WORDS BY BILL DAHL
Eddie Cochran was such a forceful presence in the recording studio that the contributions of his sidemen to his lasting legacy are too often overlooked.
Fred Conrad Smith, better known as “Guybo” Smith, was the longest lasting and most important of Cochran’s musical collaborators. Born in 1939 in Los Angeles, Smith met Cochran at Bell Gardens Junior High School in the autumn of 1951, shortly after Eddie’s family migrated to California from Minnesota. The two lads shared a deep love for country music and quickly located plenty of common jamming ground. Guybo was already fluent on upright bass (he played it in the school band), steel guitar, and mandolin, while Eddie’s skills as a vocalist and guitarist were growing fast. One of the duo’s earliest performances at a local elementary school in March of ’54 saw them doing a pair of country numbers, including Webb Pierce’s Walking The Dog, with Guybo manning the steel.