Part of being a true living legend is not talking about it,so even as Johnny Gimble made his name playing hot country jazz fiddle with Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys in the late 1940s and then did Nashville session work on classic albums by Merle Haggard,Dolly Parton,Loretta Lynn,Willie Nelson and more,youll never get the 83-year-old fiddle icon to assess his place in country music history. Gimble,who has lived in Dripping Springs,Texas,for 25 years,is the greatest living country fiddler,maybe the greatest ever. Hes toured with both Bob Wills and Willie Nelson,been recruited by Chet Atkins for his Superpickers band of top Nashville session players,and then,at age 80,backed Carrie Underwood at the Grammy Awards. And yet Gimble,who still plays with son Dick and granddaughter Emily at Gueros Taco Bar on the fourth Thursday of every month,has never forgotten his modest beginnings,growing up on a farm six miles east of Tyler. He was the eighth of nine children who loved to pick guitars,fiddles and mandolins after a day of hating to pick cotton. In his mind,Johnny is still the barefoot fiddler in hand-me-down overalls, says protege Jason Roberts of Asleep at the Wheel. Roberts is one of several guests on Johnny Gimble: Celebrating With Friends,a new Ray Benson-produced CD featuring vocal assists from such famous friends and admirers as Haggard,Nelson and Vince Gill. The folks at the CMH label wanted to call it The Worlds Greatest Fiddler Celebrating With Friends,but Gimble wouldnt sign off on that. After coming home from the Army in 1947,with an affinity for waltzes he heard while stationed in Austria,Gimble spent time in Austin,where he joined the Roberts Brothers Rhythmaires,before he started to play for Bob Wills band in 1949. To join Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys was like being signed on to play for the New York Yankees, says Gimble,who fiddled on Wills final recording session in 1973. His starting pay was $90 a week,but Wills bumped him up to $100 when Gimbles spotlight performance of Johnsons Old Grey Mule,with the fiddle braying,became a crowd-pleaser. During his two-year stint as a full-time Texas Playboy,the most famous recording Gimble played on was 1950s Faded Love. Even after suffering a massive stroke in 1999,Gimble found humour in the situation. When the doctors showed me an X-ray of my brain,they pointed to a black hole on the upper left side and told me that all memory from that spot was dead, Gimble says. I hoped thats where I kept The Orange Blossom Special. The most requested fiddle song is also the most hated by sophisticated players. When he came home from hospital,the first thing Gimble did was to see if he could play The Orange Blossom Special. He could. I play the fiddle every day, Gimble says. Im afraid if I dont,it wont know who I am.
