Pedal Steel Music

Hello fans and fellow players,

I got this from Jessi Colter and was asked to pass it on to my newsletter readers, so here it is:

On Feb. 13, 2002, the world lost a pioneer of American music to the ravages of diabetes.

More importantly to me, my son lost his father, and I lost my beloved husband.

Waylon Jennings was truly one-of-a-kind. Often thought of as an “outlaw” and a mentor to a new generation of country and rock acts inspired by his spirit and individualism, he was, above all, someone who stood strong in the face of adversity.

As original as he was, Waylon’s struggle with diabetes was not uncommon. An estimated 25.8 million children and adults in the U.S. have been diagnosed with diabetes – a chronic metabolic disease in which the body fails to produce or properly use insulin.

We now have a chance to honor the man who loved his country, his family and cared so much for his community, by helping to speed the development of new treatments for those suffering from this terrible disease.

The new Waylon Jennings Research Fund at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) will spur innovative research into finding better ways to treat diabetes, and be a fitting tribute to his life and musical legacy.

To make a donation to The Waylon Fund, please go to: Donate

For more information about The Waylon Fund, please visit: WWW.THEWAYLONFUND.ORG

The steel players that Waylon had, he has a great many followers in the steel guitar world that may not have been fans normally, he was quite a character and a good friend of Steel Guitar Nashville. Anything we can do to make Jessi happy, I’m all for it.

Now I would like to give some of the great stars a salute from us steel players because of their love for us. Billy Walker was one. A great singer that used many steel guitar players from Nashville and sometimes non-Nashville players.

David Rogers, the great singer on Columbia Records, much like Bob Luman and David Houston. Of course, I just mentioned the great Waylon Jennings that used Ralph Mooney, Fred Newell, Mike Cass and Jim Vest.

Very nice and great Nashville artists that really liked steel guitar players in their band were not really known for their love of the steel player, remember Jimmy Dickens has used steel guitar throughout his whole career with Buddy Emmons and Walter Haines being two of his prime players.

Hank Thompson got famous amongst musicians for using Curly Chalker then hiring Peewee Whitewing and Bob White. These two guys together worked as well as any two steel players in any band I ever knew.

The famous Del Reeves from the Grand Ole Opry had Jim Webb working for him for many years and then of course, the infamous Porter Wagoner, I remember one of the greatest country songs I ever heard Buddy Emmons play on. It may not have been one of Porter’s biggest hits, but it was one of the biggest with me. It was called “Me and Fred and Joe and Bill”. Sort of a comedy song.

I asked Buddy later where that incredible tone came from on his solo on that song. He said that he had borrowed Chet Atkins old Standel tube amp and the guitar was a Fender 1000. Obviously an incredible combination.

Anyway, there were many great singers that loved steel guitar on their records. Of course, Jimmy Day recorded with Willie Nelson and Jim Reeves in the golden days of country music. Ray Price is still with us today and singing better than ever, but I don’t think I know a steel player that hasn’t worked with Ray Price some time or another.

I’m sure if you all do some thinking, you’ll come up with some more great old artists that would never get on the stage without a steel guitar player. Singers like Jean Shepard, Stonewall Jackson, Connie Smith and so on.

As you can see, we are also losing the great singers who used steel guitar in the golden era and should never be forgotten. Some incredible things have been recorded on vinyl by steel guitar and some fine singers.

I can’t let this section of the newsletter go by without mentioning Faron Young and Johnny Paycheck. The crazier their steel player was, the better they got along with them. This doesn’t say too much for me because I got along real well with both of them.

Billy Robinson, steel guitarist who made his name throughout the fifties, mentioned to me that he thought the most recorded steel player in the world was Little Roy Wiggins. Little Roy recorded on smash hit after hit with Eddy Arnold throughout the late forties and all through the fifties and when I say recorded with, I mean Little Roy did all the intros, all the turn arounds and all the fills on about everything he did with Eddy.

This guy did as much for steel guitar in the beginning as anyone possibly could have. Billy Robinson, Jerry Byrd and Don Helms jokingly fought for any scraps that were left. Now to be totally honest, these first artists like Little Roy, Don Helms, Howard White, Billy Robinson and Joe Mac Vincent were here in Nashville before I was, but they definitely blazed the way for players like myself, Stu Basore, Ron Elliott, Russ Hicks, Larry Sasser and many other popular players of this day and time. So much for your history lesson today.

Remember this boys and girls, any song can be played on any tuning as long as you can find the melody in it. Technically, E9th with the E to A pedal on it is just a style. The C6th played correctly can do as much for a song as the E9th tuning can.

If you don’t believe it, go back in time and listen to players such as Johnny Sibert and Carl Smith, Joe Vincent with Faron Young and Curly Chalker with all the great artists he recorded with. So remember, the style that is played with each song really comes from the player, not the guitar tuning.

