Grady Martin

The chances are pretty good that if a country record had some distinctive guitar licks on it, anytime from the early '50s through the 1970s, they were played by Grady Martin. Along with Hank Garland and Chet Atkins -- who, as a producer, regularly used Martin -- he was one of the most prominent session guitarists in Nashville for 30 years. Thomas Grady Martin was born in Chapel Hill, TN, in early 1929, to a poor farming family living outside the tiny town of Lewisburg -- the youngest of four children, he was taught the piano by his mother and took up guitar with help from his ...