Pedal Steel Music

Hello fellow players,

I might as well touch on the subject of Robert Randolph playing the Jay Leno Show with Los Lobos a couple nights ago. As most of you know, Robert is an old friend of mine from several years ago which makes me tend to be favorable and unbiased in my comments. I like Robert very much and have known him since he was a little kid playing steel in the House of God Church at the age of twelve years old.

Robert is truly capable of playing so much more than he does in public. Looking at him as a country player, Robert can play very good things extremely fast and very clean. He never does this on the shows he plays on TV.

As far as being an excellent showman and selling what he does to the public, I truly feel that he is way ahead in that department. If you ever get a chance to see Robert Randolph play in a jam session or play blues in his old church environment, I think you’ll be a lot more impressed with what you see him do live as opposed to what he does on television which is mostly just funny noises, screaming bar slides and sound effects more fitting for an animated cartoon show.

Now Robert, I know you’re reading this, so please don’t take what I’m saying wrong. What I am saying is you’re a wonderful player, but it seems like you’re afraid somebody’s going to find out. You are undoubtedly very smart to be approaching steel guitar and playing it the way you do from a fame and fortune standpoint. Most steel players play for each other which is one thing I’m very guilty of, but when it comes to entertaining the masses with your steel guitar, you are the king Robert.

I had the honor of playing in Branson a few years ago and Fred Justice was there introducing his new Justice steel guitar. At first I thought, ‘Well here it is, just another steel guitar.” But after seeing his demo on the guitar, his tone was many times better than I had ever heard him get before on any of his former commercially built guitars.

I checked his new guitars out and listened while other people played his Justice guitar. Not only was I impressed with the tone, but also with the personality of Mr. Fred Justice. This leads me to my next subject which is the fact that I think it is wonderful for steel guitar builders to keep a certain amount of uniformity in their guitars.

I am all for all builders using the same legs and thread size, a main brand of tuning key that will be easily obtained in later years. This means Grover, Schaller, Sperzel, Goto or any good popular key. String length is something that I like to see uniformity in and that means 24 inch scale or 24 and a quarter.

The guitars that are almost alike in all respects are the Sho-Bud Super Pro, Derby, Justice, Zum, Franklin, LeGrande, JCH, Fessenden and probably two or three others. Other similar guitars that might use different size leg threads are GMI, CMI, MCI, EMCI and MSA. It’s pretty wonderful when I get a phone call for parts for some stranded player and I can inform him that several other brand parts will work on their guitar so they don’t really have an orphan and the problems that an orphan guitar can give you.

If a steel guitar manufacturer has gone out of business due to the death of their founder and builder, like Derby or JCH, I can do major repairs with quality parts because they were built originally with pretty standard dimensions in the parts they had built for their own guitars.

If you show me a guitar that is built totally different in every way, I personally would not be very interested in it under any circumstances. Ever notice how Pontiac, Chevrolet and Buick parts interchange the way they do? I think that’s wonderful. General Motors puts similar transmissions in many different brand cars that they sell. Rolls Royce even buys the GM Turbo 400 transmission for the Rolls Royce automobile. General Motors can hardly get a finer complement.

As long as you buy a steel guitar that is built to standard specifications using standard parts, it will be worth more when you sell it and you’ll love it more whenever you need a major part for it.

Now you may ask what makes the difference in tone if they’re all made so similar? The answer is quality of wood, age of wood, how these things are bolted together and so on. Pickups have a little bit to do with the tone, but nowhere near as much as most people think. I just wish there was a standard bolt pattern for pickups on all these steel guitars.

Sho-Bud and Emmons brand guitars seem to be the grand-daddys of standardization. Most builders have used these guitars specifications as a template for their own designs.

To close this newsletter with something important, my great advise to all of you is when you buy a new steel guitar as a workhorse in your herd, make sure it has some of these specifications we have just talked about and it will be worth much more when you sell it.

I want to remind everybody that free shipping within the 48 states on any steel guitar purchase will end at the end of this month.

See our monthly specials at … www.steelguitar.net/monthlyspecials.html.

The friend to 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 fans and fellow players,

While watching the news last night, I couldn’t help but notice a new very young basketball player that was making hoops from anywhere on the floor. It seems like his name was Jeremy Lin or something like that. A child prodigy that none could believe.

Very interesting to watch this guy. No matter where he was, they’d get the basketball to him and he’d sink it from anywhere on the court. Shooting about five times better than any of the famous old pros which reminds me of something I read on the forum three years ago about steel players.

Someone made the statement that Buddy Emmons is the greatest steel guitar player in the world, always will be and nobody will ever surpass his ability. Very unfortunately, this is just not true even though Buddy Emmons is an astounding steel guitarist and has been throughout his whole career, there are new kids exploding all around us.

If you could take some of these kids and put them back in the time when Buddy Emmons was first starting out and building his dream on the Opry and on the road, you’d see what I mean. When Tommy White was eighteen, he was astounding. As a matter of fact, he was much more astounding than most players had ever been before him.

Paul Franklin is another one that was a stone killer when he started his career in Nashville. This is just Nashville I’m talking about. Think about other towns in the world. I idolized Buddy Emmons back in the old days, but if I’d have heard Randall Curry, Doug Jernigan and Travis Toy back in those days, I would have been equally as impressed I’m sure.

There are child prodigies in every form of endeavor. Believe me, I’m taking nothing away from the great Buddy Emmons, but to over-inflate Buddy, Curly or any of these great old legendary players would be a disservice to some of the incredible players that are coming out today.

The world is full of great and talented people. To sell any of them short that are on the way would be a very foolish thing to do. Buddy Emmons is not only an incredible player, but he is a very smart man that knows what taste is in music and he knows how life works and how to sell his craft. All of us in this day and time can feel greatly blessed that he has shared his talent with us.

