Jerry Rivers
Jerry Rivers (August 25, 1928 – October 4, 1996) was an American fiddle player.
Biography
Jerry Rivers was born in Miami, Florida. He played fiddle with the Drifting Cowboys, a band who will be forever associated with their "frontman", the legendary Hank Williams.
Raised in Nashville, in a house that would later serve as an office for Atlantic Records, Jerry Rivers took up the fiddle as a teenager and was, by the mid-1940s, playing it semi- professionally whilst working during the day as a salesman for an electronic components company. He turned professional, briefly toured with the Short Brothers and then found himself back in Nashville working with Big Jeff Bess, husband of Hattie Louise "Tootsie" Bess, owner of the famous Tootsie's Orchid Lounge on Music City's Lower Broadway.
It was whilst working with Bess that Rivers was first approached by Williams. Although Hank had performed with groups from the mid-1930s on, it was only following his successful early appearances on the Grand Ole Opry in 1949 that he began to see the merits of a permanent backing band.