Jimmy Mattingly

Jimmy Mattingly – (b. Kentucky, c. 1963 - ) – Fiddle player. From age two to ten, Jimmy Mattingly lived in Terre Haute, where he first learned how to play the violin. Even though he had always been around bluegrass music, his first formal training came in fifth grade strings class at Benjamin Franklin Elementary School. One memorable event from those days was attending a concert by Lester Flatt and Marty Stuart at Terre Haute South Vigo High School. (Also in the audience was future bandmate Terry Eldredge from West Terre Haute.) After moving to Leitchfield, Kentucky, Mattingly continued to sharpen his fiddle playing skills. In 1981, he won the U.S. Grand Masters Fiddle Championship and started traveling with the bluegrass band Spectrum. Later in the decade, he played with Hoosier Steve Wariner and the Forrester Sisters. Next, he enjoyed long stretches of touring with Dolly Parton (1989-1993) and then with Garth Brooks (1995-2001). In fact, Mattingly can be seen playing fiddle in Garth Brooks’s famous Dr. Pepper commercial from 2002. In addition, Mattingly did session work for Brooks & Dunn, Rascal Flatts, Chris LeDoux, Ricky Van Shelton, Janie Frickie, and Susan Ashton. Not surprisingly, he finally met up with Terry Eldredge at jam sessions held at Nashville’s Station Inn, performances with the Osborne Brothers, and recording sessions for Dolly Parton’s Halos and Horns in 2002. In 2004, Mattingly, Terry Eldredge and four other experienced Nashville musicians formed the award-winning Grascals, which Mattingly left in 2008.