Beloved '60s Musician With #1 Hits Dead at 88

In very sad news for classic rock and country music fans, Wayne Moss, the Nashville-based session musician known for his work with legends such as Bob Dylan, Dolly Parton, Roy Orbison and others, has died. He was 88 years old.



Kyle Young, CEO of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, confirmed Moss' death in a statement on social media this week.

"Wayne Moss was a guitarist of dexterous skill and sophisticated taste," the statement read. "Listen carefully to Bob Dylan's ‘I Want You' or Roy Orbison's ‘Oh, Pretty Woman' or Waylon Jennings's ‘Only Daddy That'll Walk the Line.' You'll hear innovative electric lead parts that drew attention to Nashville's world-class musicianship."

"As a studio owner, his doors were equally wide open to pop, rock, and country music," Young continued. "Wayne was a musical torchbearer and a creative pathfinder who left his own resounding stamp on music history."

Orbison's son, Roy Orbison Jr., also honored his late father's friend in a social media post, writing, "My dear friend, the great guitarist Wayne Moss, has died. A member of 'Nashville's A-team' of musicians, Wayne was my dad's good friend and played on all the Roy Orbison Monument hits."

Indeed, Moss can be heard on "Oh, Pretty Woman," "Cryin'" and "Only the Lonely," in addition to such hits as Parton's "Jolene" and Dylan's Blonde on Blonde album. He worked with Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, Charley Pride and Joan Baez, and helped found two bands made up of other Nashville session players, Area Code 615 and Barefoot Jerry.

Wayne Moss founded an independent recording studio in Nashville

Moss even founded the independent recording studio, Cinderella Sound, where artists including the Steve Miller Band, Linda Ronstadt, Grand Funk Railroad and many others have recorded over the years.

As Moss said in an interview with Sound on Soundin 2011, Cinderella Sound gave musicians the privacy they couldn't find at other studios.

"We're not even in the phone book, you know?" he explained. "So unless you know somebody that knows somebody, you can't even get in here. But Steve Miller did and Ronstadt did and Leo Kottke did and a lot of folks. So we've had the business, despite the fact that you can't even find us, you know? You can't Google us or anything else, therefore there's not a Gray Line bus tour coming through here every day saying 'Is that Johnny Cash in here? I wanna get his autograph.' That drives artists crazy."

"And Steve Miller didn't want anybody in the studio that wasn't hired to play on it, and that's what he got. He wanted to engineer his own vocals? Fine, go ahead. You know? So we try to bend in whatever direction the artist wants and we've had a lot of people in here over the years."

Related: Bob Dylan Once Said This Iconic ‘60s Singer ‘Transcended All the Genres'

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This story was originally published April 21, 2026 at 3:54 PM.