Tom Brumley died last week.  Tom was a good friend to a lot of us "classic" country folks.  He was a master of the steel guitar.  Most people will remember Tom as the steel player for Buck Owens, putting the finest steel turnaround on the song, "Together Again" the first week that he went to work with Buck.  Tom was a special friend who was always the same everytime you met him.  He was gentle, kind, cheerful and always ready to lend a hand in any way he could.  Tom also recorded and toured with Ricky Nelson.  I remember working a show with Ray Price, Ricky Nelson and Charley Pride in Lexington, Kentucky years ago and standing in the shadows of the stage curtain watching Tom play steel with Ricky.  He was just amazing.  

Tom grew up not far from where I grew up in the Ozark Mountains around Powell, Missouri.  His daddy was the famous gospel songwriter, Albert Brumley, writer of "I'll Fly Away" and many, many more classic songs of praise and worship.  I grew up singing his daddy's songs and while I never got to meet Mr. Albert, I sensed some of the same gentle characteristics in the son, Tom.  

In later years, Tom had the Brumley family music show in Branson and his fans were many and from all over the world. 

Tom touched my life with his goodness, and I will remember the good times together.  God Bless his wife and family.

 Stan

 I love horses.  Been around them all my life and don’t reckon to stop now.  Grew up on a horse and cattle farm in the Ozarks and one of my first memories was my Mom, Ruby, holding me in front of her in the saddle and riding for miles on her favorite horse.  I must have been about 1 year old at the time but the memory is vivid.  Her horse in 1937, when I was a year old,  was a chestnut mare and she dearly loved to ride.  So, I just naturally inherited my love for horses.  

In my years of music and touring I have had some adventures with horses.  One time, in 1972, I was on tour in Hawaii and I met a native horse trainer who invited me out to his ranch to ride.  He raised beautiful Quarter horses and he put me on one of his Champion horses and we rode all day up a twisting trail to the top of a volcano in the most beautiful scenery I have ever witnessed.  That trail seemed about a foot across and straight down if your horse made a misstep.  It was a memory maker.

I was sitting under a shade tree just outside of Nashville one hot summer day in 1987, fingers kinda running over the strings of my old flat top guitar, talking to my friend Billy Joe Shaver about songs, about lost romance, about how the Road will wear you out, about...........Billy, how the heck did you lose your fingers, son? Billy Joe looked down at his right hand, stretched it out in front of him and studied the two short stubs that was all that remained of his two middle fingers. "I got in an accident in a sawmill where I worked...

WELL, GUITAR, HERE I AM OLD FRIEND, back to sing some blues again....ain’t it funny...I always come right back to you. Stan Hitchcock and Ronnie Reno 1982.

I continued doing the radio shows with the Waymakers and we even paid for, and recorded, a couple of custom albums for the Boys Ranch to help raise funds to carry on the work.

One day, in the early part of 1962, I was in the studio of radio station KWTO to record some of our radio shows when the recording engineer, Wan Hope, asked me if I knew any country music songs. I said sure (thinking about the old Bryce Canyon Troubadours). He said he was setting up the controls and how about singing a couple, maybe three songs for him. You must realize that I was a total gospel singer up to this point, without a thought of being a hillbilly singer.