Pedal Steel Music

Hello fellow players,

I just received a nice thank you note from Pete Drake’s widow, Rose Drake. Rose was totally responsible for running Window Music, the publishing company she and Pete had together. Rose was quite respected herself in the world of music publishing in Nashville. I never got to know Rose very well personally. About the only time I really saw her was when I was going in or out of Pete’s studio or when she was handing me a paycheck for a session. But then again, she was even nicer than Pete, if that’s possible.

Back to the subject of Lloyd’s guitar. A guitar is really just a guitar and I feel it is my responsibility to tell the world that companies that build these guitars for the stars and the masses do not build a better guitar for a star player than they do for the regular player. As a matter of fact, I have seen several steel guitars come out of these little factories that were a lot better for some reason than the guitars they made for star players.

I have sold many guitars to very discriminating players. These guys would not buy from the factories direct because they claim they never knew what they were going to get, but preferred coming to my store and trying a dozen or more before they made their purchase. Players that are too far away, like the famous J.D. Maness on the west coast, would call me and say, “Bobbe, I need a push pull Emmons guitar, black, in great condition and it really has to sound as good as any.”

Then six months after he’d get it, he’d order another one within a few serial numbers of the first one. You don’t have to be picky and come in and hear things yourself because if I tell you something is good, it’s been proven that you can take it to the bank if I tell you it is. I am pretty much of a fanatic connoisseur on all Emmons guitars and Sho-Buds since I pretty well specialized in these two brands in my professional playing career since day one.

There are many other guitars that I have tried real hard to use over time. Some of them are really great, but as most of you know, a lot of them really aren’t very great. Lloyd Green himself was an interesting customer. He came in the store one day and said he wanted a second guitar as a backup for his ’73 guitar that he was doing all those great records on.

I had a guitar in the store that was a brown finish and I thought it sounded great. Lloyd also played it in the store and did fall in love with the tone. He bought the Sho-Bud from me, but a month later said he just couldn’t get use to the pedal feel and wanted to know if I could sell it for him, which I did. I remember he liked it, but the new style triple raise, double lower mechanism didn’t feel as good to him as his double raise, single lower system on his old ’73.

Upon sitting down behind his ’73, I had to agree with him. The tone was not the issue, however the string action was. And this guitar was a half inch shorter in scale. That was several years ago and Lloyd has tried a couple of other brands of guitars but seems to always go back to the old ’73. Lloyd has also tried several amplifiers over the past decade. Lloyd talks to me about an old black face Princeton that he used many years ago to drive a 15” speaker in a larger cabinet. Since I myself had used an identical amp with a 10” speaker for sessions in my early career days, I understood him liking this amp.

Despite the picture on the back of one of Lloyd’s instrumental albums, he really didn’t record with a Standel like many Nashville players did. Buddy Emmons, Pete Drake, Doyle Grissom among the steel players here, along with myself, love the Standel tone, but service for these amps in town was not really great. Most of us in the beginning used American made Fender amplifiers.

Stu Basore used a Deluxe with a stock 12’ speaker. Weldon Myrick recorded with a Fender Twin with two 12” JBLs which weighed a hundred pounds. This was message enough for me to never argue with Weldon about anything. I figured if he would carry a hundred pound Fender Twin, he could hurt about anybody he wanted to without thinking too much about it.

Hal Rugg, along with Pete Drake on several sessions, used Sho-Bud amplifiers. I personally feel about the best tone I ever got was with Sho-Bud amps and hearing Larry Sasser play using an Emmons push pull through a Sho-Bud amp, I don’t see how he could have ever done anything that would have made him sound any better.

Those days in the late sixties, early seventies, all of us were trying to out-tone everybody else. It was very important, the tone we put out, the brand of microphone the engineers put on us and our EQ on the board during the mix. I think all of us learned a tremendous amount about tone in those days, as I don’t hear anything in this day and time being recorded that’s even close to what I used to hear.

I think by far the major amps of yesterday and today are Sho-Bud, Fender, Peavey, Standel, Webb and the old Evans tube type. Things that are important are having an amplifier that has no hum, no hiss and does not pick up extraneous noises. I remember borrowing Pete Drake’s Standel amp one day and fell madly in love with it. I called him and offered him anything he wanted for it. He just laughed and said, “No! I like it. I found mine, now go find your own.” Which I did, but it took me awhile.

