Who was/is Roy Aldridge ? - CDs, Vinyl LPs, DVD and more
Roy Aldridge
Born in Oil City, Louisiana (on November 20, 1928), Auby 'ROY' ALDRIDGE has lived the last thirty years in northwest Alabama, but the road from Louisiana to Alabama included detours through North Dakota, Maine, Florida, Los Angeles, Vegas, and Nashville. A steel guitarist by trade, Roy's first big paying gig was with Dusty Rivers & The Wagonmasters in Bismark, North Dakota. "That's where my career started upgrading," says Roy. "I started singing there." Before then, he'd worked in Vernal, Utah, where he met Ned Miller. There was a nearby oilfield, and Miller, who later wrote From A Jack To A King and Dark Moon, was running a cab company ferrying workers to the oilfields. Roy's mother ran a café, and he and Ned would close it up and play. It's unclear how Roy got to Maine, but he was working with Ernie Lindell's band when he arrived. "I was up there maybe '54 and '55," he says. "Ernie was a con artist, but his wife could sing pretty good. We were on Mount Washington TV. Dick Curless was with me." They would play show dates up in Quebec, Canada, and their bass player, Dave Miller (born Ulysee Maillet in Quebec) would tell obscene jokes about them in French. The band didn't understand the jokes and wondered why the audience was doubled over laughing. Roy had grown up in Cajun country but couldn't understand Quebec French. His EVENT recordings were leased to Hardrock Gunter's EMPEROR RECORDS in a deal that Roy no longer recalls. He remembers Larry Breau cooking up the intro to the record, though, and he remembers rarin' back at the end, "cause Presley was comin' on strong then, and we kinda had that in mind."
After leaving Maine, Roy moved out west and met Wade Ray in Los Angeles around 1958. The veteran fiddle player was on the point of taking up residency at the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas, and invited Roy to come along and play bass. Roy and Wade played the gambling joints in Vegas, Reno, and Lake Tahoe until 1964. During a stint in Yuma, Arizona, Roy met his wife-to-be, Ava, who wrote songs and sang. When she became pregnant, they moved to Tuscumbia in northwest Alabama, and Roy took a job at the Brown's Ferry nuclear plant. Ava worked for many years with Sue Richards (who recorded for Sun as Maggie Sue Wimberley), and sang backup on sessions for a host of artists, including Hank Williams Jr., Wilson Pickett, Narvel Felts, and many more. She was also a recording artist for MGM and MCA, but not an especially successful one. She was a successful songwriter, though, and wrote Sharing The Night Together (a #6 pop hit for Dr. Hook in 1979) and Treat Her Right (a #3 country hit for Sawyer Brown in 1996). She also co-wrote Sue Richards' biggest hit, Sweet Sensuous Feelings. Ava died in 2003, leaving Roy alone in northwest Alabama, troubled by failing eyesight.
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