Buddy Emmons

Biography

27 January 1937, Mishawaka, Indiana, USA. A multi-instrumentalist and sometime singer, Emmons began playing the fiddle when he was 10 years old. Encouraged by his father, he switched to a lap-top steel guitar and then graduated to bigger models. However, he states, ‘I wanted to be a boxer, but when I found out how easy it was to play and how hard it was to box, I changed my mind.’ When only 18, he stepped in for Walter Haynes, steel guitarist with Little Jimmy Dickens, on a local date. As Haynes wanted to leave the band, Emmons took his place. In 1957, he and Shot Jackson built a steel guitar from scratch, the Sho-Bud, and Emmons subsequently gave his name to a steel guitar company. Emmons played with Ernest Tubb’s Texas Troubadours (1957-62) and Ray Price’s Cherokee Cowboys (1962-68), and he played on records by Ray Price (‘Nightlife’), George Jones (‘Seasons Of My Heart’, ‘Who Shot Sam?’) and Faron Young...

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