Ronnie Tutt, drummer in Elvis Presley’s Vegas band who also played for Neil Diamond and Jerry Garcia – obituary

Ronnie Tutt, who has died aged 83, was Elvis Presley’s drummer in the singer’s final decade; he also worked with a string of other notable musicians, including Billy Joel, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks’s shortlived duo, Gram Parsons, Kenny Rogers, Neil Diamond and Jerry Garcia.

He joined Presley after his celebrated 1968 television comeback special, replacing DJ Fontana in the TCB Band (short for Elvis’s motto, Takin’ Care of Business). He went on to juggle gigs with Elvis and the Jerry Garcia Band, often playing for both the King and the Grateful Dead guitarist in the same weekend: “One night I’d be in Vegas playing with rhinestone two-piece outfits and the next night I’d be out with Garcia with the tie-dye and a pair of jeans.

“Elvis’s music was a lot more in your face; you could never play enough. But with Jerry we never talked about it, but I just knew my role with that band, no matter what configuration it was, was to help keep it together.”

During instrumental breaks in his live shows Elvis would introduce his long-haired, bearded drummer on stage as “hard-workin’ Ronnie Tutt” – which would be Tutt’s cue for a pounding extended solo.

Ronald Tutt was born in Dallas, Texas, on March 12 1938. He began singing and tap-dancing lessons aged three, and later took up trumpet and ukulele. He became something of a tap prodigy, and at 11 he danced on the first television programme to be broadcast live in his home town.

Switching from trumpet to drums, he took his first professional job while still in his teens, with the Western Swing Band, playing on weekly radio broadcasts from the Northside Coliseum in Fort Worth; there, he met the celebrated Elvis Presley sidemen, guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black.

He began studying Music at the University of North Texas, in Denton, but dropped out to pursue his drumming professionally. A lucrative session career followed until in 1969 he joined Elvis in Las Vegas for his annual residencies at the International (later the Hilton) Hotel, as well as for hundreds of shows touring the country.

Tutt was hired for the band, he recalled, because he focused intently on its mercurial leader: “I really think I got the job,” he told Presley’s biographer Peter Guralnick, “because Elvis and I had such great eye communication on-stage.

“He said that I didn’t just do my own thing when I auditioned; I watched him. And you really had to, because it was like playing for a glorified stripper. With all the moves he made, you had to play according to what he was doing.”

Among his other notable hook-ups, he toured with Neil Diamond, and played drums on the Billy Joel albums The Piano Man (1973) and Streetlife Serenade the following year, appearing on such hits as Piano Man, The Ballad of Billy the Kid and The Entertainer. He also played on the Buckingham Nicks album in 1973, the couple’s only project together before they joined Fleetwood Mac two years later.

Also in 1973, when Gram Parsons, formerly of the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers, was putting together his first solo project, he recruited the core of Presley’s TCB Band – Tutt, guitarist James Burton and keyboard player Glen Hardin.

The resulting album, GP, was a commercial flop but a critical hit that was instrumental in kick-starting the country-rock genre – as was its successor the following year, Grievous Angel, which was released posthumously following the death of Parsons from a morphine overdose.

For his 1975 album John R Cash, Johnny Cash eschewed his regular backing band, the Tennessee Three, and followed Parsons in drafting in members of the TCB Band, including Tutt. Later work included the album King of America, for which Elvis Costello enlisted members of his namesake’s TCB Band, who had continued to record and tour intermittently.

Tutt said his greatest influences were Presley, “for the flashy, explosive, slightly out-of-control style of playing that he brought out in me that mirrored his performance and personality”, Garcia for his laid-back soulfulness, and Neil Diamond for his disciplined preparation.

Ronnie Tutt was married to Donna for 49 years. She survives him with their two daughters and a son.

Ronnie Tutt, born March 12 1938, died October 16 2021