Almost everybody that learns steel guitar today thinks they have to have at least 3 pedals and 5 knee levers, but this is really far from the case. This can take several other newsletters to fully explain. It’s just that some styles are easier to play on certain tunings. I’m just glad that I was born in the early days of steel guitar when Jerry Byrd and C6th reigned supreme.

When talking about pedals and knee levers I’ll never forget what the immortal Tom Morrell always said. “When it comes down to it, you either play or you don’t.” My answer to this is yes, however what you want to sound like and how you want to play is going to be one of the forces that drive you in one direction or another.

Until next week, do you know the difference between a soprano and a Rottweiler? Jewelry.

What’s the difference between a puppy and a flutist? Eventually the puppy stops whining.

What’s the difference between a jazz musician and a country musician? A country musician plays three chords for a thousand people, the jazz musician plays a thousand chords for three people.

Why was the piano invented? For the band to have a place to sit their beers.

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

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

There are a lot of steel guitar players that live in Hendersonville, Tennessee most of which are internationally known or have been. Over the past few years many of these players have turned into good friends and will come and visit for hours at a time. Several of these have left us, like Don Helms, Howard White, Big Ben Keith, Walter Haines, Harold Fogel, of course Gene O’Neal and many others.

We can now add another one to our list. Mr. John Bechtel. John was principally a road musician and is what I call a working industrial steel guitarist, a commercial player that fills in and works with stars continuously but not necessarily on a permanent basis. John worked with many stars like Billy Walker, Charlie Louvin, Ray Pillow and did many jobs in clubs in town and a lot of shots on the Opry.

John was one of the very first Sho-Bud customers that Shot and Buddy built a new guitar for. John was very soft-spoken, had many stories because he knew so much. He was from the northeastern United States and spent a lot of time around Philadelphia in his youth. He will be dearly missed by all who knew him. This may be a corny line, but it is really the truth when it comes to John.

I was asked some questions the other day by Mr. David McKnight. David was the originator of the JagWire String Company. He asked me, “Whatever happened to the guitar called a Mooney that Tom Mooney of western Tennessee designed and built?”

I let him know that I didn’t know, however it seemed like a pretty decent guitar to me. He mentioned the Miller guitar also which is now a thing of the past as is its owner, builder, designer Roger Miller from Chillicothe, Illinois. There were many, many guitars hand built by Roger. All were pretty homemade looking. Some were very homemade looking, but then again, some of them looked pretty good. All of them that I’ve ever seen did play well.

They were all a pull release design and most of them used a good grade of maple and rosewood together. He had the same problem in pickup winding that the Mar-Len Company in North Carolina had and that is all the pickup magnets we placed in the pickup frame North South North South etc, instead of putting all the north on one side and all the south on the other.

Capri also made this mistake. Capri is a similar company to Mar-Len and Miller. I actually liked them better because they were smaller, lighter and more beautiful. Mr. Al Collins was the builder of this fine but not too good sounding guitar. The Wheeler guitar made in Nashville for awhile, unfortunately was pretty much a joke from day one. A couple of guitars that are no longer being built because of the owner’s demise are Derby and Bethel. Both very good guitars.

The Randall Steel King amplifier. The Randall Company was absorbed by another major amplifier company. Mr. Don Randall was a brilliant businessman in the music world, was also president of Fender for quite awhile and was a dear friend of mine and Jody Carver.

Jody is a famous steel player of course, that is in the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame because of his working with Arthur Godfrey and doing major network television shows over the years. I also have Jody to thank along with some others for being in the Hall of Fame myself this day and time. Jody is a wonderful human being that played Bigsby, Fender pedal and non-pedal over the years. A better friend a fellow player couldn’t have.

I don’t know how many of you are familiar with the great Thumbs Carllisle, but this is one truly incredible guitar player that we lost just a few years ago. Herby Wallace did at least two albums with him. Thumbs had very short fingers and laid his guitar in his lap much like a lapsteel and played with a thumbpick on his right hand or a straight pick and with his left hand he played chords with his thumb and fingers on the front of the neck only.

He was an extremely fast player and for a player that just used a basic E major tuning, also played nice chords in songs with deep changes. He worked with Roger Miller while Buddy Emmons was playing bass with Roger. As a person, I really liked Thumbs very much and often hired him on jobs that I had in Nashville when I needed a great guitar player.

I loved hiring guitar players that also played steel like Russ Hicks, Curly Chalker, Steve Hinson and many more. They always knew what I was doing and how to enhance what I was playing. About the only sarcasm I ever got was out of Curly Chalker. I was doing a medium tempo country song and played an obvious Buddy Emmons lick and got an immediate, “Okay, that’ll be enough of that!” comment from Curly.

I busted out laughing and said, “I just wanted to see if you were awake.”

