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On a trip to Texas in June 2007,
I was afforded the opportunity to have a chat with top
country fiddle player Johnny Gimble. For nearly seventy
years Johnny has performed with everyone from Bob Wills and
His Texas Playboys to jazz clarinettist Pete Fountain; from
country pioneer Floyd Tillman to country music super-star
George Strait. He played in the campaign band for Jimmie
Davis (composer of "You Are My Sunshine") during his
successful bid for governor of Louisiana in 1944. Once he
even played fiddle on a Paul McCartney track (his then
teenaged daughters were pretty excited about that one).
Johnny has a great sense of humour….asking
me where I came from I told him Yorkshire, England. “Oh
yeh” was his reply “that’s East Texas, across the creek!!!
(laughs) I played the Wembley Festival a couple of times.
Mervin Conn used to produce the show when I was in
Nashville. Steel guitar player Lloyd Green and I were a
team on that along with a whole lot of number one vocalists.
We were the only instrumentalists and the crowd there really
liked instrumental music. We played “San Antonio Rose” and
“Steel Guitar Rag”….they hadn’t heard it before! Then we
came back a few years later with harmonica player Charlie
McCoy. Charlie had a little trouble coming through security.
He had a little aluminium case and the security guard said..…what
is this??? Charlie said harps!!! He said I’m a musician
and I play harp (harmonica). He opened it up and he had
about twenty five harps…one for every key. The security
guard couldn’t understand why he needed more than one!”
“Security since that 9-11 thing has
really been a bitch on carrying stuff on board!!! I had a
little battery tuner in my mandolin case and it showed up on
the x-ray. So they made me stop and then they started going
through my fiddle case. I had a double case with two
fiddles. I was going to help them and show them that the
pockets didn’t have anything in there. He said…Don’t touch
it!...we’ll do that!!! I said O.K. sorry to trade jobs with
you!!!”
Johnny Gimble grew up on a farm in East
Texas, near Tyler, with his four musical brothers. “The
older ones started learning music. My oldest brother was
in the navy at that time. My next brother Jack was about
seventeen years old and my dad found a guitar for him. He
started a few cords on the guitar. Bill was the next oldest
and he started learning fiddle and mandolin. Jack was teaching
Gene (who’s a year older than me) to play guitar and Bill
was teaching me fiddle and mandolin. We just started playing
for fun and after we all came home from the service after
WWII we formed a little band called the Blues Wrestlers…….we
were wrestling blues…cheering people up. Then Jack wrote
a little theme song and so we were trying to book out dances.
We got a little radio program so we could advertise our
gigs…that was the standard procedure. We were at Houston
down near Bay City and there was a big Exxon oil refinery
with a lot of
 workers.
So we got a radio show and started advertising and they’d
come out to the dances.”
Johnny’s favourite music was western
swing and especially the music was Bob Wills! “From the
time we got a record player we bought every Bob Wills record
we could.” Johnny played with Bob Wills and The Texas Playboys
from 1949 -1951. “I had met Tiny Moore who had played fiddle
and electric mandolin with Bob. I was in Corpus Christie
with a little swing group and this booker, booked Bob Wills
for a concert and also after the concert they were going
to come over and finish the dance that we were playing at
the night club. So we were on the bandstand playing as they
were bringing their instruments in. Tiny heard me play and
at the intermission….they had Jessie Ashlock playing fiddle.
He said I think Jessie’s talking about leaving (the Playboys)
and I was wondering if you’d be interested in going to work
with the band. I told everyone later it was like, that if
you were out in the backyard playing sand-lot baseball and
someone said…would you like to go over to the New York Yankees???
Bob’s band was the top! I hadn’t met Bob. Guitar player
Eldon Shambling was the band manager, so he called me and
asked if i could go up to Austin where they were playing
at a big dance hall. So I went up and sat in with him. He
said…well you got the job if you want it! Go back and work
out your notice…everyone would work two weeks notice went
they quit. The first date was in Macalister, Oklahoma and
on the way I stopped off at Waco, Texas where they were
playing at a dance hall that I used to work at a couple
of years earlier. Bob was on the bandstand and he said….well
folks there’s a little fiddle player in the house tonight.
