A gifted steel guitarist who has backed up some of the biggest names in country, rock, and pop music in a career that has spanned six decades, Jay Dee Maness was also a witness to some of the first salvos in the country-rock revolution. Maness began playing club dates when he was just 15, and in 1967 he appeared on Safe at Home, the groundbreaking album from Gram Parsons' International Submarine Band. A year later, when Parsons had joined the Byrds, Maness played on the sessions for their iconic country-rock album Sweetheart of the Rodeo, and later on he would join Byrds bassist Chris Hillman in the successful country group the Desert Rose Band. All this is in addition to years of playing live shows and recording sessions with the likes of Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, Dwight Yoakam, Tom Jones, Neil Diamond, Eric Clapton, Elton John, Ray Charles, and many more.

Jay Dee Maness was born on January 4, 1945 in Loma Linda, California, in San Bernardino County. Maness was just ten years old when he took up the steel guitar; a neighbor was selling a Magnatone lap steel and matching amp for fifty dollars, and his father was willing to pay for it in installments. After taking 12 lessons in a 13-week course, Maness learned from then on by listening, digging into the music of Hank Williams, Ernest Tubb, Johnny Cash, and Lefty Frizzell. By 1960, Maness was playing lap steel and pedal steel well enough to sit in at local clubs, and in 1965 he joined the house band at the Aces Club in City of Industry, a gig he held down for three and a half years. Not long after he began working at the Aces Club, two regular customers introduced themselves -- Gram Parsons, a young rock musician with a passion for country music, and Chris Hillman, a former bluegrass picker who played bass with the Byrds. Maness enjoyed talking about music with Parsons and Hillman, and when Parsons' group the International Submarine Band were signed to record an album for LHI Records, he asked Maness to play on the sessions. The album, 1967's Safe at Home, was one of the first rock albums to display a strong and distinct country influence, but the restless Parsons broke up the band before the album came out, limiting its impact. Parsons soon joined the Byrds, and group leader Roger McGuinn allowed Parsons' country inclinations to dominate their next album. Parsons asked Maness to play steel guitar on what would become 1968's Sweetheart of the Rodeo, often cited as the album that launched the country-rock movement.

While Maness' work with the Byrds gave him an audience among rock fans, for the next few years he devoted himself to country. Maness did regular session work for bandleader and producer Cliffie Stone, and beginning in 1969 he spent a year on the road as a member of Buck Owens' road band the Buckaroos, as well as appearing with Owens on the first season of the TV series Hee Haw. In 1970, Maness joined the house band at North Hollywood's famed country music venue the Palomino Club, and except for a year spent working with Ray Stevens in 1975, he would play there regularly until 1978. That year, Maness was hired to play on the score for the pilot episode of the television series The Dukes of Hazzard, and he would contribute pedal steel to the show's music through its seven-season run. In addition to his work on The Dukes of Hazzard, Maness was an in-demand session player, playing on dozens of recording sessions, contributing to film and television scores, and making several appearances on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, backing up Johnny Mathis, Clint Black, and Sting, among others. In 1986, Maness and Chris Hillman were among the founding members of the Desert Rose Band, a group that blended vintage and contemporary country influences. The group scored a number of hits on the country charts, including "He's Back and I'm Blue," "One Step Forward," and "Love Reunited," before Maness left the band to return his focus to session work. Maness played on Vince Gill's first two albums, recorded in the mid-'80s, and in 2000 Gill persuaded him to join his road band, and Maness continued recording and touring with Gill and his group until 2004.

Maness rarely recorded as a solo artist, though he appeared on a 1970 album called Suite Steel, which also featured fellow pedal steel masters Buddy Emmons, Red Rhodes, and Sneaky Pete Kleinow. In 2016, Maness released an instrumental album, From Where I Sit, and in 2018 Maness teamed up with Lloyd Green, a fellow steel guitarist who also played on the Sweetheart of the Rodeo sessions, to record Journey to the Beginning: A Steel Guitar Tribute to the Byrds. The album, in which they offered new interpretations of the Byrds' country-accented material, also included guest appearances from Sam Bush, Jim Lauderdale, Herb Pedersen of the Desert Rose Band, and Richie Furay of Buffalo Springfield. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi