Leon McAuliffe

Leon McAuliffe (January 3, 1917 – August 20, 1988), born William Leon McAuliffe, was an American Western swing musician from Houston, Texas. He is famous for his steel guitar solos with Bob Wills and The Texas Playboys, inspiring Wills's phrase, "Take it away, Leon." As a member of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, McAuliffe was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999 in the early influences category.

Biography

McAuliffe, at age 16, first played with the Light Crust Doughboys, playing both rhythm guitar and steel guitar. In 1935, at age 18, he went on to play with Bob Wills in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He stayed with Wills until World War II. While with Wills he helped compose "San Antonio Rose". He is more noted, however, for his most famous composition, "Steel Guitar Rag", and his playing, along with that of Robert Lee Dunn (of Milton Brown's Musical Brownies), that popularized the steel guitar in the United States. His playing (and Dunn's) is also credited with inspiring the rhythm and blues electric guitar style occurring some twenty years later.