Pete Wade, Guitarist on Countless Nashville Hits, Dies at 89

Pete Wade, a prolific and versatile Nashville studio guitarist who played on scores of blockbuster hits — including Ray Price’s “Crazy Arms” and Sonny James’s “Young Love,” two of the most popular country records of the middle to late 1950s — died on Wednesday at his daughter’s home in Hendersonville, Tenn., near Nashville. He was 89.

His daughter, Angie Balch, said the cause was complications of hip surgery.

A member of the loose aggregation of top-flight session musicians known as the Nashville A-Team, Mr. Wade played on numerous records regarded as classics. Among the best known were Loretta Lynn’s “Fist City” (1968), Lynn Anderson’s “Rose Garden” (1970), Crystal Gayle’s “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue” (1977), George Jones’s “He Stopped Loving Her Today” (1980) and John Anderson’s “Swingin’” (1983).

All five of those records were No. 1 country hits; “Brown Eyes” and “Rose Garden” also won Grammy Awards and crossed over to the pop Top 10. “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” another Grammy winner, was added to the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry in 2008.

“Pete Wade treated all of them the same way,” the music journalist Peter Cooper said, referring to the many artists Mr. Wade accompanied, at an event celebrating his legacy at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in 2016. “He listened, he comprehended, he added what would help, and he left out anything that would distract or water down.”

An empathetic musician whose clean tone and less-is-more approach lent themselves equally to rhythm and lead playing, Mr. Wade, who also played fiddle, bass and steel guitar, had a special affinity for collaborating with steel guitarists.