Alvino Rey
was a pedal steel guitar player on the Lawrence Welk
Show from 1959-1960. Rey was born in 1908 in Oakland, CA and
moved to Cleveland, Ohio at the age of ten. At the
age of 10, Rey began studying guitar and listening
to the likes of Eddie Lang and Roy Smeck. At age 15,
he invented an electrical amplifier for the guitar
and went professional. He worked with a number of
bands including Russ Morgan, Freddy Martin and
Horace Heidt.
In 1937, he met and married one of the
King Sisters, Luise King. Heidt fired the King
Sisters from a mutual engagement they were
performing during an engagement in New York when a
microphone fell down and hit a patron. Rey also quit
and formed his own band with the King Sisters as
vocalists. In 1942, they recorded the hit song with
"Deep in the Heart of Texas." Fellow Welk Show
band member Skeets Herfurt played vocal refrain for
that hit song.
From
1944 to 1945, Rey served with the US navy as a radar technician, but
after the war returned to the charts with the song, "Cement Mixer." His
signature tune, Blue Rey, featured Luise's vocals fed through his guitar
amplifier, a trick well ahead of its time. After leaving the Welk Show,
he had his own show called "Alvino Rey And His Talking Guitar" on The
King Family ABC-TV variety show (1965-71). In the 1980's he led an
orchestra at Disneyland. Among some of the unknown future greats to
perform in his band were Ray Conniff, Neal Hefti, Billy May, Al Cohn,
Johnny Mandel and Zoot Sims.
Rey retired in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Luise King passed away in August 1997 of cancer while Rey
passed away of congestive heart failure in 2004.