Session drummer Kenny Malone is being remembered on the fifth anniversary of his death, with the article highlighting his understated playing on Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” and Crystal Gayle’s “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue”. His career mattered because his adaptable, song-focused style helped shape numerous influential Nashville recordings while extending well beyond country music.

Born in Denver in 1938, Malone began drumming as a child, spent 14 years in the US Navy band and moved to Nashville in 1970. He worked with artists including Merle Haggard, Kenny Rogers, Dobie Gray, the Chicks and Nanci Griffith, developed distinctive hand-percussion techniques and instruments, and later co-founded the jazz and world-music group Tone Patrol; he died aged 83 in a Nashville hospital in 2021 after contracting COVID-19.