Featured Player: Buddy Emmons in California

Buddy Emmons is considered one of the best steel guitarists of all time. Lloyd Green said of his colleague: "He's not an ordinary guy. In my opinion, Buddy Emmons is probably the most intelligent and talented musician who's ever played the instrument. He's like Picasso or Michelangelo. That might be laying it on a little thick, but he's just flawless in his playing. Nobody is the composite player he is. He was the first modern great steel player and nobody's surpassed him yet. Emmons just, by God, came along and sounded like a 1977 steel player when he came here in 1955."

In 1967, after more than a decade of doing studio work in Nashville and touring with country music legends such as Ernest Tubb and Ray Price, Buddy moved to Los Angeles. Here he recorded with a musically diverse group of artists such as The Carpenters, Nancy Sinatra, Gram Parsons, John Sebastian, and Ray Charles.

Here is a sampling of Buddy's work from this period: