Orville Rhodes; Country and Western Musician

Orville (Red) Rhodes, 64, preeminent country and western steel guitar player whose records included “Velvet Hammer in a Cowboy Band.� Rhodes won the Country Western Music Award as outstanding steel guitarist five times--in 1965, 1967, 1968, 1972 and 1973. The colorful Rhodes fronted his own band, Red Rhodes and the Detours, at the popular Palomino Club in North Hollywood through the 1960s, and played on the Oscar-winning soundtrack of the 1983 film, “The Right Stuff.� Born and brought up in Wood River, Ill., Rhodes was a boxer and an oil company engineer before he settled into music--both as a performer and inventor of engineering amplification equipment. As a technical engineer, he operated Red’s Royal Amp in Hollywood in the 1960s and 1970s and had recently spent a decade at Groove Tubes in Sylmar. On records, he backed such stars as The Byrds, Carpenters, Joan Baez, Nancy Sinatra, Anne Murray, Hoyt Axton, Linda Ronstadt, Hank Williams Jr., John Denver and Glen Campbell. On Sunday in Los Angeles of complications of rheumatoid arthritis.