Opry member Billy Grammer dies at 85

Posted on August 10, 2011 by Peter Cooper



Billy Grammer performing at Municipal Auditorium in 1963 (photo: Jack Corn/The Tennessean).

Grand Ole Opry member Billy Grammer, a hit-making solo artist and session guitar great, died
Wednesday at age 85 of natural causes. A resident of Sesser, Ill., Mr. Grammer was hospitalized on Tuesday.

A multi-faceted talent, Mr. Grammer was a precursor to modern guitar-ace singing stars such as Vince
Gill, Keith Urban, Marty Stuart and Brad Paisley. His signature hit, “Gotta Travel On,” crossed over from
the country charts and became a Top 5 pop record in 1959, the year he joined the Grand Ole Opry, but
he released guitar-centric albums long after he became established as a vocalist.

He also co-founded the Grammer Guitar Company in 1965, designing a distinctive acoustic instrument
that remains in favor with some players. Country Music Hall of Famer Gill recently purchased a vintage Grammer.

“Billy was a really big, friendly soul,” Gill said. “He was a guy who could do everything. There’s a kinship
between those of us who have been able to garner respect from the musician community and as singers,
a sweet brotherhood. He was also a neat guy to get to know.”

Offstage, Mr. Grammer balanced comfort and vivaciousness. He was both a family man and a thrill-
seeker. He and wife Ruth, his high-school girlfriend, married in 1944 and stayed together until his death.
But Mr. Grammer was anything but a homebody, spending non-music time fishing for bass (typical for
country performers) or jumping out of airplanes (decidedly atypical).

“Do I look happy,” he asked, rhetorically, in 1959, in a conversation relayed in a press release. “Well, it’s
probably because I am. You know, this is a great life. There’s so many facets to it. So many things to be
done and tried.”

Mr. Grammer was among 13 children born to an Illinois family. His father farmed, worked as a miner and
played music, and Mr. Grammer grew up playing fiddle, guitar and mandolin. He served in the Army in
World War II, and worked as a toolmaker after discharge. When he was laid off from the toolmaker job,
he hitchhiked to Arlington, Va., and auditioned successfully for a music-making job at WARL. In 1955,
Jimmy Dean began featuring Mr. Grammer on his television show, and three years later he started his
own band and signed to Nashville’s Monument Records.

“Gotta Travel On” was his first and biggest hit, but he also scored with Top 40 country singles “I Wanna
Go Home” (the first recorded version of the Mel Tillis-penned song that became a smash for Bobby Bare,
re-named “Detroit City”), “Bottles” and “The Real Thing” in the 1960s. Instrumental albums Country
Guitar and Sunday Guitar were influential to many guitarists, and Mr. Grammer’s regular Opry
appearances and his appearances on national programs including The Ed Sullivan Show and The Dick
Clark Show cemented his notoriety.

As a session musician, Mr. Grammer recorded with numerous Nashville luminaries, including Little Jimmy
Dickens, Charley Pride, George Hamilton IV, Ernest Tubb and Marty Robbins, though his reputation
spread far beyond Music City. When Louis Armstrong set about making a country-leaning album in 1970
in New York City, Mr. Grammer served as session leader, singing each song to Armstrong to help the jazz
great with tempo and melody and then playing rhythm guitar.

While the Grammer guitar enjoyed substantial popularity in the mid-1960s, Mr. Grammer’s ownership
partnership dissolved, and in 1968 he sold production rights to the Ampeg Company. The guitars went
out of production in 1972, after several years of spiraling sales.

In 1974, Mr. Grammer gave the invocation at the opening of the Grand Ole Opry House, in front of
President Richard Nixon.

Mr. Grammer’s eyesight declined due to a degenerative disease, and he ceased most performing in the
late 1980s. Though he settled back in Illinois, he remained a part of the Nashville-based Grand Ole Opry
family, and he occasionally performed on the program. In 2009, he traveled to Nashville as the Opry
honored his 50th anniversary on the show.

“They called me and said, ‘We noticed it’d be 50 years, how ’bout coming down,” he told a reporter with
The Southern Illinoisan newspaper. “They want me, I’m going.”

Visitation for Mr. Grammer will be held from 5 - 8 p.m. Friday at Morton & Johnston Funeral Home in
Benton, Ill. (410 S Main St., 618-438-0311). Funeral service will take place at 11 a.m. Saturday, also at
Morton & Johnston Funeral Home.

Reach Peter Cooper at (615) 259-8220 or pcooper@tennessean.com.


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