Hello fellow players,
Through these cold miserable days of winter, I slowed down enough to do some serious thinking about my past history in steel guitar. Having had a very long career and starting as a little kid in Jamestown, New York under the tutorage of my professional steel guitarist Uncle Doug Seymour. I’ve had time to think about my first influences, why I was even attempting to play steel at all and why I wanted to play the kinds of steel guitars that I did.
We’re talking late forties at this point and Uncle Doug had a beautiful triple eight Epiphone and as nice a Multi-Kord as there could ever be, as it should have been because remember it was new then. These were great instruments to engage my young fertile mind.
Jerry Byrd was flooding my mind with such beautiful steel guitar that he was hard to ignore. However, I had heard Bud Isaacs play his double neck Bigsby and I was eager to move on.
The Multi-Kord was very easy to change pedal setups on and Uncle Doug, being a pretty good steel guitar builder, he even added an E9th pedal to the Epiphone. I don’t think he knew how much time I was putting in with the two guitars that represented his whole world and that he was leaving in front of me.
Every professional steel guitar player that stopped by the farm, and there were many, and about everybody I saw was playing the little three leg Fender Dual Professional. This left me with a hard core craving for one of these beautiful little double or triple neck Fenders.
Soon I left the farm and went to the big city of Norfolk, Virginia where country and bluegrass was pretty rampant. Of course, this left me with no steel guitar, but all I could think about was steel guitars in my mind and my mind was continually playing even though I didn’t have one.
With Christmas soon to be coming, I made several demands of my father who owned a large music store and was a Fender dealer. Dad had no intention of letting me be a steel guitarist since he was a master at about every other kind of pop instrument, piano being his main instrument.
I made many childish demands for the little Fender Dual Professional with a Shot Jackson pedal added that I really wanted, however Christmas morning under the tree, there was a National double neck. I was quite disappointed because it didn’t even have legs but I worked on it hard and ended up doing all the Don Helms and Little Roy Wiggins things that I could do.
I’m sure Hank Williams and Eddy Arnold were grateful to have Don Helms and Little Roy Wiggins adding their talents to their great songs.
Uncle Doug, loving Jerry Byrd, also liked Alvino Rey. With many of my idols in music liking big band music like Alvino and Uncle Doug and my father, I ended up appreciating the C6th neck as well as E9th. The C6th neck also lends itself very well to playing the Chet Atkins and Merle Travis fingerstyle guitar.
As soon as I grew old enough, I joined the U.S. Air Force. After basic training, my dear sweet Uncle from the farm in New York, sent me his triple neck with one pedal on it. Nothing could have been better. I Air Forced as little as possible and spent every moment I could get free to play like Buddy Emmons whom I was familiar with at the time.
Upon receiving an early out from the U.S. Air Force because of government cutbacks, I took my honorable discharge in Oklahoma at Ardmore Air Force Base and stayed in Oklahoma to play in western swing bands in the Duncan/Lawton area.
Leaving my dear friend Stu Basore at the Air Base where he would continue to live and work for the next six months, I packed all my belongings and a little homebuilt Bigsby copy that I made myself and happily tripped off to Duncan, Oklahoma.
I stayed in Duncan for a few months, then moved to Dallas after trading my double neck homemade Bigsby copy to Bill Jordan for a triple neck 8-10-8 Rickenbacker. Bill was the steel player for a famous western swing band out of Wichita Falls, but I can’t remember the name of the group any more.
With the help of Billy Braddy and Maurice Anderson, I got a job in Dallas at the Patty Club. Heaven was mine. Imagine that. A kid out of the Air Force, out from under Daddy and the government’s thumbs, being totally free in the middle of Dallas making a meager living with a smile so big it would hardly fit in my house, which was a 1950 Mercury Coupe that I had paid $150 for.
I met all the young Dallas steel players and all the old ones too. I received much help from Maurice Anderson, Billy Braddy, Albert Talley and made very good friends of all the others. I was getting lots of work even though I really couldn’t play very well and having lots of fun.
The reason for me telling you all this history in a young professional’s life is because I’d like to know the history of you other young professionals. I met many steel players in my first crusade and the trail of steel guitars that I left in my trail were not what I wanted or needed. What I really wanted and needed was a double 8 or 10 Bigsby. However, no matter how I tried, between my budget and income, I could not get the tools I really needed.
I honestly feel that I could have been a much better steel player today had I been able to acquire what I needed in my youth because the guitars that I owned really held me back. Being the owner today of the world’s largest steel guitar store, I do go out of my way to help the little guys like I was in those early years.
It was actually about 1959 before I got my first guitar that would actually do the job. It was a 1959 Fender 1000. It had the good things I needed like being a double neck with eight pedals (but it had no knees). I played it for a couple years and ended up finally getting a triple neck Bigsby.
Again, I am telling this story because I’d like to know what restrictions you other players had to suffer in your early careers. Of course, it wasn’t too long before three of us Dallas steel players got together, probably the main reason being to build our own guitars the way we wanted them. Of course, these musicians were well known, being Maurice Anderson, Tom Morrell and myself.
I believe Maurice wanted a single twelve to replace his single ten Bigsby with. Morrell wanted to be mixed in with the company so that he could experiment with many things as he had several wild ideas and I just wanted a double ten commercial steel guitar that I knew I could use happily in Nashville.
Now here are the questions. How many of you built your own guitars and what configuration did you use for whatever reason? I remember seeing John Hughey’s homemade guitar and wondering where it is now. How many of you used these guitar professionally or for learning to play on? Finally, how many of you have been following steel guitar since the first Bigsbys, Sho-Buds, Wright Customs or any other of these great guitars?
Think about the history of steel guitar and you’ll realize what a short history the great professional steel guitars have had. Send me some emails and remind me of some of these great guitars.
I went on to build several pretty good quality steel guitars under my name. This means some of the very first MSAs and some that I have built totally under my own name in Norfolk, Virginia. Let me hear your stories, some of which I may put in the history of steel guitar book.
I was watching the Doyle and Teddy Wilburn Show on RFD-TV and saw Don Helms playing very well on a Sho-Bud double eight that had to be one of the first 15 to ever be made. It was a solid maple guitar with wood ends. I don’t think I ever heard him play better. Darn I miss him, like other influences in my life.
Walter Haynes, Buddy Emmons and Jimmy Crawford and so many of the rest of you have had such an influence on me, I will only feel accomplishment in my life if I can return the favor to as many youthful players as I can.
If any of you steel players have any steel guitar questions, I have been there for it all and I can answer about anything you can think to ask.
Check out our monthly specials at http://www.steelguitar.net/monthlyspecials.html We can save you a lot of money.
Your buddy,
Bobbe
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