Eddie Bond (July 1, 1933 – March 20, 2013) was an American rockabilly singer and guitarist. Despite never becoming a major national figure, Eddie Bond carved out a place as a rockabilly and country star, as well as a radio personality, for 50 years. A contemporary of Elvis Presley and a fixture in Memphis and on the Louisiana Hayride in the mid-'50s, Bond was one of the best singers of the period.
Born Eddie James Bond in Memphis, he was originally drawn into music by the work of Ernest Tubb and Roy Acuff. By age eight, Bond had saved enough to buy his first guitar, and as a teenager he played at beer joints around Memphis. He drifted through various jobs after finishing school, including furniture factory worker and truck driver, before serving an 18-month hitch in the Navy.After returning to civilian life, he began putting together his band, the Stompers, whose membership at various times in the years 1952-1954 included Jody Chastain and Curtis Lee Anderson. By 1955, the group's mainstays included Reggie Young on lead guitar, John Hughey on the pedal steel, and Johnny Fine at the drums. Bond led the Stompers on tours across the South and Southwest, billed alongside Roy Orbison, among other future country and rock & roll stars. They failed in auditions for Sam Phillips at Sun and the Bihari brothers' Meteor label.
sound -- "Talking Off the Wall" was a rocker, with a solid beat and
lots of tension in the lead and rhythm guitar parts, but it was the B-side to the milder "Double Duty Lovin'." In any case, neither record attracted any notice from the public or the musical world.Bond and his band managed to get signed to Mercury Records in 1956, and this was where they came into their own. From their first Mercury session in February of 1956, Eddie Bond & the Stompers cooked, with a lean, hard rockabilly sound that rocked with the best of them. The band in those days featured Young, Hughey, and Fine, with Bond playing rhythm. The single "I Got a Woman"/"Rockin' Daddy" from that session is testimony to the excitement they could generate.
That Mercury debut sold well in the spring of 1956, and they were getting lots of gigs and broadcast exposure at the time. Bond played the Louisiana Hayride alongside Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and Johnny Horton, and it was around this time that he started his own radio show, an activity that was to loom ever larger in his career. His second Mercury session produced still more rockabilly gold, including "Slip, Slip, Slippin' In" and "Flip, Flop Mama," and they sold respectably, if not spectacularly.
Gradually he divested himself of his various professional interests. During his retirement his health started to decline after a fall in 2011 and he died of complications from Alzheimer's disease at his home in Bolivar, Tennessee on 20 March, 2013.He was 79. (Edited mainly from Bruce Eder @, All Music Guide)