Pedal Steel Music

Hello fans and fellow players,

As most of you know by now, we have lost the Queen of Country Music and I don’t mean Bill Anderson. God love Kitty Wells. I miss her as we all here in Nashville do, but somehow I feel the greatness of this star will never be truly gone.

When I think of her, I think of listening to her on the jukebox when I was in the Air Force. Stu Basore and I used to go into town and stop at drive-in restaurants and divide our money between hearing Kitty on the jukebox and pecan pie and ice cream.

I think about all the great steel players that have worked for her. Shot Jackson was the player on so many of her hits. When I moved to Nashville, Stu Basore was a year or so ahead of me and he got the Kitty Wells job as soon as the position opened up.

This thrilled me tremendously as I was a great fan of one and friend of the other.

Not long after I moved to Nashville to try to find my fame and fortune, Russ Hicks went to work with Kitty. Soon afterward, Jimmy Crawford to the position. He was one of several of the great players that held the reigns in that steel guitar playing job.

Kitty was one of the rare people in Nashville that I have never worked for myself, but everyone that ever worked for her, all the way up to George Edwards, was a great friend.

I’m relishing some of the shorts that they’re showing on television of Kitty and Stu playing his little Fender 1200 with Howard White standing behind him on his Sho-Bud number four guitar.

I’ll always miss having missed the chance to work with Kitty. It’s a hole in my career I wish I could go back and fill. I really loved the purity of her country music. Since all her steel players were very close friends of mine, I learned much about the inner workings of the Kitty Wells road show. There was nothing pretentious about Kitty or her friendship.

I’m going to turn the rest of this newsletter over to Bob Hempker. It’s all yours Bob.

Anybody who has even the slightest bit of interest in country music knows who Kitty Wells is. Every aspiring female country western singer, in my opinion, should spend some time listening to Kitty Wells’ recordings and studying them. She is the true queen of country music.

I remember Loretta Lynn’s very first album on the Zero Label she recorded in Washington State. She sounded somewhat like Kitty Wells. You could distinctly hear the Kitty Wells influence in her voice.

When I was a kid growing up in Lima, Ohio, Kitty Wells, Johnny and Jack and Jerry Byrd were performing one of their road dates in my hometown. My guitar teacher, Ron Dearth, took me backstage after the show. I was twelve years old and I met Don Helms, Jerry Byrd and Shot Jackson all in one night. I met the whole cast of the show, but it was the steel players I really wanted to meet. Needless to say, I was on cloud nine.

Ten years or so later when I got the job with Loretta, I learned that she had the utmost admiration and respect for Kitty Wells. Loretta still today corrects people if they refer to her as the queen of country music and tells them Kitty Wells is the queen of country music. That’s how deep her respect and admiration goes.

Both of these ladies are majestic icons of country music. I’ve had the privilege of meeting one and working and being close friends with the other as Loretta feels like a sister to me.

Check out our monthly specials at www.steelguitar.net/monthlyspecials.html and we’ll try to save you a lot of money.

The friend of all bar holders,
Bobbe Seymour
www.steelguitar.net
sales@steelguitar.net
www.youtube.com/bobbeseymour

Listen To Steel Guitar Music Streaming 24 Hours A Day!

Steel Guitar Nashville
123 Mid Town Court
Hendersonville, TN. 37075
(615) 822-5555
Open 9AM – 4PM Monday – Friday
Closed Saturday and Sunday

Hello fellow players,

This is Bob Hempker filling in for Bobbe Seymour today.

With all the knee levers and floor pedals on a steel guitar, why should we take the time to learn slants and reverses?

One answer would be, there can be times when we want to play something to get a certain interval between two or more notes that we don’t have a knee lever or pedal hooked up to that particular string for and thus we can’t get that note unless we slant the bar.

Another reason is we sometimes choose to use a reverse bar or slant instead of a knee lever because it may sound a little more soulful than a pedal, somewhat like a guitar player bending a string with his left hand.

Furthermore, we may have a pedal or knee lever that raises a string only a half tone and we may want to raise or lower the string a whole note or even further, therefore we would use a knee lever or pedal with a slant or reverse.

There are many ways we can increase our creativity by being conversant in slants and reverses as it opens up all the options we have in order to play what we want to play. This makes us a more interesting player to the listener which is our goal and also to maybe play it a little different than the next guy plays it.

If you have a six string or eight string lapsteel or a dobro and a smaller bar, you can practice bar slants and reverses and they’ll be easier because of the wider string spacing and the smaller bar. Work on that until you get real comfortable and then go to your normal pedal guitar, still use the small bar until you get comfortable with that and then go up to your normal bar that you use.

Slants and reverses take lots of practice like anything else.

Since I’ve been helping Bobbe out in the store, I’ve seen a lot of players come in looking for some gadget they think will make them sound better. In my opinion, the road to better tone is practice and there is no shortcut to practicing. If you hit ruts in the road, there’s a multitude of instructional material to choose from.

