Ralph Mooney, 1928-2011

“He played with a real bright, animated sound with lots of picking, but he could take off into blues licks at the same time. Nobody every played quite like he did, and after that it became known as ‘the Mooney sound.’”
 — Ralph Mooney, who played pedal steel guitar behind Buck Owens, Merle Haggard and Waylon Jennings died of cancer last week. His style was an important component of the Californian “Bakersfield sound,” as well as the “outlaw” country music that thrived in the ’70s. In 1956, he co-wrote the song “Crazy Arms,” a no. 1 hit for Ray Price, that would become a standard of the genre. Mooney was 82.