Collaboration with Elvis among career highlights
Guitarist Billy Strange once took the kind of phone call that thousands of musicians receive only in their best and wildest dreams.
“I was staying at a hotel in Nashville in 1965, when my telephone rang and this unmistakable voice said, ‘Billy, this is Elvis. I’d like for you to stop by my studios and play some music with me,’” Strange told an English newspaper in 2002.
“I was absolutely thrilled, so I went along and he just sat at the piano playing gospel songs. We had a lot of fun; so much so that we never got around to recording anything that first day.”
That made it a rare day in Strange’s life in the 1960s: He was not only one of the hottest players, but also a successful songwriter, arranger and recording artist working in L.A.’S’ top recording studios at what may have been the pinnacle of a long career. He contributed to hit records by artists such as Presley, the Beach Boys, Phil Spector, Frank and Nancy Sinatra, the Everly Brothers, Dean Martin, Willie Nelson and the Partridge Family.
Strange, 81, died Wednesday in Nashville. The cause of death was not disclosed.
He was best known as musical arranger of Nancy Sinatra’s first No. 1 hit, These Boots Are Made For Walkin’, in 1966, and her 1967 duet with her father, Frank, Somethin’ Stupid.
Strange also was the budding pop singer’s co-star on Bang Bang (He Shot Me Down), on which the only accompaniment to her wistful vocal were the strums and runs from Strange’s tremolosoaked electric guitar.
“Billy made my brother’s song Somethin’ Stupid sound right smart, as he added raw insight to every session he sat in on,” Van Dyke Parks, a composer, arranger, producer and multi-instrumentalist, said Thursday of the song by Carson Parks. Strange played in hundreds of record- ing sessions as one of the cadre of accomplished young L.A. studio musicians later dubbed The Wrecking Crew, because they took work away from the veteran studio pros of the time. William Everett Strange was born Sept. 29, 1930, in Long Beach and early on established a musical identity with his own work.
He recorded at Capitol Records in Hollywood in the early 1950s, playing country and boogie-woogie-flavoured numbers such as Diesel Smoke, Dangerous Curves and The Crazy Quilt Rag.
In 1962, an instrumental that strange wrote, and which had been recorded by The Champs, of Tequila fame, became a huge hit for The Twist singer Chubby Checker after songwriter Kal Mann added lyrics to Strange’s music, allowing Checker to extend his dominance in the dance-craze genre. Limbo Rock exploited the early-’60s fascination in the U.S. with the limbo, and Strange’s song gave limbo parties an anthem to be built around.