Few session musicians have shaken things up again and again as dependably as James Burton. The guitar master has made historic recordings with Ricky Nelson, Merle Haggard, Buck Owens, Emmylou Harris, Elvis Presley, and many more. One of the most in-demand musicians of his generation, Burton has a deceptively simple philosophy of fitting in. “It doesn’t matter who the singer is,” he’s said. “It’s about being able to play your instrument and come up with new ideas.”

Burton’s parents figured he was going to be a guitar player from the moment he started running around the house playing the broom. Born on August 21, 1939, in Dubberly, Louisiana, he grew up in nearby Shreveport. As a youngster, he watched Hank Williams play the Louisiana Hayride, a star-making country music radio program that broadcast from Shreveport’s Municipal Auditorium.

A Guitar Prodigy

By the age of thirteen he was using records and the radio to learn to play the Fender Telecaster his parents bought him. Shortly afterward, his dad drove him to a local nightclub and entered him in a talent show. Burton won first place that night and first place in three more contests soon after. By the time he was fourteen, Burton was playing in the house band of the Louisiana Hayride.

The youngster was given special permission to play in local clubs, and in these places he was soon introducing audiences to an instrumental number that he would play long into the night. The bandleader Dale Hawkins put some lyrics on top of it and, after “Susie-Q” was recorded, Hawkins and Burton had a national hit in 1957. By this time Burton was eighteen years old. He hadn’t taken music lessons, and he didn’t read much music. “Not well enough to hurt my playing,” he once candidly explained. James Burton was a master of thinking in the moment, and he was just getting started.

He backed rockabilly-leaning Bob Luman on the Hayride, then continued with Luman on the road. In Southern California, Burton began playing on local country music TV show Town Hall Party. He also was also featured in Roger Corman’s 1957 drive-in film, Carnival Rock.

As luck would have it Luman and Burton were rehearsing Billy Lee Riley’s “Red Hot” at Imperial Records in Hollywood, when Ricky Nelson dropped by. The teenage TV star was looking to debut his own rockabilly band on his family’s hit TV comedy, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, and now he knew the guitar player he wanted. First playing rhythm behind Joe Maphis, and then taking the lead himself, the teenager from Shreveport suddenly had a national platform for his frantic style.

Fans tuned in. Elvis Presley never forgot the guitar solos he heard Burton play on the show; Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards said that when he went to the record store he didn’t buy Ricky Nelson records, he bought James Burton records. Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin started carrying around a photo of Burton in his wallet.

A Six-String Trailblazer

He was endlessly innovative. Having watched Merle Travis on Town Hall Party, Burton applied Travis’s picking style to his own needs. He studied how blues guitarists bent notes and got the idea to restring his Telecaster with banjo strings for the four highest-pitched strings and substituting regular D and A strings for the fifth and sixth strings. That led to notes he could stretch like chewing gum, twang memorably, and still keep under control. He made the strings move: “Oh, you could bend the string clear across the neck,” he once said with a laugh.

At the core of his art is Burton’s excitable “chicken-pickin’” style, a percussive way of playing steeped in downhome flavor and soaked in a salty brine. It feels tied to a place and time and yet, in his hands, it was transferred to innumerable recordings and shows.

He played with Nelson on TV and many recordings over eight years. Meanwhile in 1965 Burton established a new TV foothold on the innovative rock & roll show Shindig!, forming the house band the Shindogs. He also joined the West Coast Wrecking Crew, the studio battery that backed producer Phil Spector, the Beach Boys, Sonny & Cher, and the Mamas & the Papas among others.

He played slide guitar and was in demand for his dobro work; billed as Jimmy Dobro, he recorded a mucky instrumental “Swamp Surfer” in 1963. Burton can play the banjo and mandolin, too.

Digging into Bakersfield turf, he cut “Roll Out the Red Carpet” and “Open Up Your Heart” with Buck Owens (both 1966), and played on many signature numbers of Merle Haggard: “Swinging Doors” (1966), “Branded Man” and “Lonesome Fugitive” (1967), “Sing Me Back Home” and “Mama Tried” (1968), “I Take a Lot of Pride in What I Am,” and “Workin’ Man Blues” (1969).

Riding with the King

In 1968, Burton turned down Elvis Presley when he asked the guitarist to play on his comeback TV special—Burton was in a recording session with Frank Sinatra and couldn’t get away. But the King persisted, and in 1969 he invited Burton to put together and lead a new band for his groundbreaking stand at the International Hotel in Las Vegas.

Burton brought a pink paisley Telecaster to the TCB Band, and Presley loved it. When Presley introduced the audience to his guitarist onstage, he called Burton “the greatest guitar player I have ever heard.” Burton played in Presley’s band until Elvis’s death in 1977.

Burton also played on Gram Parsons’s albums GP (1973) and Grievous Angel (1974). After Parsons’s death, Burton was a key member of Emmylou Harris’s Hot Band, recording with Harris through the 1970s, while also playing in John Denver’s band. Burton also played shows with Jerry Lee Lewis in the 1980s and 1990s. He played on albums by Elvis Costello and in live concerts in the same period as well.

In recent years, Burton has devoted great time and energy into running the James Burton Foundation, which supports music education for those in need.

Burton was inducted by Keith Richards into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2001. He won a 2009 Grammy for Best Country Instrumental Performance for taking part in Brad Paisley’s “Cluster Pluck.”

If you had to boil his life down to a line, you might repeat what record producers have always told him in the studio. Sometimes they would write out a chart for him, or offer some kind of guideline. But then they would invariably add, “We really want you to do your thing.”

“I always kept my style, my touch, my feeling,” he’s said. He just did his thing.

—RJ Smith