Buddy Emmons "Steel guitar jazz" (1963)

Buddy Emmons

Buddy Emmons earned a place among Nashville's elite as one of the finest steel guitar players in the business. Born in Mishawaka, IN, he first fell in love with the instrument at age 11 when he received a six-string lap steel guitar as a gift. As a teen, he enrolled at the Hawaiian Conservatory of Music in South Bend, IN, and began playing professionally in Calumet City and Chicago at age 16. In 1956, Emmons went to Detroit to fill in for Walter Haynes during a performance with Little Jimmy Dickens; soon afterward he was invited to join Dickens' Country Boys. He appeared with them a few times on The Grand Ole Opry and recorded with them on a few singles, including "Buddy's Boogie" (1957). He also recorded a pair of solo singles for Columbia, "Cold Rolled Steel" (1956) and "Silver Bells" (1957).
In the late '50s, Emmons began playing occasionally with Ernest Tubb's band on Midnight Jamboree. In 1963, he began a five-year stint with Ray Price & the Cherokee Cowboys, and in 1965 teamed up with fellow steel player Shot Jackson to record the LP Steel Guitar & Dobro Sound. This led the two to create the Sho-Bud Company, which sold an innovative steel guitar that used push-rod pedals. In 1969, Emmons joined Roger Miller's Los Angeles-based band as a bass player. When not touring with Miller, he did session work for a variety of artists. He quit Miller's band in 1973 and signed a solo contract, releasing several albums in the late '70s.
After 1978, Emmons began playing for a number of small labels, where he and Ray Pennington occasionally collaborated with some of Nashville's finest sidemen as the Swing Shift Band. In 1993, Emmons began touring with the Everly Brothers. He continued to play in recording sessions throughout the '90s and into the new millennium, but was forced to stop playing around 2001 due to a repetitive motion injury. Emmons fully recovered but decided not to return to regular session work, preferring to record only with selected artists and to perform intermittently. 

Source: All Music.com.

Skillet Lickers "Old time fiddle tunes and songs from North Georgia" (1996)

Skillet Lickers

Proof that in-fighting and power plays among band members was not a practice invented by rock & roll groups, the Skillet Lickers were a prolifically talented 1920s string band that had "creative differences" through much of their career span. Originally formed as a backup band for fiddler and folksy-styled humorist Gid Tanner, the addition of fiddler Clayton McMichen took the band in another direction entirely. McMichen looked down upon Tanner's backwoods humor and musical style, preferring to take a more modern approach to the music by including jazz and pop influences, and he often downplayed the role of the banjo, as well as Tanner's high-pitched, comical vocals. Still, despite the creative differences, the Skillet Lickers operated on all cylinders throughout the '20s, recording for Columbia and gaining a reputation as one of the sharpest live bands of the time. After McMichen left in the early '30s to form other bands, Tanner kept the name and hired a revolving cast of supporting musicians to keep the ball rolling for another few years.