ROOTS of Country Music

Wynn Stewart & The Tourists

Bobby Austin

Bobby Austin was an accomplished West Coast singer and songwriter, with a pleasant voice. Bobby made his first brief chart appearance in 1966. The song that brought him into the national spotlight was Apartment #9, which was named Song of the Year by the Academy of Country Music that year. Bobby recorded for Tally Records, Challenge Records and Capitol Records and placed singles on the Billboard chart from 1966 through 1972.

Bobby played bass guitar in Wynn Stewart band and he was with Wynn when he setup residence at the Nashville Nevada Club (Las Vegas, Nevada) in 1961. Bobby remained with Stewart until 1962. The earliest version of the group known as the Nashville Nevada Club Band, featured Roy Nichols (guitar), Ralph Mooney (pedal steel), Bobby Austin (bass), Peaches Price (drums), Jim Pierce (piano) and bandleader Wynn Stewart (guitar, vocals).

The band was augmented by singer Jackie Burns. In 1961 Jackie Burns, Wynn Stewart and the Nashville Nevada band entered the United Recording Corporation studio in Las Vegas to lay down some demo tracks in the hope of gaining a record deal for singer Burns. Stewart and Burns recorded a version of the Hank Thompson classic "Breakin' the Rules,’ while Jackie sang lead on several songs "Wild One"’ "Pennies From Heaven"’ and "The End Of The World."

In 1962, Capitol Records signed Bobby to a solo contract and he subsequently left the employ of Wynn Stewart to concentrate on his career. That prompted Wynn to hire a young Merle Haggard to replace him.

Bobby Wayne

Born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and raised in Tracy, California, Bobby spent most of his life around country music and he's been playing professionally since he was fifteen. Wayne wrote some of the material for the group.

Born Robert Wayne Edrington in Oklahoma, Bobby Wayne moved to California (CA) in 1947, where he established what would become a long history in California country music. He played with various groups starting in the late 1950s, then met Dennis Hromek (member of Merle Haggard's Strangers), with whom he started a group called the Smith Brothers, based out of the Modesto, CA area, in the early 1960s.

Bobby and Dennis Hromek, in the minds of many historians, have more or less been thought of as a pair, as they traveled together from group to group. 

Around 1965 Freddie Hart offered the Smith Brothers a road gig as his band the Heartbeats. They toured with Hart until the bookings dwindled, then joined Wynn Stewart in 1966, becoming members of his road band the Tourists.

The first session Bobby Wayne recorded with Stewart resulted in the smash hit, It’s Such a Pretty World Today, the biggest of his career. Bobby would record many sessions with Stewart in 1966 and 1967 and even recorded an unreleased instrumental called Spittin’ Guitar, showing his lead guitar prowess, which was eventually released on Bear Family’s Wynn Stewart box set.

The Tourists eventually wound up joining Buck Owens’s roadshow and recording with Dick Curless, without Wynn. When that fizzled out, the pair of Bobby Wayne and Dennis Hromek split up for a while, with Bobby forming Bobby T. Adams and the Common People at the Nashville Nevada Club in Las Vegas and Hromek joining the Palomino house band, Red Rhodes and the Detours, in North Hollywood, CA. 

Dennis Hromek

Dennis Hromek was the mainstay bass player for three solid years with the Strangers, where he played on a multitude of hits and the last four Strangers solo albums. Often paired by historians with guitarist Bobby Wayne, the two had a long and storied history together, starting with their first combo the Smith Brothers, based out of Modesto, California in the early 1960s.

Hromek and Bobby Wayne joined Freddie Harts Heartbeats in 1965 and toured with them until the bookings dwindled, at which point they were drafted by Wynn Stewart and his Tourists in 1966.

The first session that Hromek and Wayne played on with Wynn Stewart was the biggest hit of his career, Its Such a Pretty World Today. The pair continued with Stewart for two years, cutting many records with him, eventually touring as the Tourists without Wynn Stewart, as part of Buck Owenss roadshow, until that fizzled out sometime around 1968.

George French

Gordon Terry

(fiddle)

(died Apr. 9, 2006)

Gordon Terry was a young prodigy and fiddle champion from Alabama who moved to Nashville, Tennessee (TN) in the early 1950s and toured with Faron Young before moving to the Los Angeles, California area in the late 1950s, where he joined the cast of the Town Hall Party television show.