He said, “If I had been asleep, that would’ve woke me up.”

Curly was known to have a very abrasive personality and would always say what was on his mind, however we got along famously and I liked him very much and we were great friends from 1957 to the day he died. Yes, we have lost an awful lot of players over the past few years and many of them really hurt to have gone, but they just keep leaving me.

Terry Bethel stopped by the store here the other day and let me know that his present days with Mel Tillis are as pleasant as the first 45 years. Boy this has to be some kind of a record. Terry’s been with Mel so long he’s starting to stutter. I remember working television shows with Ralph Emory in the sixties and having Mel Tillis guest on the show and hearing Terry Bethel and Leo Bittner playing fabulous arrangements on instruments like “Mrs. Robinson”, “Johnson Rag” etc.

We still have the lowest prices and the best deal in the world on the Peavey Nashville 112 plus they are in stock and ready to ship like always. We always keep the GFI steels in stock. The reason the GFI is so favored is because of it’s extreme high quality compared to many other steel guitars, lightweight and tremendous factory backup service. If you need a part overnight, you can get it.

What do you call a building full of rap singers?

Jail.

What’s the difference between a bassoon and a chain saw?

The exhaust.

Why do bagpipers always walk when they play?

To get away from the noise.

How long does it take to tune a steel guitar?

Nobody’s ever bothered to find out.

Just kidding guys.

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

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

I’ve had many questions concerning pick blocking. I’m hardly one to ask because I really don’t pick block knowingly. Of course, I do pick block, especially on medium tempo and slower tunes, but since I don’t wear picks I don’t get a clank or pick noise when I play.

I definitely feel that a person should make his own choice when it comes to using picks or not. I feel sure that everyone should use a thumbpick anyway. When it comes to fingerpicks, you can sure be a great player without them. Buddy Emmons, Randy Beavers and myself have proven this on steel guitar and most all lead guitar players prove it on regular guitar.

When it comes to picking and deadening strings both with the picking hand, it doesn’t really matter how you do it. As a matter of fact, I know some awfully great players that don’t pick block at all and even get offended if you ask them about it. Then there are others like myself that believe that over time, you will automatically become a pick blocker and end up doing it very well without any conscious effort.

Studying how to do it and then practicing it may be the strange way to do it, but it seems that’s what everybody wants to do. If you have a camera that you can turn on and leave on so you can watch your right hand in motion, then turn it on, aim very closely at your right hand, play a lot of things that you know for about ten minutes, then play the camera back and watch how you deaden the strings after you pick them.

What you are doing might be the right step. I kind of subscribe to the Russ Hicks theory and that is do not deaden the strings at all in any way, let each vibrating string run right into the next vibrating note. This will help your tone, make you sound faster, round out chords and keep you from sounding jerky. Try playing without deadening any strings. I think you’ll sound much better immediately.

Every day I get the question, “I need to buy a good dependable but very inexpensive guitar so which student guitar do you recommend?”

To be honest, I recommend something a lot better than a student guitar. The GFI Expo single with no pad is the most perfect inexpensive guitar to learn on that there is. You can add or take off pedals, knee levers, all the professional GFI parts fit on it, the price is very low and it is overall the most economical guitar you can buy for a first guitar.

Being totally expandable for knee levers and pedals makes it an ideal first guitar that you won’t outgrow until you want a double neck. I can sell you these guitars at a special beginner discount rate. You’d be foolish to buy a student guitar instead of one of these.

Also when it comes to trading in for a larger, double neck professional guitar, I can give you 100% of your investment toward this purchase. This is the same as having a free guitar while you’re learning. What could be more economical than that?

Non-pedal guitars, sometimes referred to as lapsteels, are really a different instrument from the pedal guitars. One cannot replace the other, however many people really love the sound and don’t mind the limitations of the non-pedal steel guitar.

Non-pedal steel guitar is an instrument that everything can be played on, but it requires a little more finesse with your hands because you have no pedals to bend the notes. However it is not a limited instrument. Any song can be played by mastering slants and reverses. I personally get great pleasure out of playing non-pedal steel guitars. As a matter of fact, we have a video showing and telling how you can be a master of non-pedal. There are several non-pedal players today, like Maurice Anderson and Randy Beavers and of course the incredible Tommy White, that are so good they should be arrested.

Learning and playing most of these instruments will make you a much more valuable steel guitarist to anybody that hires you and let’s face it, Hawaiian music with pedals is sort of sacrilegious. Non-pedal steel guitars should be used for the songs of the islands exclusively.

It’s hard to find a good rock n roll band that doesn’t have a non-pedal steel somewhere on the stage. I’m very glad to see this. A lot of rockers are hearing and feeling the love of these guitars the way us old western swingers did back in the forties and fifties. We always try to keep a stock of high quality non-pedal guitars.

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

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