Pedal Steel Power From Country Pickers
March 19, 2008
by Lenny Kaye
Illustration by Tanith Connolly
Originally published in The History of Rock, 1983
Probably no other instrument in the world is as closely associated with
country music as the pedal steel guitar. Yet its roots are found not in
some rural hamlet in the Southern reaches of America, but in an exotic,
hybrid Polynesian culture located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
The steel guitar's most venerable ancestor was born in the Hawaii
of a century past, after the guitar had been introduced to the islands
by Mexican and Portuguese cowboys who came following a cattle boom.
According to legend, a man named Joseph Kekuku one day happened to drop
his comb across his guitar's strings, becoming enchanted with the
slithering, slinky sound it made. By 1894, he was giving impromptu
concerts accompanied by his cousin Sam on violin and, by the turn of
the century, had begun to move past mere novelty into serious study of
the instrument. He designed a steel bar, held in the left hand and
moved across the strings, to make the sound brighter and cleaner.
The instrument was imported to the United States on the wave of a
Hawaiian craze that washed over American shores after the First World
War. Coinciding with the growing popularity of phonograph records, such
“hula blues” masters as Sol Hoopii, Frank Ferara, and Roy Smeck were
soon making the “lap” guitar a fashionable instrument.
Mongrel Music
Related somewhat to the bottleneck style, the Hawaiian legacy was
picked up by the mongrel music known as Western swing in the ’30s. Bob
Dunn, of Fort Worth, Texas, became the first to apply electricity to
the acoustic lap steel, and from there, such guitarists as Leon
McAuliffe, Noel Boggs, and the legendary Joaquin Murphy (who would
often walk off stage in mid-song if he was somehow dissatisfied) set
the perimeters of the new style.
photo courtesy of steelguitar.comThe problem with the steel was the
bar, which often forced players into strange tunings and awkward
“slants” to obtain some degree of musical sophistication. This would
eventually result in the addition of pedals to the instrument, whose
function would be the same as placing fingers on a guitar neck. The
’40s saw many players attempting to bridge this technical gap, from
Herb Remington—whose “Remington Ride” is an acknowledged steel
classic—through the pure-toned Jerry Byrd, to Speedy West, the Jimi
Hendrix of steel, whose bar crashes and wild swoops created sounds that
remain unique decades later.
All of the above used some form of pedal guitar, but it wasn't
until 1954 that the steel guitar entered widespread use. With Bud
Isaacs providing support for singer Webb Pierce, a song called “Slowly”
captured the imagination of country hit parades everywhere, and the
“crying” sound of a steel soon became de rigueur on every Nashville
session.
The instrument was growing in sophistication as well. Buddy Emmons
recorded Steel Guitar Jazz in 1963, backed by a jazz quartet. For those
who had thought the steel was confined to mere weeping, Emmons showed
harmonic possibilities on a par with the broadest of keyboards. Top
session man and producer Pete Drake took the instrument another step
further when he employed a voice-box to make his steel “talk”—a move
that resulted in the 1964 million-seller “Forever.”
Increasingly, steel musicians began to look past their own little
world, intent on promoting the concept of pedal steel to outside
listeners and players. Dobroist Shot Jackson and Buddy Emmons teamed up
early on to design the Sho-Bud guitar, thereafter a perennial favorite.
Others, like the tireless Jeff Newman, began to teach the steel by
means of mail-order courses, with play-along cassettes.
Steel Sweethearts
The annual high point of this activity comes during Labor Day
weekend every year, when pedal steel guitarists and fans meet in St.
Louis to pay homage to their instrument.
With all this seeming versatility, it seems strange that the
instrument has continued to be so resolutely identified with country
music. Early country-oriented rock ‘n’ roll—Bill Haley and the Comets,
Sid King and the Five Strings—did feature large helpings of steel, but
the attraction of the easily-mastered orthodox guitar probably
discouraged many would-be steelers. The instrument, with its pedal
choices, knee levers, different tunings, and photo courtesy of
Wikipediausual 10 strings per neck requires a degree of expertise and
concentration that conflicts with rock's teenage impatience.
The country-rock boom of the late ’60s and early ’70s did produce
some interesting hybrids, however. Rusty Young of Poco would slap
effects devices galore on his stand-up steel, delighting audiences at
both Fillmores, East and West. The Flying Burrito Brothers featured
Sneaky Pete Kleinow, while the Byrds repaid the crossover by bringing
Nashville regulars Lloyd Green and Jaydee Maness into the world of rock
on their 1968 album Sweetheart of the Rodeo. Clarence White, who played
on the set, later devised a B-string bender for his Telecaster to
simulate the steel's sound.
In the ’80s, the steel guitar found itself at a crossroads. Long
identified with country music, it was in real danger of becoming an
easy stereotype: Nevertheless, the ornate richness of the steel texture
is still capable of sweetening any form of sound. That it might become
an instrument used worldwide was shown when it appeared within the
Afrikan Beat Band of Nigeria's King Sunny Ade in a neat trick of
cultural transformation. It had been a long journey for the steel
guitar from “Aloha Oe” to the backbone of country and beyond.
Watch: Everything You Wanted to Know About Pedal Steel [at youtube.com]
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