Jerry Naylor
| Jerry Naylor | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Jerry Naylor Jackson |
| Born |
March 6, 1939 Chalk Mountain, Texas, U.S. |
| Genres | Country, rock and roll |
| Occupation(s) | Recording artist, television and radio personality, inspirational speaker. |
| Instruments | vocals |
| Years active | 1953–present |
| Associated acts | The Crickets |
| Website | www |
Jerry Naylor (born March 6, 1939) is an American country and rock and roll artist and broadcaster and inspirational speaker, who was the lead singer of The Crickets following the death of Buddy Holly.
Jerry Naylor Jackson was born in Chalk Mountain, Texas to a great depression farming family. His mother played piano in their local church and encouraged Jerry's love of music. Jerry listened to the greats of Country music such as Hank Williams, Sr., Lefty Frizzell, Bob Wills (with whom he shared his birthday) and Slim Whitman, and Whitman's steel guitar player, Hoot Raines, led the 9-year old Naylor to purchase and learn to play a steel guitar with money he earned picking cotton. By the age of 12 years, Jerry was playing that steel guitar at local honky tonks in and around Carlsbad and San Angelo, Texas, with his brother-in-law, Tommy Briggs' Hillbilly band which also featured Sherman Hamblin on fiddle and Earnest Smith lead guitar and vocals.
In 1953, at the age of 14, Jerry Naylor began working at a new radio station in San Angelo, Texas called KPEP. Veteran broadcaster, Joe Treadway, who with his wife Matilda (Tillie) would become Jerry's foster parents when Naylor's mother died in 1955, hired Naylor and taught him to be a disc jockey, radio commercial salesman and radio maintenance engineer. Joe Treadway encouraged Naylor to continue his performing, but on the insistence of Jerry's mother, gave him the opportunity to be the lead singer of the band. KPEP was co-owned by Joe Treadway and Dave Stone (Pinkstone) who also owned the, now legendary, KDAV radio station in Lubbock, Texas where Buddy Holly was also an on-air performer with Bob Montgomery, "Buddy & Bob".
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