Billy Strange

Billy Strange ranked among the most accomplished studio musicians of the 1960s as a core member of “The Wrecking Crew,” the elite circle of players who controlled Los Angeles recording sessions and shaped countless chart-topping tracks throughout the 1960s and 1970s. He supplied songs that became hits for Elvis Presley and Chubby Checker while also handling arrangements for Nancy Sinatra’s major successes and contributing guitar work to sessions for the Beach Boys, Phil Spector, the Everly Brothers, and numerous additional artists. Born in Long Beach, California, on September 29, 1930, to county-and-western performers George and Billie Strange, young Billy appeared with his parents on radio broadcasts and captured a yodeling contest at age five. He began playing guitar at fourteen; two years later he joined a local honky-tonk outfit that traveled to Texas seeking both experience and steady employment. Upon returning to California as a polished professional, he performed alongside leading figures of the West Coast country-and-western circuit in the 1950s—Tennessee Ernie Ford, Roy Rogers, Spade Cooley, and Cliffie Stone among them. He also secured a dual role as guitarist and vocalist at CBS Radio in Hollywood, which opened doors to pop sessions and the profitable realm of studio recording. Equally at ease with country, pop, and rock idioms, Strange quickly ascended among Los Angeles session guitarists, collaborating with prominent artists and producers of the era while releasing his own series of instrumental albums on GNP Crescendo Records. In 1962 an instrumental he composed for the Champs received lyrics from Kal Mann and was cut by Chubby Checker, yielding the major hit “Limbo Rock.” That success launched Strange’s songwriting career and drew him into Elvis Presley’s circle, where he played guitar on numerous dates, co-wrote “A Little Less Conversation” and “Memories,” and contributed to several Presley film soundtracks. Throughout the remainder of the 1960s he remained a sought-after session guitarist—appearing on the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds and Love’s Forever Changes—yet expanded his role as arranger and bandleader, overseeing the bulk of Nancy Sinatra’s signature recordings, including “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’,” “Bang Bang (He Shot Me Down),” and the father-daughter duet “Somethin’ Stupid,” while leading her touring band. He also arranged the Partridge Family’s earliest releases before relocating to Nashville, Tennessee, in the early 1970s, where he assisted in administering a publishing company for Nancy Sinatra and continued writing and recording intermittently. During the 1980s he made a brief foray into acting, portraying steel guitarist Speedy West—whom he had known from earlier sessions—in the film Coal Miner’s Daughter. When a remix of Presley’s “A Little Less Conversation” reentered the charts in 2002, Strange had already retired in Nashville, living on songwriting and performance royalties. He passed away on February 22, 2012, following a short illness.