Amos Moses Was a Cajun – RIP Jerry Reed

I have had my head under a rock for about a week now with work, attempted work, thought about work, and all kinds of manner of work (going to be that way for a little while longer, I’m afraid), so when I poked my head out tonight to see what was going on elsewhere, I was so saddened and shocked to learn of the death of Nashville legend Jerry Reed.

I was aware of Jerry Reed from a very young age and long, long before the Smokey and the Bandit films started coming out.  I remember when “Amos Moses” was on top of both the pop and country charts (uh huh, I’m that old), we used to watch his variety show on TV (I had no idea until reading it tonight that Sista Smiff’s dad Biff was the emcee, though not surprised), my dad had all his records for years and years – all long before the movie thang started.  Turned out he was a pretty good actor too, though.

There are fifty thousand posts throughout this blog about my father’s influence on me with music, and his Chet Atkins and Jerry Reed (together) records were by far some of his favorites to listen to.  They (and the dozens of tracks on the reel-to-reel tapes my parents recorded) were frequently heard in my house while growing up.

Dad had a habit of stopping and saying, during those listening sprees, “Listen to that guitar”, or “Listen to those drums”, and made you really pay attention for a while.  When listening to the Chet & Jerry records, of course, it would be “Listen to that guitar” - or “that guitar” – and so I did.  As a very small child, I knew which one playing was Atkins and which one was Reed.

And Jerry Reed was funny, so funny.  Not a surprise years later when he was such a hit in the Smokey and the Bandit films.

No matter what your favorite flavor of music generally is, you’d be hard pressed to find many with favorite flavors of all kinds who don’t have some appreciation of what a great Jerry Reed was.  The music world, all of it, harbors one less true legend this week.

Read more thoughts and writing in the wake of Jerry Reed’s passing by Newscoma, GingerSnaps, Sharon Cobb, Sadcox, Thunder Jones, Blowing Smoke, Churlita, and at The Tennessean.