Charles Wilburn Trent, born in Spartanburg, South Carolina, earned recognition as one of country music’s top banjoists and created the electric banjo. He picked up steel guitar at seven and turned professional at seventeen with an appearance on an Asheville, North Carolina, television station. Late in the 1950s he joined the Bill Carlisle Show, which soon led to his first Grand Ole Opry performance. In 1962 he became a member of Porter Wagoner’s Wagon Masters and developed the electric banjo, an instrument modeled after a steel guitar and fitted with a movable bridge that altered pitch. He stayed with Wagoner until 1973, then spent seven years opening shows for Roy Clark while appearing regularly on the television series Hee Haw. Trent began recording in 1962 under the name Charles Trent and released several albums during the 1970s, among them Bionic Banjo in 1976. He launched his own Buck Trent label in the 1980s and two years later issued a self-titled album on MCA/Dot. Throughout the 1990s he performed regularly in Branson, Missouri. Trent died on October 9, 2023, at the age of 85.