Terry recorded a string of good, but unsuccessful, singles under his own name and eventually he became a fiddle player extraordinaire for many country stars, including Merle Haggard.

Terry semiretired in 1983 due to ill health and bought a farm south of Nashville, Tennessee in Pulaski, Tennessee. He died at his daughters house nearby on April 9, 2006.

Helen "Peaches" Price

(drums, 1961-1965, 1968)

Peaches Price was a well-respected female drummer in the Los Angeles, California (CA) area who began playing in the mid-1950s with various local acts.

She is probably best remembered as the drummer for Wynn Stewart, playing on nearly every session he did from 1961 to 1965 and again in 1968, part of the classic lineup of the band that included Ralph Mooney on steel guitar, Roy Nichols on lead guitar, Bobby Austin on bass, and Gordon Terry on fiddle.

In 1963, as a member of Wynn Stewarts band, she played drums on one of Merle Haggard's earliest sessions for Tally Records. She then played on every Haggard session for the next two years, which included the hits Sing a Sad Song, (My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers and Swingin Doors.

Jackie Burns

Jim Pierce

Jody Payne

(guitar)

Alabama-born Jody Payne toured with the Strangers in 1971, and even though it was a short association, Payne is featured on the Land of Many Churches album.

Payne came up through the ranks of Wynn Stewarts Tourists, following the lead of Dennis Hromek and Bobby Wayne, before he joined the Strangers.

Payne is perhaps best known as the lead guitarist for Willie Nelson, a job that he took shortly after leaving Haggard's band and has held ever since.

Merle Haggard

(guitar, 1960)

In 1962, Capitol Records signed Bobby Austin to a solo contract and he subsequently left the employ of Wynn Stewart to concentrate on his career. That prompted Wynn to hire a young Merle Haggard to replace him.

Merle Haggard was playing for Wynn Stewart at the Nashville Nevada Club in Las Vegas, Nevada in the early 1960s.

Eventually the gig ended and the entire band, including George French Jr. on piano, joined Merle Haggard in the studio and on the road.

Ralph Mooney

(steel guitar)

One of the most legendary steel guitar players of all time, Ralph Mooney, was born in 1928 in Duncan, Oklahoma, but moved to California as a teenager in the 1940s. He began playing steel guitar after hearing Leon McAuliffe of Bob Willss Texas Playboys.

Based around Los Angeles, California (CA) in the 1950s, Mooney had an easily recognizable bent-single-note style on the pedal steel that made him a very in-demand player. He became the in-house steel guitarist for Capitol Records, where he cut an impressive array of sessions.

Wynn Stewart brought Ralph Mooney to that first Capitol session to augment Ken Nelson's session men.

In 1955 Mooney wrote the hit Crazy Arms, which became a massive hit for both Ray Price. His pedal steel began to be heard on records by Wanda Jackson, Skeets McDonald, Wynn Stewart, Rose Maddox, the Collins Kids and especially Buck Owens. His style on Bucks early hits became part of the signature Buck Owens sound.

Mooneys association with Haggard began in 1963, when he played on the Sing a Sad Song session for Tally Records, which was essentially the Wynn Stewart Nashville Nevada Club house band backing Haggard. Mooney then played on all of Merle's early hits, including (My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers, Swingin Doors, The Bottle Let Me Down, and many other tracks in the 196567 period.

Roy Nichols

Roy Nichols made his way to Bakersfield, California (CA) from Fresno, CA in the days when Bakersfield was just starting to boom. Distinctive in his style throughout his career, he made a name for himself by supporting Lefty Frizzell, Wynn Stewart and Merle Haggard. 

Roy was lead guitarist for Merle Haggard & the Strangers. He played back-up for Wynn Stewart for five years, before joining the Strangers, where he spent more than two decades. 

Roy Ernest Nichols was born in Chandler, Arizona, in 1932. After moving to Fresno, CA as a young boy, Nichols took up the guitar and by the age of sixteen was proficient enough to play on a local radio show hosted by DJ Barney Lee, where Nichols' expertise on the strings was heard by Fred Maddox, bass player and leader of the Maddox Brothers and Rose. Maddox offered the youngster a job and Nichols began what would be a lifelong career in music. 

