LITTLE ROCK — Bobby Jack Pearl’s lifelong passion for music started after his fingers floated across the strings of a steel guitar as a child.
“Ask anyone in Little Rock or anyone he’s played with, they’ll put him as being the master of his instrument,” said fellow musician Danny Turney. He played a two-neck steel guitar with two different tunings, Turney said, “which is almost like playing two different instruments.”
Pearl, who lived in Beebe, died Tuesday at White County Medical Center in Searcy from kidney failure and cancer complications, said his daughter, Sandy Pearl. He was 77.
When he was about 17 years old, he went out on the road as a musician, and his talent was soon recognized by greats like American Western-swing musician Bob Wills, who had a band called the Texas Playboys.
“Every time they played, it was different because Bob would stand in front with his fiddle [and] when it was time for you to play, he’d point at you,” Turney said. “He said that really kept you on your toes and made you a good musician.”
Dolores King said Pearl was a versatile musician who played alongside her husband, fiddler Kinky King, in the Tommy Trent Band.
“On one of Bob Wills’ [co-written] tunes, ‘I’ll Be Lucky Someday,’ Bobby did a run on that tune on his steel [guitar] ... it was so beautiful, it made me cry every time,” Dolores King said. “That would tickle him, he’d look up and grin.”
Talented, but stubborn, Pearl went to great lengths to protect his custom-made Emmons steel guitar, his daughter said.
“He wouldn’t let anyone carry it. If you breathed on it too hard, he’d get upset,” Sandy Pearl said. “He’d want you to keep the air conditioning at a certain temperature because it would get out of tune.”
He traveled throughout the United States playing in various bands with stars like Ernest Tubb and Jean Shepard, and appeared on television shows like Hee Haw.
“A lot of people would say, ‘Here’s the best steel guitar player you’ll ever hear’ ... or ‘Nobody plays better than this guy Bobby Pearl,’” Sandy Pearl said. “He’d always scrunch his nose up when they’d brag on him like that.”
For several years, he worked with Turney, a bassist and singer, in the Arkansas River Bottom Band. The band usually played five nights a week at the Jimmy Doyle Country Club in North Little Rock and backed up the stars that came to town, from Tom T. Hall to John Michael Montgomery.
Pearl was known as the go-to steel guitarist, but he passed up opportunities to work full time for artists like Toby Keith and Merle Haggard. Fuzzy Owen, who stepped down as Haggard’s steel guitarist to become his manager in the early years, suggested Pearl as a replacement.
“Merle Haggard came into town to see Bobby” and quickly hired him, Turney said. “Bobby was a little hot-tempered back then. He thought Fuzzy made a pass at his wife, so he punched him. ... He said he didn’t want to work for anyone who had that guy as a manager.”
“That was Bobby Pearl — he’d punch you out in a minute, but he’d stand with you through anything,” Turney said.
Pearl was greatly respected in musician circles and continued playing, even as his mind declined in later years.
“He was playing every day,” Sandy Pearl said. “He’d sit down at it and just pick on the strings a little bit over the past few months.”
Arkansas, Pages 14 on 11/30/2012