In this day and time, the little Peavey 112 seems to really be the workhorse of the studio players. The dependability, clean tone with great frequency range and fidelity and light weight make this a favorite for not just steel players, but electric keyboard and lead guitar as well as steel.

Jimmy Day really astounded me with the great tone he got on his Webb amplifier on sessions we did together. I think that was the perfect amp and steel guitar combination for great tone. A blue Mullen steel and red Webb amplifier. The CD that I’m talking about that he sounded so good on is the Masters Collection which was the last album that Jimmy recorded before he met his untimely death.

As you can see, the right combination between guitar and amplifier means a lot. Gene O’Neal was a fanatic on the Peavey Session 400 amplifier and liked Sho-Bud and Emmons guitars before he died. However, he always had an open mind. Don Helms always used one of the Peavey models and ended up buying a Nashville 112 from me. Ralph Mooney was known to play a big, heavy Fender Quad which is essentially a Fender Twin amplifier with four 6L6s powering four 12” JBLs in one open back cabinet.

If any of you out there want to try some amplifiers, we have all the current Peavey models. We have a Fender Twin with a single 15” from the factory and an incredible Webb amp, single 15”, two or three Standels and no telling what all as we are trading continuously and we scrutinize each amplifier carefully before we put it up for sale. Give us a call for prices.

We also have a great supply and continuous flow of the Peavey Nashville 112 that has proven to be the most successful steel guitar amp ever.

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

Your buddy,

Bobbe

www.steelguitar.net

sales@steelguitar.net

www.youtube.com/bobbeseymour

www.myspace.com/bobbeseymour

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,

I’ve had tremendous response concerning my newsletter about the origins, history and development of the E9th tuning. Of course, as you must know, this has opened the door to doing the same thing about the C6th tuning. Where did it come from? Who were the pioneers and why is it the way it is?

In the beginning before pedals the C6th setup was by far the most popular tuning on any steel guitar. About any song could be played on it from hard country through all the standards and pure jazz. Naturally it was impossible to play a good four or five note complex chord and have all the notes in tune. So if you wanted to play Moonlight In Vermont with three to five note harmony, you had to have some pedals that changed at least a couple of the strings.

This was absolutely the most perfect tuning to play all the standard big tunes of yesteryear, but just like the E9th tuning, you have three basic pedals that you have to have and the rest are all incidental pedals. This setup makes so much sense that there isn’t but one to do it. So to say who invented it is a non important academic approach to basic music.

Those of us that grew up on non-pedal C6th have known from day one what strings needed to be raised or lowered to get the most necessary basic chords that are needed in almost every song. When I first saw the great steel guitar player Bob Meadows, his Bigsby guitar was setup with just three pedals on the C6th neck. Each pedal only moved one string, however he played Stardust, Dancing In The Dark, Tenderly and every other good standard in big chords, no trouble at all.

Just think about it. Three pedals on a C6th tuning and the world of chords was his. The tuning is small to large gauges was E, C, A, G, E, C, A, F, with F of course being the bass string. One pedal lowered his second string, two other pedals lowered the fourth and fifth strings. This was definitely the way to get about every complex chord you need to play about any complex tune.

Other players over the years ended up raising strings three and four instead of lowering the second string, but everybody still today lowers the other ones the way it was done in the beginning. I traveled from coast to coast and every area claimed that they invented the pedal setup on the C6th.

However, the great Dallas players seemed to be really getting the most out of it. Tom Morrell, Billy Braddy, Maurice Anderson were playing all the great tunes with this original C6th setup with no knee levers. Some things just musically have to be, like the keyboard on the piano. It just doesn’t make sense to be laid out any other way. The standard C6th setup for a steel guitar makes no sense to be setup any other way.