When I was a young guy trying to learn to play, which I’m still trying to learn to play, there were no instructional materials for pedal steel guitar at that time. You were totally on your own. Before buying the next gadget to make you sound better, may I suggest that you consider some of the instructional material available today and block out a small time each day to practice.

Practice with a written out practice plan. That will keep you focused. I suggest single note scales, arpeggios, harmonized scales with two notes, harmonized scales with three notes, even four notes. And you want to do them in every key.

When you learn a new song, learn it in at least three or four different keys. This helps you learn the positions on the instrument and better prepares you for playing professionally. I would add too, any passage of a song, intro, turnaround, ending that you normally play, try playing it with a bar slant or reverse bar where you normally use a pedal or knee lever. Whether or not you end up playing it that way out on a gig, it’s still good practice.

Drag out some old Jerry Byrd albums and listen to them. Even in his Hawaiian songs, some of his ideas can be incorporated into country music or any other style of music for that matter. It doesn’t really matter where you pull ideas from as long as they’re usable.

I’ll steal a lick from somebody in a heartbeat. That’s how we learn from each other. We’re all going to play the same passage a little bit differently. By adding fluency in slants and reverses to your arsenal, you are setting yourself up as a unique player and stylist. When you get to that level, that’s when people start copying you.

If you don’t already have it, you should check out Bobbe’s Slants and Reverses DVD. It really helps you incorporate your ears, hands, knees and feet into your overall playing. If you think about it, our ears and our brain are the two most important factors in what and how we play.

Take a serious look at the videos at www.steelguitar.net/videos.html and see if they don’t make you the best gadget you can invest in. Like I said, I absolutely wish we had this stuff when I was a kid.

Check out our monthly specials at www.steelguitar.net/monthlyspecials.html and we’ll try to save you a lot of money.
www.steelguitar.net
sales@steelguitar.net
www.youtube.com/bobbeseymour

Listen To Steel Guitar Music Streaming 24 Hours A Day!

Steel Guitar Nashville
123 Mid Town Court
Hendersonville, TN. 37075
(615) 822-5555
Open 9AM – 4PM Monday – Friday
Closed Saturday and Sunday

Hello fans and fellow players,

This special Bobbe’s Tips is for you hardcore steel guitarists and history buffs who like to remember the great guitars that brought us to where we are today.

I remember a story from the great Alvino Rey telling of the first time he played an experimental electric lapsteel guitar somewhere between 1928 and 1932. He practiced with the orchestra and everybody was amazed and happy about how well the steel could be heard.

Unfortunately, his amplifier was plugged into the lighting circuits so when the orchestra started, the curtain went up, the stage lights were turned down and so was the power to his amplifier. He was right back to square one. He learned a lesson that day.

His guitar of choice at the time was from the Rickenbacher Company, one of the first guitars with an electric pickup on it.

Now we move ahead to 1939. Many people and companies were experimenting with methods to stretch the strings to get different tunings to keep the guitars small instead of going to 3 and 4 neck models. A significant guitar was the Electradaire which had 3 rocking pedals, each with 3 positions. These pedals were actually electric switches that triggered solenoids under the guitar and raised and lowered the strings through an electrical changer apparatus.

Jumping ahead to 1946, we saw the birth of the Fender Guitar Company by Leo G. Fender who was inspired to build guitars by motorcycle genius Paul A. Bigsby. Bigsby had been commissioned to build steel and lead guitars by such notables as Merle Travis, Joaquin Murphy, Ernie Ball, Speedy West and the elite who’s who of the guitar playing professionals. Bigsby’s guitars set the standard in quality and tone from ’46 to at least 1958.

Of course, Fender was in on the end of the non-pedal guitar manufacturing and had one serious attempt at building a decent pedal guitar. This model was called the Fender 1000 and was brought to prominence by such players as Curley Chalker and Ralph Mooney.

In 1945, an incredible little pedal steel guitar was designed and mass produced by the Harlin Brothers of Indianapolis, Indiana. It was called the Multi-Kord and was truly a work of art for it’s day and time. This was the first 3 piece finger mechanism all pull steel guitar ever built. It was built very inexpensively. This means cheap body, legs, pickup, but strangely it did sound good. Many came with the mother of toilet seat pearloid finish. Most were six string and four pedal single neck versions with a few eights and even fewer double necks being built before production ceased.

The Multi-Kord is not a good guitar by today’s standards but definitely a significant guitar in the history of steel guitar. This was the first good working pedal steel guitar with a universal changer produced in significant numbers. This guitar remains the easiest steel guitar to change pedal setups on that has ever been made. The tuning possibilities on the Multi-Kord are limitless, unlike any guitar that has been made since. However, forget knee levers. The design of the body of this guitar does not allow for knee levers, not that anyone had them in that time period anyway. Remember, this is the birth of pedals. Knee levers didn’t come along for another 15 years.

Every pedal on the Multi-Kord could instantly be changed to raise or lower any or every string with just one pedal push. This means if you wanted to raise and lower every string in your tuning, you could make the change and tune it in less than a minute, almost as fast as you could think about it. Of course, the more strings you changed with the pedal, the harder the pedal was to push, but this rule applies to steel guitars today as well. I definitely consider the Multi-Kord to be the great-great-grandfather of today’s modern pedal steel guitar. Every design today is just a modification of this unique changer system built by these four brothers in Indianapolis.

