Donald Hugh Helms (February 28, 1927 – August 11, 2008) was an American musician who was the steel guitar player of Hank Williams's Drifting Cowboys group. He was a member of the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame (1984).
Biography
Helms was a featured musician on a vast number of Hank Williams recordings and provided the high, piercing signature steel guitar sound on more than 100 of Hank's songs and on 10 of his 11 number-one country hits.
Bill Lloyd, the curator of stringed instruments at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, said of Helms: "After the great tunes and Hank's mournful voice, the next thing you think about in those songs is the steel guitar. It is the quintessential honky-tonk steel sound — tuneful, aggressive, full of attitude." Lloyd also credits Helms's sound as a major influence in shifting the sound of country music away from the hillbilly string-band sound popular in the 1930s and toward the more modern electric style that became prominent in the 1940s.