Musician, actor Jerry Reed dies at 71

Sept. 2, 2008

[archy]

Jerry Reed is tops to us guitar pickers. He was a super picker. Most pickers pick with a straight pick, some use three fingers, but Jerry Reed played with all five fingers.

Jerry was a big influence on quite a few banjo pickers as well, including me.

[archy]

I think JR said "Well... I ainna-gonna do that naw more"

What a legend he was. Thanks for the pings and the posts.

He said a few other pretty sharp things, too.

Musician, actor Jerry Reed dies at 71

Mr. Reed enjoyed his comedic Hollywood roles (which included a part in the 1998 Adam Sandler film, The Waterboy), and he often smiled when movie fans would ask for an autograph without realizing that he was a singer and guitarist of significance. Music was most important to him, though. Asked by interviewer Frank Goodman which facet of music he preferred – songwriter, solo guitarist, session man or entertainer – Mr. Reed said, “Hey, that’s like trying to pick out your favorite leg.”

“There’s nothing on earth as powerful as music, period,” he told Goodman. “I mean, it’s pretty hard to fight and hate and be angry when you’re making music, isn’t it?”
As Mr. Reed’s health declined in recent years, he focused on spiritual studies and on bringing attention to veterans’ issues. “For 50 years, all I’d done was take, take, take,” he told The Tennessean’s Tim Ghianni in 2007. “I decided from now on it is going to be giving. And I’m way behind. We’re all way behind. We live this life like what’s down here is what it’s all about. We’re temporary, son, like a wisp of smoke.”

“I got to write hit songs,” he told interviewer Calvin Gilbert in 2005. “And I got to be on phonograph records… I’m a cotton mill boy, and I got to go to Hollywood. Can you imagine that? Why, yeah, my goodness gracious. Go figure.”

[Zionist Conspirator]

Nope. I'm very familiar with that song and that isn't the one. It had a Spanish female name in the title, I think.

Thank you anyway!

[BlueLancer]

I liked most everything that he did, musically and in the movies. However, this one was my favorite, even more than Smokey and the Bandit ...

[Sue Perkick]

I hated hearing this. He was so much more talented than a lot of people think. One heck of a guitar player & a good man.

RIP Jerry

[yarddog]

There is one thing about Jerry Reed you could tell as soon as you saw him and heard him speak. He was from the deep South. I think he was born in Georgia but he called himself the Alabama Wild Man.

I once saw a quote from Robert E. Lee. I haven’ seen the quote again but I still think it was accurate. Despite the fact that he was a Virginian, he said he had come to prefer soldiers from Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. Those were the best fighters. I think Jerry Reed exemplified the type people who lived in that area as well as it was possible.

[Tolkien]

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