The value of these guitars today? Pretty close to zero, right down there with the values of the Gibson Electro-Harps but possibly unfairly so, unlike Bigsby which has risen to it’s highly deserved place of honor in history.

A few of you will remember Gibson’s very feeble attempt at producing a workable pedal steel guitar. Even though they engineered and built many different models, all of which had the classic beauty that Gibson is famous for, none of these guitars ever worked well enough to be called real pedal steel guitars. These are only collectible today to look at and talk about, not to play. Since the Harlin Brothers held the patent on the good three finger design, Gibson was unable to design an effective changer that didn’t infringe upon the patent.

In 1949, Bigsby added pedals to Speedy West’s triple 8 steel guitar that worked very well. However, pedal steel guitar was pretty much still a novelty until Webb Pierce recorded “Slowly”, “More and More”, “In The Jailhouse Now”, “Wandering, Wondering”, “There Stands The Glass” and “I Ain’t Never”.

All of these were Number One tunes in the early to mid 50’s. The first song, “Slowly” was recorded with Webb by Bud Isaacs and his double neck 8 string, 2 pedal Bigsby guitar.

The rest of this great string of number one hits were recorded by Sonny Burnett on a double neck 8 string Bigsby steel guitar that Webb Pierce purchased from Carl Smith’s steel guitarist, Johnny Sibert. This guitar is presently being restored and is referred to as the Webb Pierce “More and More” guitar. The former Bud Isaacs guitar, the “Slowly” guitar is now owned by Jack Hamlett in Maryland.

These two guitars are probably the two most significant guitars in the history of pedal steel guitar. These are the guitars that first put the beautiful pedal steel guitar sound in the ears of the masses. Up to this point in history, every steel guitar player wanted pedals but from this point on in 1953, not only the players themselves, but the band leaders, club owners, producers and audience had to hear those pedals pushed.

Many Fender guitars that didn’t have pedals originally, had their owners out in their garages hacking out homemade pedals so they could sound like the Bigsby’s on the records. Some quite possibly even came close.

Bigsby being a one man operation working in his garage at 56 years old, could not keep up with the sudden demand for his instrument and this is what opened the door for the Fender 1000, Sho-Bud, Wright Custom and Emmons guitars that followed. Bigsby guitars are the ultimate collectible steel guitars.

In 1958, several players who could not get Bigsbys because of the 3 year waiting list that Paul Bigsby had, bought a guitar called the Sho-Bud built by Shot Jackson and sons and promoted by Buddy Emmons at first, then Buddy Charlton in the mid-sixties.

The next very significant guitar that turned out to be the standard of the era and still endures in the hearts of many pros is the Emmons Push Pull guitar. The design work on this guitar started in 1961 with the first models being available to the public at the end of 1964. This is one company who’s first guitars are just as good as their last guitars. This company never made a bad one and set the standard of tone that most players say still stands today.

Now we have a new wave of steel guitars that have come out in the last five years or so. Since the development of computerized milling machines and lathes, parts can be made quicker, with greater precision and for less money, thus the quality of the newest steel guitars has risen to near perfection. This made way for light, compact, extremely high quality guitars with very acceptable tone at very acceptable prices such as the GFI-Magnum class of guitars.

Remember, this is about significant guitars in history and not about how good one guitar is compared to another. There seem to be as many guitar builders today as there are guitar players. Most guitars seem to be improved or copies of what we will call the standard design of steel guitars. I will define this as being multiple raise-lower changer guitars with raised aluminum necks weighing from 44 to 50 pounds without the case, most using chrome microphone stand legs and pickups from the two or three vendors of choice.

Most of these manufacturers aim at the Emmons All Pull LeGrande or the Sho-Bud SuperPro for what they want their final product to look and sound like.

So I will say significant guitars down through history are Rickenbacher, Electrodaire, Multi-Kord, Bigsby, Fender 1000 (and 400), Sho-Bud, Emmons and the new wave of GFI-Magnum class of guitars.

Now remember, there are many other fine brands of guitars like Mullen, Derby, Williams, JCH, Performance, Rittenberry, MSA and of course the incredible reproduction of the Emmons Push Pull, the Promat. I’m sure there are many others including some homemade brands that range from pretty good to astounding, but I wouldn’t call them milestones in the evolution of guitars like the ones mentioned in this newsletter.

Check out our monthly specials at www.steelguitar.net/monthlyspecials.html and we’ll try to save you a lot of money.

The friend of all bar holders,
Bobbe Seymour
www.steelguitar.net
sales@steelguitar.net
www.youtube.com/bobbeseymour

Listen To Steel Guitar Music Streaming 24 Hours A Day!

Steel Guitar Nashville
123 Mid Town Court
Hendersonville, TN. 37075
(615) 822-5555
Open 9AM – 4PM Monday – Friday
Closed Saturday and Sunday