To all of my readers reading this now, Howard White’s widow Ruth White sent me the following email about the death of a fine guitar player that worked the Opry and the road with the biggest stars of the time. See how many of you out there remember Luke.

Bobbe…..from Mom…..I thought that you might like to know that a great guitar player, Luke Brandon, in Knoxville died on Thursday night. Luke came to Nashville with Howard from Knoxville to play with Cowboy Copas in l952. Howard stayed here but Luke kept going home to Rockwood. He was a great guitar picker. Howard and Ray Edenton said Luke knew more chords than anyone. Ray, Luke and Howard all lived at Mom Church’s. Don Davis was there at that time too.

Chet used Luke on a lot of sessions, but if you knew Luke, you knew that he wouldn’t stay in Nashville for a little thing like a session. Ha! Did you ever have the opportunity to play a session with Luke? Maybe you didn’t get here early enough. Howard’s last performance was at the St. Louis steel guitar convention and Luke played guitar with him. Just thought the old folks might want to know.

By the way, my book about Don Davis will be out in the Fall. It is going in the publisher’s catalog in June. A funnier book you will not have read.

Warmest regards, Ruth White

To all my readers I want to say that when I do these newsletters for you all, I’m really doing them for all of you. You younger players will not understand who a lot of the older players are and vice versa. What I’m doing is trying to cover the entire scope of our steel guitar playing world. It’s a big one and even bigger if you cover the whole thing from the beginning up until now.

Think about what I’ve just said. We have incredible players in their eighties and we have some really incredible players that are in their mid-teens. Everyone of these folks are steel guitar players and it wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t cover them all. There has already been an incredible era of steel guitar built. We have new players that are continuing this craft in an amazing way.

I’ve seen some of the oldest players talk about the young players in a very admiring manner and of course, the younger guys talk very reverently about the older players. What a wonderful world where we all love each other, the world of steel guitar.

Remember, we have free shipping within the continental United States on any steel guitar purchased before the end of the month.

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,

I just got word that one of my first groups that I went to school with and worked with some is going into the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame. Dickie “Bebop” Harrell just sent me an email stating that he had just gotten word from the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame that the old band that we were in together, The Blue Caps is going in and will be getting overdue accolades.

Dickie was the drummer, Gene Vincent was the singer, Cliff Gallup was the guitar holder and player that has gained much respect and recognition over the past many years and we went through two or three bass players of which I was one for a few seconds.

The promoter that put us all together and made us famous and wrote our first hit tune was the father of Mike Douchette who later gained his own fame working with Tammy Wynette. His daddy’s name was Sheriff Tex Davis. Mike of course, is a very well known steel guitarist in Nashville. Anyway this story could go on forever.

Back in the days of Rockabilly, it was all accepted as country music. All the country radio stations played the Rockabilly artists right along beside Hank Williams, Eddy Arnold, George Jones, Faron Young and the like. It was only later that this style branched off into Rock N Roll.

Now Rock N Roll has run off and left Rockabilly by the side of the road. As bad as a condition that old country is in, it’s still about equal to Rockabilly. Just think about it. If Whitney Houston had been popular 55 years ago, she would only be played on black stations.

Music is something that is continually changing and thank goodness we all seem to remember the old artists that paved the road for the new. Let’s never forget any kind of music or develop a dislike for any kind of music, possibly with the exception of rap.

I’ve been asked about the beginning of Western Swing and how it got started. First of all, there was light and then later God created Earth and on the seventh day he rested. Western Swing was invented not long after that. It’s been pretty well there since the beginning of time, however it was an outgrowth from big band pop stuff of the day.

Around the twenties, big bands with big brass sections were born because of movie sound tracks and any music job where big volume was needed. Remember, there were no PA sets in those days that could make you run for cover like they have today. Big had to do with volume and excitement.

Bands like Sammy Kaye, Glen Gray, Jack Teagarden, Benny Goodman, Chick Webb, Glenn Miller, Harry James, Gene Krupa, but the reason these bands were built big was to have volume that could be obtained no other way at the time.

The country boys that had a little fifty watt PA set with one microphone and had to share it amongst everyone in the band during solos, had a rough time being heard, but yet many people loved this kind of music. So along comes this funny guy named Bob Wills. Bob loved to make noises and comments in the middle of his band solos and he also realized that he needed to hire many pieces which included a horn section and at times a violin section in order to get those great big country jobs like backing up cowboy movie stars on film.

Rex Allen, Rocky Lane, Roy Rogers and several others that had Bob Wills as a guest in their movie shorts. I suppose this irons out the fact that Bob Wills was the beginner leader in Western Swing music and Western Swing music was a combination of big band pop and country quartet.

Big band music required written arrangements and music stands. Most music stands had the name of the band on them. Remember, I’m sure most of you have seen pictures of the Dorsey Brothers and Glenn Miller sitting down and reading their arrangements from those nice music stands.

The beginning of Western Swing and later big country music, we can credit the players that were working in these big bands and the big bands themselves, Tex Williams, Hank Thompson, The Miller Brothers, Luke Wills and another one of Bob’s famous brothers named Billy Jack, that worked the west coast. Vance Terry was the steel player with Billy Jack Wills.

I think many of you will remember the fact that I’m offering you a minimal trade-in on your film camera that are technically worth less and less everyday because of the digital format cameras. They are becoming more and more prevalent in closets the world over. Here’s your last chance to get money out of them rather than letting them hibernate in your closet. I’m taking the trade-ins on any steel guitar purchase.

We’re getting near the end of the free shipping which is a good way for you guys to save money up until the beginning of next month.

See our monthly specials at … www.steelguitar.net/monthlyspecials.html.

The friend to 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