Country music runs on the blood, sweat and tears of session musicians, whose contributions to the genre too often go unsung. Bobby Thompson is one such example. Getting his start with formative bluegrass duo Jim & Jesse, Thompson would later lend his innovative picking style to works by George Strait, Reba McEntire, and Dolly Parton—just to name a few. Today, we’re honoring Robert Clark “Bobby” Thompson, born in Converse, South Carolina, on this day (July 5) in 1937.
Unlike many of Nashville’s success stories, Thompson did not hail from a musical family. His father worked at a cotton mill, and his mother was a housewife.
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However, like many families in the late ’30s and ’40s, the Thompsons had a Saturday night ritual of listening to the Grand Ole Opry radio broadcast. At age 14, Bobby Thompson decided to take up the banjo after hearing Flatt and Scruggs’ “Foggy Mountain Breakdown”.
“It just knocked me out,” he recalled in a 1998 interview.
How Bobby Thompson Elevated the Banjo
After graduating from high school in 1955, Thompson began moving around the South, taking up with various bands and painting cars by day.
In the late 1950s, he ended up in Valdosta, Georgia, with Jim & Jesse, playing on the instrumentals “Border Ride” and “Dixie Hoedown”.
That’s also where Bobby Thompson began cultivating what became known as the “melodic style” of banjo playing, modifying the standard three-finger “roll” of the right hand to catch more melody notes.
This marked a departure from the three-finger style cultivated and popularized by Earl Scrugs. And according to Thompson, people didn’t immediately take to it.
“Everybody just wanted to hear Scruggs style, and when I played that fiddle-tune style they’d look at me like I was crazy,” he recalled in 1998.
Thompson’s method eventually caught on, however, with banjo players like 18-time Grammy Award winner Bela Fleck taking it up.
“I think [Thompson] has done a lot for the banjo,” Scruggs told The Tennessean in 2004. “He was the first one to play that style of banjo that I ever heard. And there has never been anyone to top him.”
Bobby Thompson’s prolific career as a session musician lasted from the 1960s to the ’80s. His resume included works such as Dolly Parton’s Jolene (1974), Loretta Lynn’s 1982 album I Lie, and George Strait’s 1981 album Strait Country.
Along with his fellow session musicians Weldon Myrick and Charlie McCoy, Thompson formed the supergroup Area Code 615 in the late ’60s. They released two albums.
Thompson also spent 17 years as a member of the staff band for the popular TV show Hee Haw.
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On May 18, 2005, Bobby Thompson died at the age of 67.
Featured image courtesy of The Sieker Band