CMT Blog: Archive

Write this down: The first Sunday of every month, Robert's Western World on Lower Broadway in Nashville, 2 to 6 p.m. Be there -- absences will not be tolerated... If you can't get there you'll miss a true living legend of country music. Don Helms, who was Hank Williams' steel guitar player, performs with Nashville musicians David Tanner, Jesse Lee Jones and Chris Scruggs. This is your chance to hear the man who played the intros to "Your Cheatin' Heart" and "Cold, Cold Heart." I went to see him earlier this month and it honestly sent a chill down my spine to hear him play those classic lines.

Don is 81 now, and he's honestly still playing great - but it's not his faculties that will get you, it's THAT sound. You'd know it if I could hum it to you. It's haunting, ghostly, and beautiful -- and it's essential to the sound of Hank Williams. In 1948, Hank had made Don promise to join his band if he ever performed on the Grand Ole Opry. After Hank tore the place down with "Lovesick Blues," Don left his gig at an ice rink in Alabama and became part of country music history. More than a steel player, he's an essential ingredient of country music as we know it.

I was lucky enough to play fiddle on a few tunes with Don last week, and it really is amazing to hear him launch into a song he recorded halfway through the last century. The other guys in the band might try to stump Don by announcing a Hank, Ernest Tubb or Patsy Cline song he hasn't played more than once in his life (that being the time he recorded it!), but after scanning his memory, Don marches into the song whether the band is ready or not. In the words of Marty Stuart, Don is truly "a master in every sense of the word."