John Hogan was the first to play Jim Reeves’ guitar

Singer John Hogan is best known for his hits Rollin’ Home, Still Got a Crush on You, Cottage in the Country, Where I Come From, and others. But not many know that he was the first person to play the guitar of the late great Jim Reeves in Nashville years after the singer’s death.

John, who recorded several albums in Nashville with some of Jim Reeves’s backing musicians, got to be the first person to play Jim’s guitar after befriending the late Leo Jackson who was a member of the Reeves backing band The Blue Boys.

Of all the achievements that he has had during his 40 plus years as a Country singer, the Offaly man says his most precious memory is of being the first person to be given Jim’s guitar to play years after Jim Reeves died in a plane crash.

“It happened when I was recording in Nashville under producer Ronny Light. Some of Music City’s most famous session men were on backing including Leo Jackson from Jim’s band on guitar and mandolin, Hargus Pig Robbins on piano, Glen Duncan on fiddle and Milton Sledge on drums,” says John.

Working with for the famous RCA Records label in Nashville Ronny Light produced hits for Waylon Jennings, including one of his biggest, Good Hearted Woman. Waylon wrote that song with help from his pal Willie Nelson after hearing about Tina Turner being ‘a good-hearted woman loving a two-timing man’ referring to her husband at that time, Ike!

While Waylon didn’t write any song for John on that album another famous Nashville songwriter Pat Alger did and he subsequently went on to write some of Garth Brooks's biggest hits.

Both Garth and John Hogan became successful singers many years after the untimely death of Jim Reeves and, indeed, Jim’s guitar had remained locked away in a cabinet and never played for decades after the plane crash that claimed his life, as John explains.

“Producer Ronny Light detected a bit of a fret noise in the guitar that Leo Jackson was playing in our morning recording session and as we were completing the recording that afternoon, he asked Leo to get another guitar as quickly as possible,” says John.

Leo knew that the only other suitable guitar for replacing his own at such short notice was the historic one that lay un-played in its dusty case at home since the day Jim Reeves died.

“Leo asked me to take the guitar out of its case and I was shocked and surprised when he said to me to play a bit on it. My reaction was that I wouldn’t be so brave or bold as to play guitar in front of a picker as famous as him.

“But Leo persisted and eventually I played it before Leo put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘John, young man, you are now the first guy to play Jim Reeves’s guitar since he died,’ and I was stunned.”

John says that Leo explained how Jim’s had been in his possession all those years but because he revered Reeves so much, he never took the guitar out of its case since the day he died – until then.

Leo said that he brought Jim’s guitar everywhere for him, he played it for him, and kept it tuned and was entrusted with keeping it under lock and key in his house and in ‘ship-shape’ all the time.

“Leo said he kept it under lock and key because he ‘feared that some son-of-a-bitch would recognise it as Jim Reeves’s guitar and steal it and sell it for 50 bucks’, which was probably true,” added John.

Leo was the most likely custodian of Jim’s custom-made guitar anyway because he was the lead guitarist with Reeves from the age of 18 until Jim’s death. As a teenager he came to live with Jim and his wife Mary, who had no children of their own. Leo was noted for saying in interviews that ‘Jim and Mary Reeves finished raising me’.

John Hogan also befriended Ricky Scaggs and the late Johnny Russell at the Grand Ole Opry. The latter explained nonchalantly, humorously and with a wry smile about the financial consequences of writing Act Naturally for Ringo Starr and The Beatles and for Buck Owens.‘Yea, I wrote and recorded Act Naturally first myself and then Buck Owens had a number one with it and then The Beatles recorded it and then the Revenue Commissioners recorded it and that finished that!’

Just like his memories of playing Jim Reeves’ guitar, this more hilarious Nashville memory about Act Naturally is one that remains etched in John's memory.

Currently John Hogan says he is busier than ever as a solo artist and doing guest spots at concerts plus preparing for the next series of the concert show A Night at the Opry with Claudia Buckley and Johnny Brady early next year.