Roy Wiggins
American guitarist
Roy Wiggins (June 27, 1926 – August 3, 1999), known professionally as Little Roy Wiggins, was an American steel guitarist who is best known for his work with Eddy Arnold. Wiggins began playing professionally at a young age. As Eddy Arnold's first hire, he developed a signature "ting-a-ling" sound that helped make Arnold the most popular country entertainer for a period. As Arnold moved towards pop music, Wiggins' instrumental work was faded to the background, and then dropped entirely. Wiggins then made several solo instrumental recordings, and toured with other country musicians. Late in life he played for tourists in Tennessee.
Biography
Early life and career
Wiggins was born Ivan Leroy Wiggins on June 27, 1926, in Nashville, Tennessee. At the age of six, Wiggins became fascinated with the Hawaiian guitars he heard on Grand Ole Opry broadcasts, and particularly the playing of Burt Hutcherson, who was also a family friend. Soon afterwards his mother purchased a guitar for him from a traveling salesman, and he began taking lessons from Robert E. Martin. He developed his skills quickly enough that by age fifteen he was playing professionally for Paul Howard and his Arkansas Cotton Pickers.
“Roy Wiggins” enters the record as american guitarist. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Wiggins, American and guitarist can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q30125104. VIAF identifies the subject as 6631423. The Library of Congress control number is n94106685. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1926 and 1999.
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This entry incorporates text from “Roy Wiggins” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.