Ed Black ZB Custom

Russ Tkac · Post by **Russ Tkac** » 17 Jun 2011 8:24 am

The late Ed Black playing his ZB Custom on the Michael Dinner song "The Great Pretender." His ZB tone got me going years ago. Bob Warford also adds some great B-Bender!

http://soundcloud.com/tonecaster/01-the-great-pretender

Boy, does time fly...

Brandin · Post by **Brandin** » 17 Jun 2011 9:12 am

Very nice! I wish I knew where that guitar is now?

GB

Kirk Eipper · Post by **Kirk Eipper** » 17 Jun 2011 9:25 am

Ed was a great friend and mentor to me. A lot of folks don't know that Ed was also and incredible trick roper and once spent about 500 man hours on a custom hand tooled leather Tele case that was just unbelievable. It even made it to the cover of a magazine as I recall. He had a band called the Eddys and he made a bunch of cow hide straps with the hair still on them and custom tooled covers for the guitars ala Waylon for the band. Ed was just a sweet gracious guy that I miss alot.

Dont know where that ZB is Gary. He was playing an Emmons last time we worked together in about 1990 or so.

Russ Tkac · Post by **Russ Tkac** » 17 Jun 2011 9:33 am

That Eddy's CD is pretty sweet. I got a copy from Rick MacDonald some years ago. Great stuff!

Bud Hall · Post by **Bud Hall** » 18 Jun 2011 9:57 pm

Love that tune and the steel work is the kind of stuff I cut my teeth on. Zane and Tom were my heros, and I wanted so much to get Tom's sound, got my first ZB in 66, and started selling them in 69 still use my old S-11 on an occasional gig. You gotta love it!!

Bud Hall

Kevin Hatton · Post by **Kevin Hatton** » 18 Jun 2011 10:36 pm

This is why many of us revere these guitars. You can really their beauty in their recording. Classic sounding. To me, they are both equal and superior to an Emmons. I sold all my other guitars years ago and joined the ZB club. What a beautiful sounding steel.

Skip Edwards · Post by **Skip Edwards** » 19 Jun 2011 9:31 pm

Classic Mid '70's California country rock...
I also miss Ed alot.
Russ, thanks for posting that. It needs to be heard.

Larry Behm · Post by **Larry Behm** » 20 Jun 2011 6:29 am

Bud Hall good to see you here.

It always amazes me why the recording engineer feels that a Tele with a B bender should be played at the same time as the steel and visa versa.

Larry Behm

Russ Tkac · Post by **Russ Tkac** » 20 Jun 2011 8:48 am

Keep in mind this is from 1973 I believe so Country Rock and the use of B-Benders is still pretty new ... and it is Bob Warford.

Glad to post it Skip, seeing that I got it from you!
Russ

Glenn Suchan · Post by **Glenn Suchan** » 9 Jul 2011 1:36 pm

Russ, thanks for the blast-from-the-past. Back (early 1970's) when I was grabbin' up every record I could find that listed a steel guitar as a part of the instrumentation, I found Michael Dinner's The Great Pretender. It was very inspirational for me lyrically and for the musical performances. In fact, I used to perform solo with a guitar (as Jake Foxbreath), and one of the songs I did was "Last Dance in Salinas" from this album.

Along with Ed Black playing steel, Sneaky Pete and Al Perkins also contributed.

I was hoping to find the album in CD format... no luck, but someone has the vinyl, in very good condition, for $100 on Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/great-pretender-L ... 694&sr=1-1

Keep on pickin'!
Glenn

Russ Tkac · Post by **Russ Tkac** » 9 Jul 2011 5:17 pm

http://soundcloud.com/tonecaster/02-yel ... -express-1

Here is another one from the album. I have the album but it is not on CD. I got these a few years ago from Skip.

This is Ed on steel and Bob on B-bender again, with Linda Ronstadt, Doug Haywood and Herb Pederson on vocals.

Great stuff.

Ken Mizell · Post by **Ken Mizell** » 9 Jul 2011 7:42 pm

Have you guys ever heard Linda Ronstadt's "Silver Threads and Golden Needles" with Ed on steel? Great playing there. She had two versions of that song, one with keyboards, and one with steel. Ed's playing on the version with pedal steel is smokin'.

Russ Tkac · Post by **Russ Tkac** » 10 Jul 2011 7:10 pm

Yes, first solo I learned.

Herb Steiner · Post by **Herb Steiner** » 11 Jul 2011 2:31 am

Ken Mizell wrote:Have you guys ever heard Linda Ronstadt's "Silver Threads and Golden Needles" with Ed on steel? Great playing there. She had two versions of that song, one with keyboards, and one with steel. Ed's playing on the version with pedal steel is smokin'.

Linda recorded two versions of "Threads" with steel. The first was Red Rhodes on Hand Sown, Home Grown" from 1969, and Ed recorded the second version, with not as many effects as Red used. Red was heavy into effects in those days. I was present at the session, but not on steel.

Ken Mizell · Post by **Ken Mizell** » 11 Jul 2011 3:59 am

Great info, thanks much Herb. We are very fortunate to get eye witness accounts here on the forum.

The version I like most has Ed Black in the liner notes. I was wondering - Could the version I mentioned that sounds like keyboards on the turnaround be Red Rhodes with effects?

Herb Steiner · Post by **Herb Steiner** » 11 Jul 2011 5:59 am

Ken Mizell wrote:The version I like most has Ed Black in the liner notes. I was wondering - Could the version I mentioned that sounds like keyboards on the turnaround be Red Rhodes with effects?

I don't have the cut handy, but it could very well be the case.

Trivia: during those sessions, Red was the bandleader at the Palomino Club, and Buddy was subbing for him. This was early 1969.

