The quick take on Richard B. “Casper” Rawls is the line about “a guitar players’ guitarist.” True as it may be, he’s more accurately a musician who demurs such lofty notions with a friendly smile and lets his fingers and guitars speak for his talents. Which is why he has earned the admiration of guitarists who indeed know guitar playing at its finest such as James Burton and Buck Owens. And why in and around Austin, Texas as well as around the globe, discerning fans and listeners, roots music aficionados and fellow musicians know him as a player of impeccable taste, stylish and smart economy, and ultimately — thanks to those aforementioned qualities — wonderful power and beauty.

That’s because Rawls is a guitarist who plays the songs and the music and not just the guitar. He did so for 25 years with Austin’s legendary LeRoi Brothers along with 11 years backing singer Toni Price as well as performing, recording and touring with a host of notable artists and acts within the internationally celebrated Austin scene. And he does so with a personal modesty and almost charismatic friendliness that has made him beloved by his fellow musicians and the music fans who know and enjoy his playing.

“Casper is a great guitar player and one of my favorite people,” says Burton. “He’s also become like family to me.”

Grammy winner Dave Alvin feels similarly about Rawls as a player and a person. “For many years Casper Rawls has been one of my favorite guitarists and people. Picking up where country/rock visionaries like James Burton and Clarence White left off, Casper can bend, twist and coax some powerful, abstract soulful beauty out of a six-string guitar. Hell, he could probably do the same thing with a one-string guitar. If I practiced 12 hours a day for the rest of my life I’d still not be in his league. He’s true guitar hero who plays with intelligence as well as passion. And also a really, really good guy.”

The sirens’ call of the twang guitar that is one Rawls musical trademark among many first caught the ears of Richard Rawls (pka Casper) in the Texas town of Helotes, just outside San Antonio, where he grew up. It beckoned from the country radio stations that his father played constantly at home and in the car — Buck Owens (with guitarist Don Rich) and Duane Eddy were early favorites — and on TV from the guitarist backing Ricky Nelson when he performed on “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.” As Rawls remembers, “I would watch the show just to hear James Burton play guitar.”

Starting on acoustic guitar at the age of eight and graduating to electric a few years later, Rawls would ride his bike over to the legendary Helotes club John T. Floore’s Country Store to hear the star country acts that played there and the local and traveling musicians jam on Sunday afternoons. He first played those jams at age 11 and started playing in public with his first teenaged band at the youth clubs on the nearby military bases, soon graduating with a succession of acts to teen dances and parties.

By then the rock revolution led by the Beatles had joined country music as influences on Rawls, who cites such guitar gods as Eric Clapton, Duane Allman, George Harrison and fellow Texan Freddie King — who he frequently saw playing San Antonio and was befriended by — as benchmarks in the development of his style.

On moving to Austin to attend college at the University of Texas in 1973, Rawls came under the sway of such master guitarists then on the thriving local scene as Stevie and Jimmie Vaughan, Bill Campbell, Johnny Richardson as well as blues masters that came to town to play Antone’s nightclub like Hubert Sumlin from Howlin’ Wolf’s band (who Rawls came to be friends with).  He also played in local country bands such as The River City Rounders and The Country Sounds that made the rounds of the thriving central Texas Honky Tonk scene including The Broken Spoke and Dessau Hall.  The late Townsend Miller ( then entertainment editor for The Austin American Statesman) approached Rawls while he was playing the legendary Skyline Club and asked him how things were out in Bakersfield!  He was more than surprised to learn Casper hailed from Helotes.  Casper also fell in with a band of Mississippians relocated to Austin known as The Howlers that included Omar Dykes (later leader of Omar & The Howlers) and producer and songwriter R.S. Field, earning himself a nickname that became his professional first name in the process.

“I nicknamed everybody back then,” says Field, “and so I named him Casper because of the irony of his sweet disposition and his intense, electrified guitar style.”

Rawls played with Mississippi transplants Webb Wilder, Suzy Elkins and Gerry “Phareaux” Felton in an Austin group called The Eveready Brothers, and then further honed his chops playing with the house band at a country dance hall called The Short Line Station in McAllen Texas, opening for Merle Haggard, Ernest Tubb, Asleep at the Wheel and many others, and backing singers like Johnny Rodriguez (a sensation on the order of Elvis in South Texas), Johnny Paycheck, Moe Bandy and Mel Street. He also met and spent time with another guitar hero — Roy Nichols of Merle Haggard’s band The Strangers. “He let me use his amp during the show and play his guitar during sound check, one of the first Fender Telecasters I ever played,” says Rawls, who up until then was known for his black Gibson Les Paul.

Though Rawls was playing constantly, he had really never considered making his living with the guitar. “I thought it as just a part time thing,” he recalls. “For me it was just fun. I didn’t think about it as a career. Make a living at this? What a concept!”

One way he did make his living then was going on tour with superstar bands like Styx, Kansas, Heart and Supertramp as a sound tech and rigger. “It was great,” he says of those days. “It was lot of hard work, but also a really eye-opening experience to learn about the music business on that level —those bands were selling out arenas and places like Madison Square Garden for a week.”

In between tours he spent some time in Mississippi with his friends who had returned there, playing in a band called The Drapes with Wilder and Suzy Elkins. It was there that he was first introduced to the Parsons/White B-Bender — invented by Gene Parsons and Clarence White (another major Rawls influence) of The Byrds — that has become another trademark of his style.

