Andrew Hickey

speaker

2,253 appearances 4 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 3 Sep

Andrew Hickey’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 3.

Appearances

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A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs · Song 185: “Peaches En Regalia” by Frank Zappa · 21 Jul 2026 podcast

He played on the Lawrence Welk Show in 1959...

and a few years later on Gene Autry's Mighty Ranch.

It's difficult to talk more precisely about Cash's career, because in his interviews he's frustratingly vague about what he did and didn't play on, in ways that in general make him sound rather more important than he actually was.

Which is particularly annoying as he was in fact, as we just heard, an incredibly accomplished guitarist and banjo player, and did have a number of very real achievements.

But, for example, in interviews he will talk a lot about playing guitar with Elvis in the film Roused About, in ways that make it sound like Casher played on the soundtrack.

In fact, Casher was just chosen to mime guitar in the film, the actual tracks having been played by Scotty Moore, Billy Strange, Barney Kessel and Tiny Tim Prell.

He also talks about having been a member of the Wrecking Crew, and talks vaguely about sessions he played on for Phil Spector, Sonny Bono and others.

I'm sure he did play on some sessions for some of those people, but I haven't been able to find any confirmation of which ones, and I've never seen his name on any AFM sheets for any sessions I've looked at.

There's no official membership of the Wrecking Crew.

Like the Nashville A-Team, it's an informal name given to the people who are always called as the first or second choice to play at a lot of the same sessions as each other.

And while Kasher may have played on some Wrecking Crew sessions, he would have been a long way down the list of guitarists called on.

Just off the top of my head, guitarists who were regularly called on for Wrecking Crew sessions were Tommy Tedesco, Al Casey, Jerry Cole, Mike Deasy, Billy Strange, James Burton, Glenn Campbell, Barney Kessel and Louis Shelton.

So it's difficult to say much about Kasher, because most of the information we have about him comes from his own interviews, and I don't think he's reliable enough to take his words as straight fact.

But that's not to take away from his musicianship, which, as we've heard, was spectacular.

Don Preston agreed, saying in an interview later, Zappa always had another guitar player because at that time he couldn't play guitar very well, so he always had a really good guitar player in the early group like Henry Vestine and Elliot Ingber.

Even when I joined the band there was some guy, I don't know who it was to this day, but he had like lightning fingers.

That's certainly evident on the one surviving live recording of this line-up of the group, released very recently.

But Preston also said he was very, very straight-looking and he really didn't fit with the band.

He didn't really know any of us and we never got to know him, so he disappeared real fast.

That was happening a lot with the Early Mothers.

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