Nichols played with many local San Joaquin Valley acts, but his next major touring job was with Lefty Frizzell, who by the time Roy joined the band in 1954 was a huge star. 

Nichols found considerable work as a sideman and recorded a few sides with the Farmer Boys for Capitol Records in Hollywood, California. His flashy solo on the Farmer Boys 1955 recording of Charming Betsy is one of the fastest country guitar solos ever recorded and in fact may equal or surpass anything that Jimmy Bryant ever recorded. 

After his stint with Frizzell, Nichols joined the Cousin Herb Henson’s Trading Post television show in Bakersfield, CA where he remained lead guitarist until Henson died in 1963 of an aneurism. During that time Nichols rubbed shoulders and played with everyone from local Bakersfield stalwarts Buck and Bonnie Owens to Billy Mize and Cliff Crofford, as well as nearly every artist who toured through Bakersfield and appeared on the show. 

Nichols took other jobs to supplement his income and in 1961 he began a long association with honky-tonk legend Wynn Stewart. Nichols performed with Stewart at his Nashville Nevada Club in Las Vegas, Nevada for several years, where he famously asked the visiting Merle Haggard to get up and play a few songs during an intermission (a chance meeting that resulted in Merle's first break, playing bass with Wynn Stewart and using Stewart’s composition Sing a Sad Song as his first hit record).

Nichols would record and tour with many acts in the early 1960s. Between 1961 and 1964 he recorded several sides with Rose Maddox (many of which also featured future Stranger Norm Hamlet on steel guitar), including the entirety of her Big Bouquet of Roses album (LP), the Alone With You LP, and several single releases. 

In 1961, possibly through the Maddox connection (Rose Maddox joined the Johnny Cash road show in 1961), Nichols toured with Johnny Cash and was the lead guitarist on Cash's hit Tennessee Flat-Top Box, recorded at Radio Recorders in Hollywood, CA.

Nichols also recorded with Wynn Stewart extensively between 1962 and 1965, though he does not appear on either of Stewart's big hits, Wishful Thinking from 1961 (right before Nichols began recording with Stewart) and It’s Such a Pretty World Today from 1967 (right after Nichols left to tour with Haggard full time). Nonetheless, Nichols contributed some wonderful solos to many of Stewart’s records, such as Donna on My Mind, Halfway in Love and Take It or Leave It. 

Roy Nichols is famous for his use of the Fender Telecaster guitar, a guitar that he (as well as James Burton) used to create the trebly, biting twang that defines 1960s country. Roy also had a custom-made Mosrite double-neck guitar with his name on it that he played often in the early 1960s. 

Capitol Records recorded a live album in September 1963 at the Bakersfield Civic Auditorium in honor of the tenth anniversary of Cousin Herb Henson’s Trading Post, released under the inappropriate title Country Music Hootenanny (a title Capitol Artists and Repertoire (A&R) man Ken Nelson fought against and lost).

Nichols was the lead guitarist in the house band, appearing on tracks behind such acts as Glen Campbell, Roy Clark, Rose Maddox, Joe and Rose Lee Maphis and Merle Travis. The album also represents the only track ever released under Roy Nichols' name, a virtuosic instrumental version of the old-timey standard Silver Bell, incorrectly listed on the cover as Silver Bells.  

Nichols retired from playing, with his poor health being a major factor. He did appear in the PBS documentary The Bakersfield Sound, playing guitar behind Fred and Rose Maddox and he appeared live for one last star-studded night of legendary Bakersfield musicians at the Palomino Club in North Hollywood, CA in 1992. The Academy of Country and Western Music honored Nichols with nominations for Guitarist of the Year several times. 

In 1996 he suffered a major stroke and was confined to a wheelchair and on July 3, 2001, he died. It was an event sadly unreported in most newspapers and the media, largely due to Chet Atkins’ death only days before. 

-Researched, compiled and written by Richard Bell, Roots of Country Music, Dec. 2, 2011.

The Nashville Nevada Band

(L-R) Bobby Austin, Roy Nichols, Wynn Stewart, George French, Peaches Price, Ralph Mooney, Carl Mortensen-club owner.