RIP Tom Brumley

By Robbie on October 21, 2009

The steel guitar is an unusually hard instrument to play. Owing to that and the clubby nature of Nashville session work, the ranks of the country steel greats are thin. There are only a few who, over decades-long careers in recording, have innovated valuable dialects that have lived echoingly on in the technique of all who subsequently sit down at the instrument. I am thinking specifically of four men, and only four, from the great 40-year-long period between Hank Williams's death and Garth Brooks's revolutionary rise: Buddy Emmons, Tom Brumley, Lloyd Green, and John Hughey. Remember, my criteria are prodigious innovation and a thorough and inescapable influence via records. There are a lot of dazzling and marvelously original players, such as Speedy West and Ralph Mooney, Jimmy Day and Curly Chalker, Winnie Winston and Herb Remington, who, for reasons trivial and obvious (geography, more time touring than recording, attachment to a single artist) or otherwise (alcoholism, crotchetiness), didn't play on the scores of hit records, and hundreds of just-plain records, on which Emmons et al performed. And many others I won't mention who did record a lot but are in my opinion unworthy of inclusion in that golden quartet.

One of the pleasures of my life has been to make friendships and records with this elite, with the regretted exception of Mr. Emmons. Tom and John both died a good while ago, Tom on February 6 of this year and John in 2007. I chanced to see Eric Ambel's fond and detailed reminiscence about Tom online, and was pained to realize that I had failed to note either man's passing here on my site. So let me attend belatedly to that, starting with Tom.

Tom broke out of construction work and into country music history when Buck Owens invited him into his back-up band, the Buckaroos, to replace Jay McDonald. (I had thought the year to be 1964, when "Together Again" was recorded and released; terrific-but-not-infallible Wikipedia states 1963.) Buck was at the start of a hit streak that would last into 1969, an achievement that cemented his, and Tom's, place in the annals. Besides "Together Again" with its groundbreaking 8 bars of crystalline melody in C#, shadowed provocatively with a third harmony in the lower octave, some of the songs Tom played on were "Tiger by the Tail," "Before You Go," "Sam's Place," "Roll Out The Red Carpet," "Open Up Your Heart," "Waitin' in Your Welfare Line," "Sweet Rosie Jones," "Who's Gonna Mow Your Grass," and "I Don't Care." After Buck he did a stint for 10 years with Ricky Nelson; "Garden Party" was the defining track. Then it was on to sporadic session work, and a three-year tenure with Chris Hillman's Desert Rose Band. His solidest hipster cred from his later years comes from his association with Dwight Yoakam, on all of whose records from 1987's Hillbilly Deluxe to 1997's Under the Covers he played. In the last 15 or so years of his life he increasingly minimized his session work, which he found less and less rewarding, and focused on his family show in Branson. (His father, Al Brumley, was the gospel patriarch of "I'll Fly Away" fame, and his brothers were also good musicians.)

When that call came from Buck, Tom told me that he asked for, and was granted, the weekend to mull it over. A secure job in a steady family business, versus traveling the world with its (I refer here to the world) hottest C&W singer, exemplifies what William James once called a "live option" -- a momentous and unfudgeable choice between equally plausible alternatives. The two days Tom took to make it, before shooting straight off to Japan, speak to his nature. He was the kind of canny, undemonstrative, straight-shooting character that is produced outside America's cosmopolitan zones. Glamor didn't sway him emotionally. He gamed the big things that came his way smartly and efficiently and stuck by his decisions -- see the length of his terms with the above acts, as well as his 48-year-long marriage to the lovely and just-as-canny Rolene.

I first met Tom in 1995, when I was in Springfield, Missouri working on tracks that would later be included in my record Country Love Songs. I have it in mind that he brought in a Fender Twin Reverb with JBL speakers, but I also recall that it was a small amp that he carried with one hand, so I could be wrong. Lou Whitney, in whose studio we were working, had recently used Tom on the country record that Jonathan Richman made with the Skeletons, and because of that and, needless to say, the Dwight and Buck connection, I was as excited as I could be. It took a while to bre ak the ice. Tom was suffering from a cold, and was in less than expansive spirits. Also Lou observed that cutting unfamiliar songs live-to-two-track didn't thrill him. (I had mailed cassettes of the songs ahead of me, but at this stage of my education was innocent of the general rule that session guys would just as soon offer you a massage with happy ending as listen to anything in advance of arrival.) Eventually he got switched on by Donny Thompson's remarkable guitar style, and his mood relaxed. By the time we assembled at the same place to work on my next record, the following year, he was officially in my corner, all smiles and stories, and (we had some big-label ballast in our budget this time) the steel playing was all overdubs.

