more important than that, he was my dear friend,” veteran Nashville engineer Glenn Rieuf wrote on Facebook Sunday evening. “We shared a lot of our dreams through his music and his Young'un Sound Studio. Chip loved the thumb-picking style of guitar pickin' and he was very good at it. It was a passion that blossomed into his later years.”

In 2009, Young was inducted into the National Thumpickers Hall of Fame. A year later he was honored as part of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s Nashville Cats: A Celebration of Music City Musicians series.

Funeral services will be held at Trevecca Community Church of the Nazarene in Nashville tomorrow, Dec. 23, at 10 a.m., with internment to follow at Woodlawn Memorial Park. A visitation for family and friends takes place tonight at the church from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Young’s death is the latest in what’s been a tragic month in the world of influential session musicians. The news comes just one week after the death of famed Elvis Presley backup singer Milly Kirkham, which came just days after Time Jumpers singer Dawn Sears succumbed to lung cancer and weeks following the deaths of Rolling Stones saxophonist Bobby Keys and Small Faces/Faces keyboardist and session great Ian McLagan.