Jerry Reed has died of complications from emphysema at the age of 71. Reed, who was born in Atlanta in 1937, spent two years in the military before moving to Nashville in the early 1960s to pursue a career in the country music industry. A guitar picker with a unique style, he quickly earned a place in the fraternity of working, sought-after studio musicians while honing his songwriting on the side. His rise to solo stardom was abetted by two legendary figures: Chet Atkins, who produced one of Reed's early singles in the mid-'60s and later teamed up with him for a pair of award-winning albums in the early 1970s, and Elvis Presley, who recorded a couple of Reed compositions, "Guitar Man" and "U.S. Male", while plotting his own late-'60s comeback. (Legend has it that Elvis, who decided to do "Guitar Man" after hearing Reed's own recorded version, decreed that Reed was to be brought in to play on the sessions after finding that nobody else could recreate the self-taught guitarist's "weird tunings.") Reed's own biggest hit, the 1971 Grammy-winning "When You're Hot, You're Hot", established him as an unexpected master of the demented redneck comedy routine set to music, a field that he also plowed in the Elvis tribute "Tupelo Mississippi Flash" and the great, rabid Cajun epic "Amos Moses." During this period, he was becoming a familiar face on TV, thanks to recurring appearances on musical-variety programs hosted by Glen Campbell and Dean Martin. (Reed had his own short-lived series--The Jerry Reed When You're Hot You're Hot Hour--in 1972.) He also slipped into animated (as in cartoon) form to appear on an episode of The New Scooby-Doo Movies, calling in Shaggy, Scooby, and the other personnel of the Mystery Machine to help him find his lost guitar.
In 1975, Reed made his movie acting debut in the redneck classic W. W. and the Dixie Dancekings, starring Burt Reynolds. His movie career, which would displace his music career for several years, became inextricably tied to that of Reynolds's, with whom he co-starred in Gator (which Reynolds directed), Smokey and the Bandit and its first sequel, and Stroker Ace, where his brief appearance was uncredited, a hint that Reynolds probably wishes he'd picked up on. Reed also turned up on Reynolds's TV series B. L. Stryker and Evening Shade; acted in the comedy Hot Stuff, which was directed by its star, fellow Reynolds sidekick Dom DeLuise; and displaced ol' Burt in the 1983 Smokey and the Bandit Part 3, which Reynolds couldn't be bothered with. He also co-starred with Peter Fonda in High-Ballin', part of the trucker-as-modern-American-hero drive-in movie cycle that the Smokey and the Bandit movies (and Reed's own contribution to its soundtrack, "East Bound and Down") helped midwife, went head to head with Robin Williams and Walter Matthau in the 1983 comedy The Survivors, and played an officer in the Gene Hackman-Danny Glover Vietnam drama Bat 21 (1988), on which he was also the executive producer. After contributing redneck authenticity to the Adam Sandler vehicle The Waterboy in 1998, Reed officially abandoned movies to spend the rest of his life concentrating on his music. At that time, he expressed something close to disdain for his acting ability ("When people ask me what my motivation is, I have a simple answer: Money."), but in fact he was an easy, natural presence on-screen, and brought energy and likability to many roles that might have defeated a better-trained but stiffer performer. If the secret to his success in movies was partly that he recognized his own limitations and never strayed to far outside his comfortable range, that at least makes him smarter than say, Kris Kristofferson. Reed is survived by his wife Priscilla, with whom he would have celebrated a fiftieth wedding anniversary next year.