To see Slim Bryant playing his guitar in his Dormont dining room: click here.

Our Own Country Music Legend Turns 98 this Month
Slim Bryant, the guitar-playing father of Pittsburgh's country-music scene, recalls a long and tuneful career in radio and TV.

Thomas Hoyt "Slim" Bryant is a tall string bean of a fellow with a great goofy smile and a phenomenal memory. He was born in Atlanta, Ga., in 1908, but he's lived here since 1940.

He resides in a modest home in a handsome Dormont neighborhood. If you get him talking about his early career as a guitar player in country-music bands (starting in the late 1920s), about songs he wrote (including several songs that were recorded by Jimmie Rodgers in the early '30s - with Bryant on guitar), and about his long career on KDKA radio and TV, you may begin to understand the splendor of Bryant and his band, the Wildcats.

Slim Bryant is slimmer today (right) than he was in his 1957 publicity shot (below).

"We were one of the first groups who modernized the country music a little bit," he said recently, sitting in his cool old sea-foam-green kitchen. "Just a little - with a beat."

Slim Bryant and his Wildcats were on KDKA radio's "Farm Hour," every weekday morning from 7 to 8 a.m. for 19 years (1941-1960). And there were countless concerts all over this part of the country. "We made personal appearances because that's where the money was," he says, "not on the radio." Novelty songs were a specialty, including "Eeny Meeny Dixie Deeny," the closest he ever came to having a "hit" on the Billboard charts.

When television came to Pittsburgh, on Jan. 11, 1949, Slim Bryant and his Wildcats performed on the very first program, a musical variety show live on WDTV from Syria Mosque in Oakland. Bryant remembers the evening as if it were yesterday.

He gave up teaching guitar after a nasty slip on the ice in 2003, but he exercises daily to stay strong. Arthritis in his fingers prevents him from playing very often now, but the Gibson L-5 guitar that he's been playing since 1936 was on the dining-room table when we stopped by, and he strummed a few tunes.

Bryant and his Wildcats recorded many songs for the NBC Thesaurus Transcription Library, which was distributed to hundreds of radio stations, but it's not easy to find those recordings on a CD right now. Bryant is featured - and he even sings "Yum Yum Blues" - on a recently released compilation of performances by the late fiddler Clayton McMichen, an old friend of his.

Bryant's guitar is forever on the 1932 Jimmie Rodgers recordings, but most of his greatest work was probably done live in radio and TV studios, broadcast without being recorded. Bryant helped make Western Pennsylvanians love pure old country music long before it was fashionable. "Pittsburgh is the nicest place I ever lived," he explains. "That's why I'm here now. I love it."

Segments of Rick Sebak's recent interview with Slim Bryant will be featured on "OnQ," Thurs., Dec. 7, which is Bryant's 98th birthday; tune in to WQED tv13 at 7:30 p.m. Photos courtesy Slim Bryant. Thanks to Judy and John Maggio for their help with this article.

Below: Clayton McMichen and his Georgia Wildcats on their first visit to KDKA in 1931. From left: Pat Berryman, Clayton McMichen, Johnny Barfield and Slim Bryant.