He recorded with virtually every major country star of the sixties, seventies, and early eighties, including Faron Young, Johnny Paycheck Little Jimmy Dickens, Reba McEntire, George Jones, Don Williams, Dolly Parton, Crystal Gayle, Loretta Lynn, Bob Wills, Asleep at the Wheel, Don Francisco (song "He's Alive"), Ray Price, Willie Nelson, George Strait ("Amarillo by Morning"), Bill Monroe, David Allan Coe, and Emmylou Harris.
Versatile, he recorded with Elvis Presley, Gary Burton, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, The Monkees, Linda Ronstadt ("Long, Long Time"), Ray Charles, Henry Mancini, Dan Fogelberg, The Statler Brothers, The Happy Goodman Family, Neil Young and The Lewis Family.
Please make welcome to the stage the great Buddy Spicher" -- [1][2] During his career of more than fifty years, he has been known for double stops and playing harmony in twin fiddle work.
Slowly he became sought after, and by 1967, working with Tommy Jackson, then Johnny Gimble, and sometimes Grover "Shorty" Lavender, Spicher was an "A-list" fiddle player; it was a position he maintained for more than ten years.
He can be heard playing the fiddle (“violin” in the credits on the record jacket) on Christian singer Don Francisco's 1977 album Forgiven.
That's what makes it tick … We do all the things to get set up and then if we're real lucky, and everybody's feelin' good, it just has a certain magical feel and then if nobody else has anything like it on another label… there's a lot of luck involved.
Spicher throughout this time toured the US, UK, France, and Japan with many stars including, Ray Price, Loretta Lynn, and Crystal Gayle.
Spicher was the fiddler, violinist, and cellist for Area Code 615, a Nashville country rock band active in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
He also shared his talents on the feature performance of “Bring a Torch, Jeanette Isabella” by late TV legend Carroll O'Connor.
[7] The Nashville Cats honor, held in the Country Music Hall of Fame's Ford Theater, involves a two-hour program highlighting Spicher's career accomplishments.
As Stephen Betts writes in the October 14, 2014 issue of Rolling Stone magazine, the exhibit highlights the work of the Cats with famous artists in genres other than country.
He was an adjunct professor at Belmont University in Nashville until December 2016, and has been active in fiddle camps and seminars throughout the US for the past fifteen years.
He co-wrote with Jimmy Martin "Goin' Up Dry Branch"; fiddler Michael Cleveland and Flamekeeper's version of the song won the International Bluegrass Music Association's Instrumental Recorded Performance prize in 2011.
He, Cleveland and banjoist Alison Brown collaborated with Grammy-nominated bluegrass band The Special Consensus on John Denver's "Thank God I'm a Country Boy".