'Bakersfield Sound' Members Perform at Mountain Bible Church

Mountain Bible Church is honored to have Tommy Hays and Jimmy Phillips perform at their Sunday morning service, August 17th at 10 a.m.

Tommy Hays (born Thomas Avery Hays in Hartshorne, Oklahoma, in 1929) is a guitarist, band leader and vocalist. He started playing the guitar in church when he was 10 years old. Tommy arrived on the Bakersfield music scene in 1947 where he formed the band "The Western Swingsters."

He performed on the Billy Mize TV Show, Cousin Herb Show, was a member of the house band for the Lucky Spot and the Blackboard and had his own radio show on KMPC. Tommy played on stage with many of the old timers who were part of creating the Bakersfield Sound.

Tommy has been playing in the honky-tonks in and around Bakersfield for over fifty years. Recognized as one of the original "Bakersfield Sound" pioneers, he has helped forge this unique and definitive sound. Driven by the piano, steel and Telecaster guitar, the Bakersfield Sound was a reaction to the early '50s and '60s sweetening of country music epitomized by the Nashville Sound. Tommy Hays is in his 68th year of entertainment with "The Western Swingsters."

Along with the Western Swingsters, he released the CD 60 Years of Western Swing in 2006. He currently resides in Bakersfield, California, and still plays locally. Tommy and his wife Kim reside in Bakersfield.

Longtime Tehachapi barber and veteran country music pioneer Jimmy Phillips also helped develop the "Bakersfield Sound" in the late 1950s and '60s. Jimmy grew up in a farm labor camp in Arvin and first learned to drum with a pair of drumsticks on a metal folding chair. Jimmy first started drumming professionally when he was only 15 years old with a band called Jolly Jody and the Go Daddys, playing to enthusiastic crowds at dance clubs in Pismo Beach.

Jimmy's incredibly solid drumming led to a long musical tenure featuring gigs and studio recordings with a wealth of musicians, including Red Simpson, Joe and Rose Lee Maphis, Barbara Mandrell, Merle Haggard, Jelly Sanders and many more.

Phillips, who played drums on several records and performed on KERO-TV's The Jimmy Thomason Show, agreed with Eugene Moles that the Bakersfield Sound got its' start in 1949 or 1950. He added that Bill Woods was at the forefront of the movement and that Woods is known as the "Father of the Bakersfield Sound."

Jimmy has a CD available of Country and Western Swing favorites, with Jimmy both drumming and singing lead. Though he still works fulltime and runs Jim's Barber Shop in Old Towne after more than 38 years in business, Jimmy also continues to perform.

Both Jimmy and Tommy were inducted into the Country Western Swing Hall of Fame in Sacramento in October of 2010. Jimmy and his wife Diane have been married 44 years.

Mountain Bible Church is located at 630 Maple Street in Tehachapi. Our Worship on August 17th will be at 10 a.m. only. Please join us.