The Unique Guitar Blog: Rusty Young - Member Of Poco Passed Away On April 14th, 2021

Rusty Young in 2018

Rusty Young was born and raised in Colorado. He began playing lap steel guitar at age 6, and taught guitar and steel guitar lessons during his high school years. As a child his parents took him to country music bars that they loved. This is where he was captivated by the sound of steel guitar players.

It only made sense that as a teen, he began playing country music in those late night bars.

The Boenzee Cryque

After finishing school Young played in a well known Denver psychedelic rock band "Boenzee Cryque".

Buffalo Springfield

By the late 1960's one of Rusty's former guitar students became the road manager for Buffalo Springfield. Richie Furay and Jim Messina needed a steel guitarist for the Furay's song "Kind Woman". He suggested that they hire Young.

Poco

The group must have liked him because after Buffalo Springfield disbanded in 1968 Rusty Young became a founding member of Poco in 1968 along with Richie Furay and Jim Messina,

The Troubadour

Drummer George Grantham and bass player Randy Meisner rounded out the original Poco lineup. The group Poco was initially put together to perform at a high-profile show at the Troubadour in West Hollywood.

But they had such a great sound, and really cliched as a group.

Poco with Schmidt and Cotton

The band's membership fluctuated over the years. When Furay left the group, Young took on more song writing responsibility, along with Paul Cotton and Timothy B. Schmit.

Rusty with pedal steel,
banjo, and dobro

Rusty Young was the band's steel guitar player, although through the years he played a variety of other stringed instruments including banjo, dobro, and mandolin.

Young’s pedal steel work along with the group’s rustic signature sound and helped create a prominent place for the steel guitar among roots-conscious California rock bands.

In a 2014 interview with Goldmine magazine, referring to Mr. Furay’s compositions:

“I added color to Richie’s country-rock songs, and that was the whole idea, to use country-sounding instruments. I pushed the envelope on steel guitar, playing it with a fuzz tone, because nobody was doing that. I played the pedal steel through a Leslie speaker, much as a Hammond B3 organist would, causing some listeners to assume he was indeed playing an organ."

Poco

After Jim Messina, and Richie Furay left the group Rusty Young emerged as one of the group’s frontmen, along with the newcomer Paul Cotton.

Rusty Young - Crazy Love

Mr. Young would go on to write and sing the lead vocal on his best known and most popular song “Crazy Love,” This became the band’s biggest hit, and reached No. 1 on the Billboard adult contemporary chart and No. 17 on the pop chart in 1979..

Rusty Young also wrote and sang lead on “Rose of Cimarron,” another of Poco’s more enduring recordings from the ’70s, and orchestrated the 1989 reunion of the group’s original members for the album “Legacy,” which, like the 1978 platinum-selling “Legend,” yielded a pair of Top 40 singles.

2013 - Steel Guitar Hall of Fame

In 2013 he was inducted into the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame. He announced his retirement that same year, but it turned out to be short lived.

Poco - Legend LP

A few shows were booked into 2014 including three farewell shows in Florida. One of those shows was a performance in a recording studio in front of a live audience for a DVD document of the band's live show. Young said there could be some one-offs in the future after that, but the band would not be actively touring as before.

Young and Nashville bass player Jack Sundrud wrote and recorded music for children's story videos as the "Session Cats".

Waitin' For The Sun

Young continued to do guest performances with former members of Poco and other country rock artists. Young released his first solo album in 2017 on Blue Élan Records, Waitin' For The Sun.

In 2019 Rusty Young released his first new music since Waitin' for the Sun.

Rusty Young
Listen To Your Heart

The new tune, "Listen to Your Heart", was released digitally and benefited a local Steelville, Missouri animal charity, Santana's Hope for Paws (Friends of Steelville, MO Pound) Animal Shelter.

Norman Russell Young, better know to the world as Rusty, one of the founding member's of Poco, beloved by his fans, died of a heart attack on April 14, 2021 at the age of 75 years old.

Click on the links under the pictures for sources. Click on the links in the text for further information.