Dave Ristrim · Post by **Dave Ristrim** » 12 Jul 2011 4:23 pm

Oh what a great trip down memory lane. That Michael Dinner album is on my desert island disc list! I was in a band in the late 70's that covered several of the cuts. KFAT used to play the heck out of "Great Pretender", "Yellow Rose" and a few others.
I converted the vinyl to cd via ProTools years ago so I could enjoy it whenever I wanted to. I just started playing it in iTunes as I'm typing this. SWEET!

Jerry Hayes R.I.P. · Post by **Jerry Hayes R.I.P.** » 13 Jul 2011 8:04 am

Ed sat in for a set on my old ShoBud S-12 when I was at the DJ Ranch in north Long Beach before I left SoCal. Tommy Spurlock was the lead guitarist on the Sunday afternoon band and they might have came together but I'm not sure. Anyway, he did a great job as I recall........JH in Va.

Chris Schlotzhauer · Post by **Chris Schlotzhauer** » 13 Jul 2011 8:19 am

I used to cover "The Great Pretender" in my band. Actually, my steel player, David Norris turned me on to the tune.
Love that song

Kirk Eipper · Post by **Kirk Eipper** » 13 Jul 2011 9:48 am

Jerry,

What years were you at DJ's Ranch? I was the house guitarist there from about 91 to 93 or so. Went overseas on tour for 6 months and Harry Orlove subbed for me.

Never met anybody who had the gig.

KE

Jerry Hayes R.I.P. · Post by **Jerry Hayes R.I.P.** » 14 Jul 2011 7:51 am

Kirk, I was there three different times starting in '80 or '81 with Clark Rohn. We had a bunch of different musicians including Leo J. Eiffert, Ron Catt, Hank Cochram, Gino Cirriano, John Stevens, Jerry Raney and a couple of others. I always played lead and steel both. We left once and went to the Blue Bayou in Lakewood for a little while but came back to the DJ. I left So Cal in October of '85 and moved to Virginia. I still go back every couple of years as I have two grown kids still living there....JH in Va.

Olli Haavisto · Post by **Olli Haavisto** » 15 Jul 2011 10:03 am

Dave, are you aware of this ?: http://www.kfat.com/
I often listen to it and wish I`d "been there".
Great times, for sure !

John Haspert · Post by **John Haspert** » 15 Jul 2011 3:39 pm

In reply to a different posting, I commented-
"At the time that song was recorded for Capitol records, there were actually 2 versions. The first released version was on a compilation of Capitol artists including Linda Ronstadt. I think the name of that album was the "New Spirit of Capitol". I have two different copies of the Vinyl, neither gave credits. However, The first version was all Pedal Steel Guitar, no fiddle and the player was the Great Red Rhodes. He used distortion and that version has one of his classic intros. The solo is the same line (nearly) played twice through in harmonics with distortion. I just love that solo. Red told me that when he hit that solo in the studio, it drove the producer, Chip Douglas, out of the booth, but they kept it. That version doesn't get much air play. The second version used all the same tracks as it was for a "Linda" album and they brought in David Lindley for the fiddle. This is the version more often heard as they used Red and David doubled on the Intro. In the Solo, David takes the first half and Red's Original Screaming harmonics is the second half. While I prefer the first version, I never get tired of hearing that track.

I just went out and looked at the track credits and the Asylum track and it gives Ed Black credit as Guitar (steel)and Gib credit as the fiddler, both great Artists as well. This occured just at the transition of Linda leaving Capitol and going to what was going to become WEA, Warner-Elektra-Asylum. I knew Red when he was with us and I know Chip and am aware of those original sessions. It looks like possibly they re-recorded that track for the Asylum release. That was not totally unheard of, to re-record tracks when artists changed labels. And relatively speaking, this was a fairly straight forward set of tracks.....because Linda knows how to Rock with the best of them. I think I found the original version on YouTube- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsiXcS-glAU. It looks like the Capitol version(s) are from ~1969 and then the Asylum was a few years later.

Ken Mizell · Post by **Ken Mizell** » 15 Jul 2011 6:48 pm

John - That's the version that I (somehow) thought was some sort of keyboards - I got fooled. Knowing that was Red Rhodes gives me a new perspective on it. I am a Red Rhodes fan, forever.

I really like the version that is attributed to Ed Black though.

Russ Tkac · Post by **Russ Tkac** » 19 Nov 2011 1:23 pm

Found this nice picture and a write up about Ed on line and thought I'd post it.

Ed Black

Black started out in Phoenix, AZ, around 1971 with Goose Creek Symphony. The group traveled to Los Angeles where they opened up for Linda Ronstadt at the Whiskey a Go Go and Ronstadt, along with her producer, John Boylan, convinced Black and drummer, Mickey McGee to join her band. In agreeing to their offer Black wound up playing on Ronstadt's albums, Don't Cry Now, Heart Like a Wheel, and Prisoner in Disguise, touring with her band in between releases as well.

Ed Black took the pedal steel guitar and Dobro, traditionally country and western instruments, into the world of rock music. Black wasn't the first to do this but he was one of the most memorable, having recorded the distinctive, screaming solo in Linda Ronstadt's "Silver Threads and Golden Needles" as an early example.

Black left Ronstadt's band after 1975 and concentrated on his studio prowess, appearing on albums by Tracy Chapman, Gene Clark, Dwight Yoakam, and many other high-profile artists until 1990 when his health began to fail. In 1998 the music world was robbed of a very talented innovator in Ed Black, who passed away at barely 50 years old.

Here is a video of Ed with Linda Ronstadt from 1973.

http://youtu.be/CZCsntj-wkY

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