However, most players have embellished this setup. It might be nice for our own particular style. If you want to know what a standard C6th setup is today, it is on my website at www.steelguitar.net/tuningd10.html

There is no mistaking the fact that a double ten steel guitar covers the musical spectrum about as well as it can be covered as long as you stay pretty close to the standard setups. Answering the question where did the steel guitar tunings come from on the C6th neck, the answer is it came from about everywhere at once. Nobody can lay claim to the perfect way to do it because musically there isn’t but one good standard way of doing it, just like the layout of the piano, to say it again.

Let’s talk about steel guitars that have been made famous by their owners. Many players that are very well known have had their steel guitars for many years and some players go from guitar to guitar so often that they just don’t make the guitar any special history. Like Jimmy Day has been well known for playing his original little double eight Sho-Bud painted blue and his name written on the front.

The guitar was in natural finish for a long time and is now owned by Lynn Owsley, although it’s in pretty bad condition. Jimmy’s last guitar that he was making very famous is a double neck ten string Mullen, blue and sounded very great.

About any guitar that Buddy Emmons played got famous overnight so I’ll just name a few from the time I met Buddy in 1955. Triple neck eight string Bigsby, double neck eight string Sho-Bud, then he had a double nine Sho-Bud that was natural with white necks. Then he got a double ten Sho-Bud, also a permanent, maple front and necks with a gun-metal gray top.

Then Buddy started playing a wide selection of Emmons steel guitars because of his involvement with the company. Today Buddy still has a push pull Emmons and a LeGrande and no telling what else is sitting around the house that cannot be called a main guitar.

Lloyd Green started in Nashville with Faron Young playing a triple neck Bigsby with one pedal that belonged to Faron Young. When Lloyd left Faron he bought a double neck Bigsby from Shot Jackson. Then his next guitar was a black permanent with a heart inlaid on the front. Then he got his sunburst green and natural double ten that he did the famous Charley Pride album on.

Then of course, he had David Jackson build him a double ten cross-over Sho-Bud but complained of it being way too heavy. He loved the guitar so he took it back to David and said, “I never play the C6th neck so take it off. Do not disturb the E9th neck.” David did it.

This guitar had the aluminum frame of the cross-over Baldwin and was painted green. It did not have the LDG logo on the front as Lloyd’s middle name is Lamar. The next steel guitar was custom built from the ground up for Lloyd by David Jackson. It had a full wood body, wood neck, a twenty four and a half inch scale with a shorter keyhead. This is the guitar that Lloyd is playing today and was built in 1973. It is called the LDG and is extremely well known and famous. Lloyd has been on many hit records on this guitar and has really bonded with it over the years.

As you see, it takes continual abuse and exposure for a star players guitar to become famous. Bud Isaacs Bigsby, PeeWee Whitewing and Bob White’s Bigsbys, Joaquin Murphy’s Bigsby and Speedy West’s Bigsby, their reputations were being built along with their owners.

Anything you guys want to know more about will be covered. Let me know and we’ll do it.

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

Your buddy,

Bobbe

www.steelguitar.net

sales@steelguitar.net

www.youtube.com/bobbeseymour

www.myspace.com/bobbeseymour

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,

I want to talk today about a steel guitar player that everybody’s heard of, but you really don’t hear much about anymore. This is a real shame because he was the king of steel guitar recording in Nashville, Tennessee from 1961 – 1985. You really can’t name a major artist that Pete Drake has not recorded with. This is no exaggeration. Some of his first major recordings that went to number one were with artists like Roy Drusky, Lynn Anderson and even one Patsy Cline session.

Pete gained tremendous following in the sixties when a couple of the hot players in Nashville left town and Pete jumped in immediately working his great political skill and by 1965 he was by far the hardest working steel guitarist in Nashville.

I remember him telling me that he had cots that he left setup in all the big recording studios in Nashville, along with a steel guitar in each one of the major studios. Until Lloyd Green came on the scene in ’65 and Weldon Myrick and Hal Rugg started working the Opry and studios, Pete had free reign.

Pete’s style was actually a very unique C6th style and his signature lick was raising the 2, 3 and 4 strings with the floor pedals instead of the typical E9th things that everybody else was doing. Pete also in the following decade produced several artists that made him pretty well known within the music business. Artists like Bob Dylan, the Beatles, Ernest Tubb, Dolly Parton and so on.

