As one of the most influential session guitarists in musical history, Reggie Young enjoyed a front row seat as Beatlemania invaded America, played on some of Elvis Presley's most iconic anthems, helped craft the sound of Southern Soul and, throughout an extraordinary career, supplied the twanging licks to over 100 top ten US hits.
Born in his grandmother's house in the Missouri Bootheel in 1936, Young grew up in Osceola, Arkansas and was introduced to music by his father who played a Hawaiian-style lap steel guitar. Moving to Memphis with his family when he was 14, Reggie was given his first National flat-top guitar for Christmas that year, and when his neighbour made him an amplifier out of old jukebox parts, he was soon out playing at dances and barbecue joints with his first proper band Bud Deckleman and the Dreamers. Inspired by his hero Chet Atkins and the R&B sounds he heard pouring out of the clubs on Beale Street, Young got his first big break when he played on regional hit 'Rockin' Daddy' in 1956 with rockabilly outfit Eddie Bond and The Stompers and was then taken on a tour across the US as part of a package show headlined by Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins. He was also a member of Johnny Horton's honky tonk trio who performed on the popular Louisiana Hayride radio show, before joining the pioneering rock and roll group the Bill Black Combo and scored national hits in 1959 with the instrumental tracks 'Smokie, Part 2' and 'White Silver Sands'. He was drafted into the US army the following year, and after returning from serving in Ethiopia he took on studio work in Memphis, until The Beatles turned up in America in 1964, and requested that the Bill Black Combo open for them on their first US tour. Drawing giant crowds of screaming teen-boppers, it was a pivotal tour in an era that saw The Beatles change the face of pop music, and the opportunity also led to Young and the band heading to play in Europe on a line-up that also featured The Kinks and The Yardbirds with a 17-year-old Eric Clapton.
Life on the road didn't really suit Young, though, and it was as a session player at Chips Moman's American Sound Studio in Tennessee that he excelled and helped shape a stunning number of landmark hits between 1967 and 1971. As lead guitarist of the house band The Memphis Boys, Young's funky, twanging soulful Telecaster riffs lit up iconic records such as Dusty Springfield's classic version of 'Son of a Preacher Man', Otis Redding's 'Sitting On the Dock of the Bay' and Neil Diamond's 'Sweet Caroline'. He was also part of the 1969 'Elvis in Memphis' album and played on classics such as 'Suspicious Minds' and 'In the Ghetto'. The studio became known for encapsulating the era-defining 'Memphis Sound', which somehow melded together country twang, smooth R&B grooves and lilting Delta blues licks.
He moved on to Nashville in the mid-1970s, and played on Dobie Gray's 'Drift Away', Waylon Jennings' 'Luckenbach, Texas' and Willie Nelson's 'Always On My Mind', and in the 1990s he ended up touring with the supergroup The Highwaymen, formed by Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson. He later collaborated with his wife, cellist Jenny Lynn Hollowell on a self-released a record called 'Be Still' in 2008 and finally released his debut solo album 'Forever Young' in 2017 before dying from heart failure in January 2019 at his home in Leiper's Fork, Tennessee aged 82.