The boys have heard him play and they’ve hired him. He’s
going to play with us next week. They say he’s good…well
he darn sure better be
 (laughs).”
“We worked out of Oklahoma City and played
driving distance to around 200 miles. We played six night’s
a week and most of the time four-hour dances….we played
from nine till one. We’d finish up a dance and be back in
town by four or five in the morning, which would give us
time to rest before the broadcast at 12.30pm (radio broadcast).”
Johnny Gimble moved to Nashville in
1968 and worked there for ten years. “I recorded with all
the name artists there, such as Ray Price.” Before I moved
to Nashville, I’d recorded in Dallas and Columbia Records
had a producer Don Law…he was a Britisher! The one before
him was Art Satherley who was also from England. But, there
was a studio in Dallas that Don liked to record in, (Jim
Beck’s studio) which he did with Lefty Frizzell’s early
records. Anyone form the Southwest, he’d bring to Dallas to
record before Nashville became so famous for recording. So I
recorded in Dallas with Lefty Frizzell, Marty Robins and Ray
Price. So if there was anyone on Columbia where they used
the fiddle, they’d call me in! When I was in Dallas I was
playing a night club and I’d get calls to go into the
studio…sometimes at midnight. That was how I got acquainted
with studio work, so when I moved to Nashville I already had
a bit of experience.”
After Johnny left Nashville in July
1978, he played music wherever he could. Willie Nelson was
making the movie Honeysuckle Rose (released in 1980) and
he called Johnny Gimble to say they had a scene where they
needed a little dance band and Nelson asked Gimble to put
a band together. Johnny brought in piano player Curly Hollinsworth,
drummer Bill Mouse, Johnny’s son Dick and steel guitarist
Maurie Sanderson for the scene. “We played in the movie
and then I travelled up the road with Willie’s band for
six months. We played one nighters. Play a concert in Shreveport
and then get back on the bus and drive to Memphis or Nashville
some three or four hundred miles away and play a concert
there the next night……some of them are still doing that!
I spoke with Floyd Tillman (singer/songwriter) when I moved
back from Nashville. I was 52 years-old and Floyd was 60
or 62. We played some golf tournament together and I asked
him…are you doing any personal appearances? Floyd said…oh
 they
call me and if it sounds like it’ll be fun I go and do it.
So that is the way I kinda do it now! They call and sometimes
it pretty hard. We played at Elko, Nevada for the cowboy
poets gathering they have every January. It was pretty hard
flying out there. We flew to Salt Lake City, then hired
a car and drove two and half to three hours to Elko, hang
around, play two or three engagements and then reverse the
procedure to come home.”
Johnny Gimble is now 81years of age and
on Christmas Eve 1999 he suffered three strokes in quick
succession. “We were at home doing Christmas stuff and I got
to mumbling and fumbling. Barbara (Johnny’s wife) reminded
me we were putting money in envelopes for our grandchildren
for presents and she said that I couldn’t even count money.
She said something’s wrong with you, so they took me to the
hospital emergency room. They did a CAT scan and the doctor
said Mr Gimble you’ve had three tiny strokes in your right
frontal brain. I said does it have anything to do with this
(Johnny indicated his left arm to me) and he said it has
everything to do with your left side. So I was surprised
that I could play, because my hero J.R. Shatwell in San
Antonio had had a stroke that paralysed his left side and he
couldn’t play anymore. As long as I can make them think I
can play I’ll just keep on going!!!”
Johnny Gimble ‘can’ still play, maybe
not as he did at his peek, but he’ll still holds his own
with fiddle and mandolin on stage. And he’s a pretty good
singer to boot!!!!!!!
Big thanks to Johnny Gimble for taking
the time to talk to me before his evening performance at
Snyder Western Swing festival, Texas 2007.
http://www.johnnygimble.com/
Graham Lees
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