Part of I-40 will be named for a country music mainstay from Johnston County

Jimmy Capps titled his autobiography “The Man in Back,” a reference to his decades as a session guitarist on some of country music’s biggest hits.

Soon, Capps will also be known as the man on the highway sign along a stretch of Interstate 40 near where he grew up in Johnston County.

The section of I-40 where it crosses I-95 near Benson will be christened Jimmy Capps Highway, the state Board of Transportation decided Thursday. Capps grew up in Benson, where he listened to the Grand Ole Opry and Chet Atkins with members of the Carter Family on the radio as a boy. He picked up the guitar at age 12 and played on local radio shows as a teenager before heading to Nashville in the late 1950s.

Capps made his debut at the Opry in 1958 with the Louvin Brothers and was a member of the house band of the Grand Ole Opry from 1967 until just before he died in 2020 at age 81.

Capps was inducted into the N.C. Music Hall of Fame and the Musicians Hall of Fame in Nashville. But he would never have imagined having a highway named for him, his wife, Michele Capps, told transportation board members Thursday.

“He was a gentleman, and he was humble,” she said. “He loved his home state and his hometown of Benson, and he never forgot where he came from. And he was always proud when he was introduced on the Grand Ole Opry as a North Carolinian.”

Capps played on hundreds of country records in the 1970s and 1980s; at his peak he sat in on more than 500 recording sessions a year, according to his website.

The hits he contributed to include Tammy Wynette’s “Stand By Your Man,” Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler,” The Oak Ridge Boys’ “Elvira” and George Jones’ “He Stopped Loving Her Today.” Among the dozens of other musicians he played behind were Conway Twitty, John Denver, Ray Charles, Barbara Mandrell, George Strait, Ronnie Milsap and Alan Jackson.

In later years, he was known as Sheriff Jimmy Capps on the variety show “Larry’s Country Diner.”

Johnston County and Town of Benson asked NCDOT to honor Capps with a highway designation. It covers I-40 on either side of I-95, between the N.C. 242 interchange and 5 Points Road.

Though Capps didn’t live to see part of I-40 named in his honor, he was on hand when Benson Mayor Jimmy Medlin unveiled a sign declaring Church Street, where he grew up, as Jimmy Capps Parkway in the spring of 2019.

“I just don’t know what to say. I’m a man of few words,” Capps said as the parkway sign was unveiled. “I’m truly the man in back.”