Travis Wammack obit

Alabama music legend who played on rock, R&B and country hits, has died

 

He was not on the list.

Travis Wammack, a gifted and influential guitarist equally skilled at tasty playing and flash technique, has died. He was 81.

Wammack was a longtime pillar of the Muscle Shoals music scene, including with the FAME Gang, the studio musicians who followed the iconic Swampers as FAME Studios’ house band.

In recent years, Wammack faced health challenges including ankylosing spondylitis, a spinal disease.

Born in Walnut, Mississippi, Travis Wammack got his music career started in Memphis.

As a teenager, he built a makeshift fuzz-box, before guitar effects-pedals were widely produced. Prior to mass-produced light-gauge guitar strings, he swapped out his Gibson’s G-string with an A-tenor banjo-string to facilitate easier string bending.

Wammack also dropped a backwards vocal into the middle of his otherwise all-instrumental 1964 single “Scratchy,” before The Beatles popularized the trippy studio trick.

His breakneck guitar licks on that vinyl single’s B-side, “Fire Fly,” mixed chicken-pickin’, surf-rock and teenager braggadocio. A precursor to guitar-hero shredding.

Later, Wammack relocated to the Shoals, as that North Alabama area’s recording scene was booming. He went on to play on an array of Muscle Shoals hits by artists ranging from Clarence Carter to the Osmonds, Wilson Pickett to Bobbie Gentry to Mac Davis.

For example, Wammack can be heard on Carter’s iconic 1970 R&B ballad “Patches.” In 2018, Wammack told me, “I started out on ‘Patches’ playing a maraca, and then I overdubbed a guitar and some harmonica. And what a great song, what a great hit for Clarence Carter.”

Gentry’s country classic “Fancy,” also from 1970, was another memorable session. Gentry decided to not play her Martin acoustic guitar on the track, to focus on singing the song’s many lyrics.

So, FAME Studios mastermind and producer Rick Hall asked her if she’d mind if Wammack played her guitar. Gentry agreed. Wammack played acoustic on “Fancy,” which Reba McEntire later covered for a 1990 hit.

From 1984 to 1996, Wammack was pioneering piano-rocker Little Richard’s guitarist. He also wrote and played guitar on Richard’s swampy 1970 single “Greenwood, Mississippi,” off Richard’s album “The Rill Thing” [the misspelling is intentional].

In 2018, Wammack recalled, “I think Little Richard was in his prime when we did that album. He was singing his butt off. Me and [FAME Gang guitarist] Junior Lowe had written this song about two weeks before and we didn’t know Little Richard was coming to the studio.

“And lo and behold, Little Richard and his entourage walks into the studio. I had it [a demo of the song] on cassette and took it out and played it in my pickup truck and he said, ‘Travis, I’ve got to record that.’”

Travis Wammack drew inspiration from guitarists ranging from bluesman Freddie King to rocker Duane Eddy to country aces Merle Travis and Chet Atkins.

Fans of Wammack’s playing included the likes of Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant and Jimmy Page. Once, at a Little Richard concert in England, Plant and Jimmy Page were visiting with Richard backstage. Little Richard introduced the Zeppelin duo Wammack.

After hearing Wammack’s name, Plant and Page, who didn’t know before that Travis was in Richard’s band turned to each other and simply said, “‘Scratchy’,” referring to Wammack’s aforementioned early solo single.

In our 2018 interview, Wammack said while hanging with Page and Plant, “Jimmy told me ‘Scratchy,’ ‘Firefly,’ those are the ones that really inspired him to bear down [on guitar]. He said, ‘I could play ‘Scratchy,’ but I never could play [that single’s flipside] ‘Fire Fly.’’ What a compliment.”

In 2024, Wammack featured in AL.com’s “Alabama’s 20 greatest guitarists of all-time” list.

Outside of music, Wammack’s interests included hunting snakes, including cottonmouths and water moccasins, using a slingshot.

Whenever Travis caught rattlesnakes, he’d use their skin for making items like belts and guitar straps. He’d save the meat for cooking.

During our 2018 chat, he joked about how he first got into snake hunting back in the day. “Everybody else was doing drugs and drinking, and I’m chasing rattlesnakes and women.”

Not sure about snakes, but Wammack certainly found the right woman: Mitzi Wammack, his longtime wife. After his passing, Travis’ survivors include Mitzi and son Travis “Monkee” Wammack, Jr., a drummer who often accompanied his dad onstage.

In his final years, due to ankylosing spondylitis, which Mötley Crüe guitar legend Mick Mars has also dealt with, Wammack could no longer play guitar. In 2024, he auctioned off much of his guitar, amp and effect pedal collection.

FAME Studios collective FAME Gang included the likes of: Wammack, Lowe, keyboardists Clayton Ivey, James Hooker and Randy McCormick; percussionist Mickey Buckins; horn players Harvey Thompson, Ronnie Eades, Aaron Vernell, Harrison Calloway Jr.; bassists Jesse Boyce, Jerry Bridges, Jerry Masters and Bob Wray; and drummers Freeman Brown, Roger Clark and Fred Pouty.

According to Rodney Hall, Rick Hall’s son and FAME Studios general manager, the FAME Gang, “have played on records that have sold more than the Beatles.”

The FAME Gang was the studio’s third house band, but the first to be comprised of both white and Black musicians. Wammack told me in a 2019 interview (published 2025), “We never even acknowledged color. Most musicians, it’s just your heart and how you play.”