Nine notes of some of the most recognizable music in movie history came courtesy of actor Ronny Cox's guitar-picking fingers.

It was Cox, playing Drew Ballinger in the movie "Deliverance," who leaned against an old station wagon and played "Dueling Banjos" with the character Lonnie (Billy Redden). The strange scene foreshadowed coming mayhem on a north Georgia river.

Cox wasn't pantomiming. He had years of experience to draw from by the time the movie was shot in 1972.

"I was calling square dances when I was 10 years old," Cox, 71, said of his youth near Clovis, N.M. "Clovis ... in the late '50s and early '60s was a hotbed of recording.

"Norman Petty's studios were there, and I was actually at the recording session when Buddy Holly cut 'Peggy Sue.' So I was cutting records when I was in high school. I put myself through college with a rock 'n' roll band. I used to play Texas swing. Then, in the '60s, I got enamored with folk music, and I've been there ever since."

Cox has written and recorded plenty of music in a long, under-the-radar career that brings him Thursday to the Roanoke Public Library. He'll be leading a three-man band through material that includes his latest record, "Songs ... With Repercussions."

A prolific actor, musician

In the years since "Deliverance," Cox has paid the bills with acting. He has a deep page at the online Internet Movie Database, including television and movie roles by the dozens. Some highlights include movies "The Onion Field," the first "Beverly Hills Cop," and a sequel, "Taps," "Robocop" and "Total Recall"; and TV shows "St. Elsewhere," "Star Trek: The Next Generation," "Desperate Housewives" and "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit."

But other than the Woody Guthrie biopic "Bound for Glory," the starring role in the Earl Hamner Jr. TV show "Apple's Way" and the short-lived TV musical "Cop Rock," Cox hasn't been hired for his singing and playing.

"I got 'Deliverance' ... because I could play," he said by phone from his home in Southern California. "Early in my career, everybody knew that I was this actor from New Mexico that also played music. It's just that I had such success in the last 25 or 30 years, mainly playing men of authority -- presidents, or dictators of Mars, or the head of the Beverly Hills Cops ... that now when people see me with a guitar, there's some sort of disconnect."

Still, he's kept his music career alive, releasing six albums -- including a collection of Mickey Newbury songs -- touring when he could and performing on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" and "Mountain Stage." And over the past five or six years, he's directed most of his energy toward writing and performing, declining acting jobs that might interfere.

"What I discovered was as much as I love acting, and I do love acting, I don't love it as much as I love the music," Cox said. "With acting, no matter what kind of acting it is ... there is and must be that imaginary fourth wall between you and the audience. You can't skip through the camera. You can't talk directly to the audience. You're always sort of confined by that character.

"And with music, and especially the kind of music show that I do, where I also tell stories and engage, there is the possibility of a profound one-on-one sharing that can take place. And I find that to be the most compelling opiate there is."

Grieving through song

The past couple of years have been difficult. Cox lost his wife, Mary -- whom he had known since childhood, the only woman he ever dated -- to cancer.

Cox, laughing, recalled their 45th wedding anniversary celebration, where Cox's friend and "Deliverance" co-star Ned Beatty told him: "Do you know how long that is in actor years? That's like a thousand."

He says that "Songs ... With Repercussions" is about his wife's absence.

"I'm not maudlin about this at all, but one of the things that helped me about losing Mary, is that through the music, I sort of grieve publicly," he said. "I don't try to hide the fact that Mary was everything to me. And the audiences get that ... and I think appreciate it in some way, on some level, and they help me get through it.

"Not that I'm there to do my grief therapy on people, because my shows are fairly upbeat and joyous, but I find ... that shared experience that we all have, that music can touch chords in us that we can't get to any place else."