Buddy Fite - Buddy Fite and Friend (1971/2021) [Official Digital Download 24/192]

Ronald D. Fite, (June 19, 1938 - September 4, 2001), known as Buddy Fite, was an American guitarist from Oregon.

Fite was raised by his grandparents. As a child he learned to play first ukulele, then Hawai'ian steel guitar. He was playing professionally by the age of ten.

As a teenager he was active in the Washington and Oregon music scenes, where he met Willie Nelson, then a disk jockey on station KAVM (now KMTT). Nelson invited him to play steel guitar on his first recording, No Place For Me, released in February 1957.

He was impressed by the guitar playing on records by Les Paul and strove hard to emulate his sound, not knowing that Paul's guitars were usually recorded at half speed and their distinctive sound achieved by skilful production work. Fite's preferred style was jazz, but he could play in many other genres.

Fite disliked flying and had a deep love for the Pacific Northwest. Consequently he rarely played outside that area.

In the 1960s he was a member of a Hell's Angels group and worked in a Washington lumber mill

In 1969 Robert Mersey received tapes of Fite's playing and signed him to his record label Cyclone Records, a subsidiary of Columbia Pictures. Fite declined to travel in order to record, and went instead to a local Oregon studio, forcing Mersey to come to him or mailing the resulting tapes to him for production. His first album for Mersey contained largely standards; his second included some of his own compositions. Mersey wrote of him: "The proof of Buddy's genius is that the exquisite chord changes and great melodic lines which he plays are all instinctive; as he cannot read a note of music. The music comes from within and, no doubt, this is what makes him the great stylist he is."

TRACKLIST

1. Buddy Fite - The Guy's In Love With You
2. Buddy Fite - We've Only Just Begun
3. Buddy Fite - All The Things You Are
4. Buddy Fite - (They Long To Be) Close To You
5. Buddy Fite - Didn't We
6. Buddy Fite - I'll Never Fall In Love Again
7. Buddy Fite - Don't Take Your Love From Me
8. Buddy Fite - My Cherie Amour
9. Buddy Fite - Yesterdays / Yesterday
10. Buddy Fite - Something



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