Jerry Byrd

• Born 9 March 1920, Lima Ohio
• Died 11 April 2005, Honolulu, Hawaii

Jerry Byrd created some of the finest exotica ever recorded in Nashville. Having paid his dues as a guitarist with Ernie Lee's Pleasant Valley Boys and Ernest Tubb's band, he settled in Nashville and became one of the core group of session men who played on an enormous number of country recordings from the early 1950s through the height of the "Nashville Sound" era of the 1960s.

Byrd earned his mention in the rolls of space age pop history, though, as a prolific Hawaiian guitarist, producing some of the earliest mainstream American imitations of Hawaiian hits, starting with his 1951 album for Mercury, "Shores of Waikiki." Although he moved from label to label through the early 1970s, his specialty remained the same: dreamy steel guitar sounds that provide the perfect accompaniment to a quiet evening of flipping through Hawaiian postcards.

Recordings