ABBA

Bassist and orchestra leader from Nashville, Tennessee, where he cut his teeth, quite literally, on the lip of his grandma’s Victrola phonograph player.

He grew up, like many children, being entranced by the sounds of the Grand Ole Opry. At the age of nine, he started his own shoeshine business and one of his patrons was Jack Drake, who played bass for Ernest Tubb. Bob pestered him with questions about the bass guitar, and Jack encouraged his interest by teaching him everything he could about the instrument. At ten years of age, Bob was playing guitar and singing on a radio program entitled Goober and the Kentuckians, which aired on WSIX.

A chance meeting with Owen Bradley when he was twelve would eventually lead to an unparalleled career in music recordation. Owen asked Bob to make a direct-to-disk recording at The Ryman and it was only a portent of things to come.

In 1952, he got a gig on Red Foley’s television program, Ozark Jubilee, on ABC-TV. The only problem was, the show aired in Springfield, Missouri, and at the time Bob was working with Marty Robbins back in Nashville, as well. For two years, he did a thousand-mile commute between the two cities, and eventually quit the show due to exhaustion.

It turned out to be a very good decision. Owen Bradley had become a big noise in Music City, and when he inked a deal with Decca, young Bob was not far behind. He soon became an integral member of Nashville’s A-team, oftentimes leading the sessions on which he played.

Some of the artists with whom he worked include Paul Anka, Chet Atkins, Debby Boone, Patsy Cline, Bobby Darin, Mac Davis, John Denver, Connie Francis, George Jones, Brenda Lee, Don McLean, Willie Nelson, Elvis Presley, Johnny Rodriguez, Kenny Rogers, and Hank Williams, Jr..

In 1959, he and Fred Foster established Monument Records, and one of their artists was Roy Orbison. These were the salad days of his recording career, as well, often working twelve-hour days, every day of the week. One year, he appeared approximately 300 recordings, and that was just on the Mercury label.

He formed his own orchestra in 1960 and they recorded an instrumental entitled “Mexico” and it went gold and peaked at #7 on the Billboard pop chart and spent one week atop the easy listening chart. Another one of his most well-known recordings was Roger Miller’s “King of the Road”, which features a prevalent bass line.

His bass line has featured on more than 17,000 recordings, purportedly the most of any country and western bassist, possibly more than anyone in the world. It is small wonder that Life magazine dubbed him the #1 country bass player, ever. In 2007, Bob was most deservedly enshrined in the Musicians Hall of Fame.

Hargus “Pig” Robbins recordings

Chunky People (Jim Vest/David Chamberlain)

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