I remember doing a session for Bob Milsap, a new writer in Nashville. He asked me to play the Pete Drake style on a song he was pitching to Stoney Edwards called She’s My Rock. I did and when I finished the session and left the studio, I told Pete what they had asked me to do. He laughed and said, “Well I bet when they record the master, they’ll call me.”

I laughed and said, “I hope not.” But sure enough, two months later I got a phone call from Pete saying that he just did a Stoney Edwards session and one of the songs was She’s My Rock. He said I played his style lick absolutely perfectly on the turn around, however where I started the lick on the third beat, he just couldn’t get it and he wanted to start the lick on the first beat of the measure because that’s the way it felt to him.

I said, “So what did you do?”

He said, “I told them to call you next time for the demo and the master.”

I laughed and thanked him. Pete had a very successful studio right across from 18^th Avenue South from my studio. His was called Pete’s Place. Mine was called Seymour Sound until I decided the recording business was not for me.

Pete was born in Augusta, Georgia in 1932 and died in July 1988 of complications from emphysema. Pete always did smoke like a chimney in my opinion. His death followed his brother’s death, the very famous Jack Drake that spent 24 years playing bass with the Ernest Tubb road crew. He was one of the famous and great Texas Troubadours.

Pete confided in me that he had decided to learn to play steel guitar after hearing Bud Isaacs recording with Webb Pierce on the song “Slowly”. Another thing he was famous for was recording vocal songs with a steel guitar talking device. “Forever” went to number one on the country charts. Most steel players didn’t like these antics or tricks and many players would put Pete down for things he did to be famous and sell records.

I remember the time when a very famous hot country jazz steel guitarist was doing a session for Pete in one of Pete’s studios. All the musicians were gathered around this terrifically hot famous steel guitarist and he proceeded to play some gargantuous lick that made everybody say wow and everyone was truly astounded. He looked up at Pete Drake who was setting up the microphones for the instruments in the studio and he yelled at Pete, “Hey Pete. Can you make a noise like that?”

Everybody laughed until Pete reached in his pocket, pulled out a great big roll of hundred dollar bills, ran his thumb across the rolled up ends making a whirring noise and looked at the show off steel player and said, “Can you make a noise like that?”

It was hard to find Pete when he didn’t have a very large roll of hundred dollar bills in his pocket or a new Cadillac in front of his studio. One thing those that knew him will always appreciate about him is his friendly personality, look you right in the eye and give you a hearty handshake. He always remembered everybody’s name and the last time he saw them and what they were talking about.

Truly one of the great legends of the golden era, Pete did many things to help other steel guitarists in town, like hiring me to play on sessions he produced for Columbia. David Rogers was one of the artists. I was proud to be on his sessions before David died.

It was a little unearthing that Pete had a studio employee that helped musicians in and out with their equipment named Paul Franklin Jr. It felt strange having Paul carry my equipment in and out knowing the great quality player that Paul was. However, Paul’s attitude was incredible and surely that helped him to be one of the great studio musicians himself in later years. We all have a lot to thank Pete Drake for.

Take a look at our restoration page on the website and then read on. www.steelguitar.net/restoration.html

These Fender steel guitars are going up in value every year. Many of them nowadays have pickups that have gone bad and tuning keys that are stripped. We are doing restorations on these guitars and installing new tuning keys, pickup coils and replating all the chrome steel parts, refinishing the wood to the color of your choice and installing new fretboards.

These guitars restored look better than they did new and if needed we can even include new legs. This is not inexpensive to restore these guitars, however you will be much money ahead if you restore them as opposed to throwing them away. These are wonderful little non-pedal guitars and should be treated with the respect they deserve.

The dual Professional or the triple Professional, along with all the Stringmasters are totally worth restoring. We are here to do it. Give us a call if we can help you.

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

Your buddy,

Bobbe

www.steelguitar.net

sales@steelguitar.net

www.youtube.com/bobbeseymour

www.myspace.com/bobbeseymour

Steel Guitar Nashville

123 Mid Town Court

Hendersonville, TN. 37075

(615) 822-5555

Open 9AM – 4PM Monday – Friday

Closed Saturday and Sunday