Well, perhaps "stories" is an exaggeration -- Tom was a fairly taciturn man. "Summary abstracts" would be closer:

Buck Owens was a great man to work for.

Buck liked keying songs in guitar-unfriendly places, under the theory that they would stand out against the competition on the radio.

So the Buckaroos tuned down a half-step.

However, guitar-unfriendly keys aren't necessarily steel-guitar-unfriendly keys. The only time I heard Tom, or any steel player, remark with a small degree of exasperation on a key appearing on one of my charts was when we recorded "Raelene Wheeler," which ended with the steel playing solo-like flights in E. "E is the worst key on the steel guitar," he informed me. E? That's like saying a flattop is the hardest haircut to give. Which, now that I think of it, a few barbers have told me. I find it hard to credit either statement -- can I hear from some steel players on this?

Don Rich liked to eat steak in restaurants. "First," said Tom solemnly, "he would turn it white with salt, and then black with pepper. Always."

The new country music they've got today is just terrible. Whoa -- he said it -- not me! Must be true.

Buck liked to record new songs unrehearsed, under the theory that the band would play them with more focus.

Partly as a result of that working method, there are albums of Buck's that Tom claimed never to have "removed from the cellophane," so convinced he was of the inadequacy of his work.

The Under the Covers record was a source of pride. "There's stuff on there you won't even recognize, horns, wild arrangements, one that even sounds like Frank Sinatra," he said, shaking his head. When I got to hear the record later on, I agreed with his opinion on the boldness and the quality. 

Tidbits like these, as much as they amused and amuse me, don't get at the fellow's essence, which, like any player's, was most enduringly and ideally expressed in his tone, touch, and sense of musical construction and conversation. Listen to "Together Again" and you may hear some un-Brumleyesque qualities at the margins -- a tense brittleness, youthful joy his  own prowess (despite the ten years of gigging and honing already behind him), delight in the explosive newness of the split-screen harmonies. (Lloyd Green told me that when Buck and Tom came to the Opry after the record's release, all the steel players in the building assembled around Tom as he played to marvel and observe his technique -- see "influence" above.) At the precarious point of the two-bar rest (counting in 6/8) at the top of Tom's solo you can hear him rush the time out of joint and into an unknown place, which the band smooths back into place on re-entry.

Then listen for comparison to "Garden Party" and hear the sound that was more Tom's point of destination, a mellow, self-assured sound stripped of dross and secure in the power of a clear and compelling narrative. The timefeel had moved to the far side of the beat, and it stayed there. This was a cosmic, ego-less style, unconcerned with whatever might be competing with it on the radio. If it weren't an instantly recognizable sound you could say that it aimed, even in solos, to fit in, not stand out. It paid a lot of attention to the vocal melody, didn't seem at great pains, if you took it note by note, to sidestep the common book of go-to phrases for either guitar or steel guitar.

This threw me a little, I confess, the first few times I recorded with Tom. His solo on "Tears Only Run Way" seems to wind down before the solo officially ends; you can hear his right hand fall to rest well over a bar in advance of the bridge. On "Dirty-Mouthed Flo" his 8 bars are pretty sprightly, in accordance with the tempo and mood, and yet -- he didn't really do sprightly. No matter the tempo, his voice, particularly after the Buck years, is steady and calm. On playback I wondered if it was an incongruity -- except for Tom the song skitters along like an idiot on an Arctic sleighride. Some years later, I heard the song by accident and without at first recognizing it, starting mid-steel-solo; thus getting a more objective angle on it, I understood that passage to be the highlight of the song, the part where it most approximated music. The story that solo tells is of more interest than the lyrics.

This being so, I guess smart artists may use musicians like Tom as goads. (Tom Goad!) Buck, Ricky, Dwight -- I admire them and wouldn't slight them, but there are tons of talented celebrities out there, a new one every season in fact. Rarer are the ones who can compress a world of meaning into 8 or 16 bars, without recourse to words. Thanks, Tom.