Larry Collins obit

Renowned Guitarist Larry Collins Passes

 

He was not on the list.

Rockabilly guitar great Larry Collins of the Collins Kids died January 5, 2024 at Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital in Santa Clarita, California. He was 79 and died from natural causes.

With his sister Lorrie, the Collins Kids became rockabilly royalty after joining the cast of Los Angeles television’s “Town Hall Party” in 1954, when Larry was 10 years old and his vocalist sister was 12. They were embraced as a talented teenage sensation in the country-music community and nascent rock-and-roll scene.

On the show, hosted by cowboy singer Tex Ritter, they appeared alongside country greats such as Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, Lefty Frizzell, and Marty Robbins, as well as young rock-and-roll musicians like Gene Vincent, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis. In ’56, the Collins Kids appeared as guests on the first televised broadcast of the Grand Ole Opry.

Larry mentored by Joe Maphis, also a regular on the show, and played the double-neck Mosrite guitar Maphis gave him throughout his life. He and Maphis recorded an album of guitar instrumentals together in ’58. Surf-guitar king Dick Dale studied Larry’s finger-picking style in early appearances on the TV show.

The Collins Kids’ rockabilly records from the ‘50s – “Hop, Skip and Jump,” “Hot Rod,” “Whistle Bait” – are classics of the genre. Their music also inspired fans outside the genre, like Bob Dylan, Lemmy Kilmister, and Jello Biafra.

The pair reunited to appear at a British rockabilly festival in 1993 and continued to perform occasionally until Lorrie retired in 2012. She died in 2018 and was inducted to the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame the following year.

Larry was born October 4, 1944, and the Collins family moved from Tulsa to Southern California in ’53, after Lorrie won a talent contest and was advised to relocate by Leon McAuliffe, steel player for Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys.

As a songwriter in the years following the Collins Kids, Larry scored with the 1972 hit by Tanya Tucker, “Delta Dawn,” a #1 pop hit and Grammy nomination the following year for Helen Reddy, and the 1981 David Frizzell/Shelly West country hit duet “You’re the Reason God Made Oklahoma,” a tribute to his home state, nominated for Song of the Year by the Country Music Association. He also wrote songs with Mac Davis covered by Davis, Nancy Sinatra, and Lou Rawls, among others.

Larry is survived by his daughter, Larissa, two grandsons, and his sister, Nicki.