Lloyd Green

Lloyd Lamar Green (born October 4, 1937) is an American steel guitarist noted for his extensive country music recording session career in Nashville performing on 116 No.1 country hits including Tammy Wynette's “D-I-V-O-R-C-E” (1968), Charlie Rich's “Behind Closed Doors” (1973), The Oak Ridge Boys’ “Elvira” (1981), and Alan Jackson's “Remember When” (2004).

Green was a one of an inner circle of elite recording studio musicians known colloquially as the Nashville A-Team.

Green was born on October 4, 1937 in Leaf, Mississippi, about 40 miles southeast of Hattiesburg.

He moved with his family to Mobile, Alabama at the age of four, where he began to take music lessons.

At age seven, he applied for lessons at the Oahu Music Company, but they did not take students under fourteen.

Oahu allowed a "test lesson" for him.

When they found his strong aptitude, they let him enroll.

He was an exceptional student, to the extent that Oahu used him in their promotional materials and newsletters.

Green said, "I became the poster child for the course when I was about 10 years old" (see photo).

About that time he received his first electric Hawaiian guitar (lap steel), a Rickenbacker Bakelite with an Oahu amplifier.

He had the ability to memorize songs quickly and was able to play them back exactly as his teacher had played them.

About this time, lap steel guitars were getting pedals added to become the new pedal steel guitar and Green made an improvised pedal to add to his lap steel using an automobile accelerator pedal.

He graduated from high school in 1955 and attended the University of Southern Mississippi.

Green said, "While in school, I was playing around Mississippi with Justin Tubb, the Wilburn Brothers, the Browns, Hank Locklin. . . It really whetted my appetite.” In 1956 at age 19, he shocked his parents when he decided to take a year off college and move to Nashville to pursue music. After the move, he roomed for a while with another future steel guitar great, Jimmy Day. A few months after the move, he met his future wife Dot Edwards from Columbia, Tennessee and they were married in 1957. They have remained together over five decades.

Green joined Faron Young's road band in December 1956 and stayed for 18 months.

He soon played steel guitar on his first session, George Jones' "Too Much Water" recorded in the newly-opened RCA Studio in Nashville.

After a one month tour with Ferlin Husky, with money tight, he swore never to tour again and temporarily gave up music to work as a shoe salesman, not playing his guitar for two years.

In a career beginning in the mid 1960s and spanning a quarter-century, Green performed on more than 5000 recordings helping to create hits for scores of artists such as Charley Pride, The Byrds, Johnny Cash, The Monkees, Don Williams, Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, and many others.

By the spring of 1963 he was ready to try music again.

Singer Roy Drusky offered him a job as Drusky's assistant working in the Nashville office of the music licensing company SESAC.

At that time, Green didn't have enough money to renew his expired musicians' union card until Fred Rose's widow renewed it for him.

The SESAC job put Green in the middle of the action on Nashville's Music Row.

He said, "...the first week I was there, Slim Williamson, who owned Chart Records, hired me for a demo and master session."

Green began working with a new artist, Lynn Anderson, whose hits for Chart led to her stardom on Columbia Records with hits such as "Rose Garden".

In 1965, Green recorded a demo of a song called "The Bridge Washed Out" for Decca recording artist Warner Mack.

Mack liked what Green played on the demo.

It was a sharp-edged rapid style on muted strings now known as "chicken pickin'".

Mack wanted to hire Green for the master session, but producer Owen Bradley objected.

Green was an unknown outsider at the time and Bradley wanted Pete Drake, who was a veteran studio player.

Warner persisted and Green got the job.

At the session, Bradley was not happy and said over the talkback, "Turn them damn highs off-a that steel! They're killin'my ears".

Bassist Bob Moore heard Green play and said, "Son, that's a career for you right there – there's your sound!"

Moore's positive sentiment was not unanimous– Bradley was not convinced and guitarist Grady Martin issued a one-word expletive.

However, when the record came out three months later, it went straight to number one and ushered Green into the circle of studio hit-makers.

Well-wishers congratulated Bradley on the hit's ground-breaking new sound and his answer was "Well, I really appreciate that. We knew we were on to something new when we cut it."

The unique style was copied by other steel players and remained in vogue for a few years thereafter.

For the next 15 years, Green remained an elite studio player averaging 400 sessions a year including a string of 17 years of performing on at least three No. 1 songs each year.

His 1968 performance on the Byrds' landmark album Sweetheart of the Rodeo, influenced generations of non-mainstream country guitarists.

Green was inducted into the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame in 1988.

He was featured on Ken Burns' Country Music documentary film in 2019.