There's an interesting story behind Sleep Walk. Santo and Johnny Farina's parents were both born in Italy, and they spoke broken English, so the family was brought up speaking half Italian, half English. When WW2 broke out, the father joined the military. He was already a Hank Williams fan and while in service in the Pacific fell in love with Hawaiian music and the steel guitar, so he wrote home to his wife, sending money, and telling her to buy the boys a steel guitar and have them learn how to play it. He wanted them to be able to play like he'd heard Don Helms and Jerry Byrd play on his favorite Hank Williams recordings.
So the mother and the sons went to the local music shop. The Italian owner had only one steel guitar in stock, a Fender 3-neck Stringmaster, which he knew very little about. So he sold it to them at a knocked-down price as he was a friend of the family, together with an old tube amplifier. For the next few months they tried to teach themselves but didn't make much progress, until they found an old Hawaiian who had been taught by Sol Hoopii and agreed to teach them. They went for lessons for about six months, then the war ended and he returned to Hawaii.
The brothers then formed a band and played in night clubs. They never completely perfected the Hawaiian sound, and they weren't really country players. They developed a style of their own. Both brothers played steel and rhythm and they alternated, but they only had one steel guitar and couldn't afford another. They started writing their own compositions. Early one morning Santo woke Johnny at about 3:00 a.m. and said that he had an idea for a song, so they practised it for a while and eventually it became Sleep Walk. The next day their father was very enthusiastic saying that it could be a hit, but Santo was always skeptical about whether they could make it as fulltime professionals. The father had insisted that they tape all their night-club performances so that he could listen to them at home and save them for posterity. He got them to record Sleep Walk and Johnny spent several months going from one record pruducer to another, playing his tape, with very little success, until eventually he came across a producer who was very enthusiastic.
So the company put it out as a single, but they weren't entirely sure that a steel guitar instrumental would sell to the general public, so they asked for the words. He went home and their sister (or cousin, I'm not sure) wrote the words overnight. They got Betty Brye, who was a popular night club singer in the area, and under contract to them, to record it with the studio orchestra, but with a similar arrangement to the original instrumental. Both singles came out simultaneously.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pCUR0gMXDc
As a surprise to the record company, the instrumental shot to the top of the charts and the rest is history, while the vocal version became a minor hit.
As is well known, the brothers toured together with their band for many years and made a lot of albums, until Santo decided to relocate back to Italy, where he continued his steel guitar career, whilst Johnny continued without him, and as far as I know both are still playing. It's been said that Johnny is touring under a misnomer, in that he's billing himself and his band as Johnny of Sleepwalk fame, whereas he only played rhythm on the hit record. That's not really fair. He plays just as well as his brother. Many steel guitarists have recorded Sleep Walk over the years, but, to my ears, the original is the best, and the next best is Johnny Farina's version. Let's face it, he's been playing the tune in front of an audience every day for over fifty years.
But there's a postscript to the story. Betty Brye left show business in the 60s to raise a family. A few years ago, then in her 70s, and with her children and grandchildren grown up, she got tired of retirement and went back onto the night club circuit. She now tours, singing her original material, mainly jazz and big band numbers from the 40s, and one of her most-requested numbers is ...... Sleep Walk.