Soon Parsons would become a fan of Rawls. “Casper Rawls is, first off, one of the greatest people you’ll ever be fortunate enough to meet, and a guitar player whose playing reminds me of the few great classic country-rock guitarists that I am fondest of, with the addition of Casper’s own wonderful and unique touch,” says Parsons.

When The Drapes disbanded, Rawls returned to the road with Supertramp, and played with the group and their musical friends at an end of tour party in Los Angeles. “After I played, everybody came over and said: “Didn’t know you could play guitar. That was fantastic.” Then Roger Hodgson, Supertramp’s singer, came over to me, and shook my hand and said: “Look, I know you’ve been out working on the crew for us on this tour, but I don’t ever want to see you out here again. Basically, you’re fired. You take that guitar and you go play music for the rest of your life.” “ And that’s what I did.”

And on returning to Texas, Rawls was soon asked to join the LeRoi Brothers, and for 25 years was a member of the legendary Texas roots-rock combo through recordings and tours of North American and overseas.

Around that time he was asked by Gene Parsons and Fender Guitars to demonstrate the new production model Telecaster with a factory-installed B-Bender at the annual NAMM show in Nashville, playing guitar at Fender’s display booth throughout the event. “I looked up at one point, and there’s James Burton listening to me play,” Rawls recalls. “Holy cow! Where’s the neck here? Oh yeah. There’s six strings on here? Oh wow…. Throughout the rest of the weekend I would look up and there he would be.”

“At the end of the show he came over and said, Hey man, I really dig your picking, we have to stay in touch. He gave me his card with all his numbers. And I was like, wow, what super a nice guy, what a cool honor, I got to meet James Burton and talk with him. When I got home I put the card in my drawer,” Rawls says with the usual modesty. “About three weeks later I get a call. On the caller ID it says: James Burton. Oh my God. And he says: “Hey Casper, what’re you doing? How come you didn’t call me? I said, man, I just thought you were being polite. I didn’t know you really meant it. He said, yeah, I really like your picking, I want to do something with you.”

Burton has since taken Rawls under his wing as both a friend and protégé. “It’s such a privilege to be able to meet one of my childhood heroes and then later become friends, and then later be able to call him up and bring him down to Austin for sessions. And to be able to go up to his place in Shreveport and hang out with him for a week when he does his guitar festival and help him with whatever needs doing, and play guitar with him and just learn.”

In 1995 Rawls began playing with Toni Price for a nine-year stretch at her weekly Hippie Hour show at Austin’s Continental Club that beacame a local musical phenomenon profiled on NPR’s “Weekend Edition.” The Price gig also brought him back to the acoustic guitar and helped him develop and hone his skills on it beside his formidable electric guitar talents. He also was a central player on all of Price’s albums, played and sang on a song he wrote that she included on one, and invited Burton to Austin to record with Price on her Midnight Pumpkin and Born to be Blue CDs.

And for many years now, Rawls has been the guitar player of choice for recordings by (as well as gigs when his busy schedule permits) for artists on the Austin scene within a variety of genres. His mastery of twang guitar and country picking has been employed by such acts as The Derailers, Heybale!, The Hollisters, The Geezinslaw Brothers and many others on the Austin and Texas country scene. At the same time, blues acts like Marcia Ball, Doyle Bramhall, Angela Strehli and Miss Lavelle White have also enjoyed his six-string contributions on the recordings. Rawls has played with surf guitar guru Teisco Del Rey and was a featured artist on the album Big Guitars From Texas, Volume 2. He is also a featured player on the country compilations Rig Rock Deluxe and Austin Country Nights.

“Casper Rawls is one of those rare and wonderful guitarists who only plays the notes that matter, and makes every one of those notes count in a way that hits you with sweet bliss as a listener,” says veteran Austin-based music journalist Rob Patterson. “It’s always a joy to hear Casper play guitar.”

And he has continued to win the favor and friendship of some of the finest guitar talents whose work so influenced him. Rawls and drummer Tom Lewis founded the annual Buck Owens Birthday Bash at Austin’s Continental Club, and in its fourth year, Owens himself showed up for the tribute and became a fan of Casper’s playing. Rawls later spent time in Bakersfield playing at Owens’ Crystal Palace club and time with Owens trading licks as well as guitar love and lore. The event also inspired a tribute CD that Rawls compiled and co-produced with Grammy Award winning drummer, David Sanger, “Happy Birthday Buck”, which featured a number of top Austin artists as well as Rodney Crowell, Albert Lee, Herb Pederson, Jim Lauderdale and Buck Owens himself.

Rawls has also produced albums by The Hollisters, Two Hoots and a Holler and The Lucky Tomblin Band, written songs that have appeared on albums by Price, The LeRois, Trent Summar and The Beat Tornadoes, and continued to record with Webb Wilder over the years. Now relocated home to Helotes, he can be heard playing live with a variety of acts around Austin and San Antonio many nights a week. And as a further sign of the esteem he enjoys from Austin musicians and music fans, he now hosts his weekly Planet Casper musical gatherings at The Continental Club every Thursday evening.

Of course, after all that, the best way to know Casper Rawls is to listen to him play. “Casper is one of my favorite guitar players and perhaps the greatest guy in the world,” says R.S. Field (known for his production work with Billy Joe Shaver, Webb Wilder and Sonny Landreth). Anyone else who knows Rawls and his playing would heartily agree to the greatness of this kind and self-effacing man whose guitar playing speaks for him with that true and rare six-string brilliance.

--Rob Patterson, 2008