Tom Brumley steel solo on Together Again... question..

[Jack Aldrich]

I meant to say, in response to the no-slant posters, that I rest my case. IMHO, most of the early pedal steel greats started on non-pedal steels, so they knew how to slant.

[Lane Gray]

That's a reverse slant.

[Ethan Shaw]

Bob, I have a long-scale 1000 that's sunburst and black-framed. It looks just like that (except for the "Tom Brumley"!

[Don Drummer]

I have the b to bflat change. To me there is a great difference between staying on one fret and using the original move where you go back one fret and raise the 3rd string. To me it's night and day. An example of this is in a video of Tom Brumley on RFD as a guest of Ronnie Reno's show. Here we see Tom playing his Anapeg with the 5th string lower not moving the bar doing his iconic solo. While it was good it, it did not have mojo of the original.

[Herb Steiner]

That's a reverse slant.

Good work, Lane! I was hoping someone would recognize that, and I figured it prob'ly would be you!

[Herb Steiner]

... While it was good it, it did not have mojo of the original.

Exactly. Slants provide a certain organic out-of-tune-ness that lend a very "human" or "vocal" element to the sound. Other examples would be the slants Buddy Emmons used on Ray Price's cut of "Wild Side of Life" and his own Black Album version of "Danny Boy."

[Kenny Davis]

Lane: You got me! I posted the wrong picture!

[Jack Aldrich]

Lane:You got me! I posted the wrong picture!

A reverse slant is what I use. BTW - Since I'm focusing on non-pedal steel, slants come easier now.

[Lane Gray]

Use both. Even if you don't dig his "trickly" style, youtube up Freddy Roulette. From forward to reverse slants like his wrists are made of Playdoh.

[Larry Chung]

As long as we're discussing this lovely tune/solo - it's worth checking out the tone differences in the original recording w/the Fender versus the "Live at Carnegie Hall" LP w/the ZB. Really beautiful tone on both.

A nice way to spend a few moments between turkey and football. (:

[steinar]

Larry, as a fellow ZB aficionado, I´d like to comment on what you write about the tone of Tom on the Carnegie Hall concert album. Tom said that on that album, what you hear approximates what you would hear in a live setting when it came to the tone of the steel. The reason was that from live concert recordings, the steel tone could not be manipulated like it invariably was done on studio recordings, - given Buck`s concept of a car speaker as the normative reproductive medium.

Tom didn`t like the trebled tone he was given on the recordings, and hence Carnegie Hall was more to his liking as representative of what he wanted to sound like. If you listen to his "In Time" album, you can hear what this evolved into in later years.

Now the only mystery remaining is what happened to the Carnegie hall ZB, - Tom didn`t know, and nobody else seems to know, either. Any clue, Larry?

[Dave Yustin]

Regarding the damaged condition of that Fender 1000 when Tom Brumley first saw it, I recall hearing Buck Owens tell the story of how that happened. Buck, Tom Brumley and I believe Carl Smith, were all guests on a country music show that was on RFD tv for awhile. I don't recall the name of the show, it was hosted by a country singer whom I'd never heard of, who played alot of package shows on tours during the 60s and 70's. Buck Owens explained that there was an arguement when the previous steel player left the band, that he was angry and picked the guitar up by the cables and threw it.
Then Tom Brumley told the rest of the story,( as has already been posted here), that he was told not to bring his own steel as they had the Fender. He and Don Rich managed to repair it enough to do "Together Again". Later on the show, Tom Brumley played the solo on an Ampeg steel he had.

[Kenny Davis]

Steinar: Could this be the Carnegie Hall guitar? This would have been prior to the Carnegie Hall concert in March, 1966. It was taken from a Mathis Brothers Country Social show that preceeded the Buck Owens Ranch shows. The first Ranch show was recorded just before the Carnegie Hall concert.




You asked earlier about Bud's Bounce, and I believe it was this guitar, but on a later show.

[steinar]

Kenny,

I believe the Carnegie Hall guitar to have had a red pedalboard, did this have it?
I hope that Greg Jones will comment on this, - if anybody knows, it will be Greg!

[Kenny Davis]

It did have the red pedalboard. It's my understanding that WKY television studio had used gaffer's tape on it to prevent the studio lighting from creating a reflection in the cameras.

[steinar]

Then, this may be it! He used it on many Ranch Shows. Whatever happened to this guitar??

ps. Have sent you a pm

[B. Greg Jones]

That is the Carnegie Hall guitar that Kenny posted. The red pedalboard was just a cover used by the TV studio to keep the glare down while filming. Notice in this pic that there are no endplate tuners for the 10th string on the front neck. Tom replaced the B string with a low E. This guitar is a D-10 and the serial number is #1009.

Greg

[Kenny Davis]

The low E string explains those C6th type licks on Act Naturally and a couple other up tempo tunes on the live performances!

[Henry Matthews]

Hey Lane or Herb, which strings do you hit on the bar slant? I would love to use a few bar slants but never experimented with them.

[Lane Gray]

The most commonly used one on E9th is a reverse slant raising 8 instead of raising the E to make a dom7 chord against 5&6. Since the 6th string is usually flat against the E# lever, that slant sounds BETTER than straight across. Say you're on the C chord at 8, and you want the A7: reverse slant to hit 8 on the 9th frets while leaving 5 dead on 8, and 6 will climb a tad sharp. Buddy Emmons prefers that to the F# lever. So do I.

[B. Greg Jones]

Kenny, I just saw the video of Together Again from the Mathis Bros. show where Tom is playing the sunburst Fender. Now here is what I heard....Buck and the band are lip syncing the song, just that song though, all the others are live. On the solo, Tom IS using forward and reverse slants, all while grinning at the camera and he doesn't have his left foot on the pedals. You can see that at the end of the song. Also it doesn't look like Don or Doyle's guitars are plugged in. If you watch them play it live on the Ranch Shows, Tom doesn't use slants on the solo. Now Tom was great at bar slants, seen him do it several times on his Rickenbacker. The song that Don sang on the Ranch show, "If You Make Me Much Bluer I'll Go Out Of My Mind", Tom does the intro and does a really nice backwards slant on the black ZB D-11.

Greg

[Clyde Mattocks]

Lane makes a valid point about the slant sounding better than using the lever for this purpose. I prefer the slant and never gave a thought as to why. Buddy Charleton told me once he preferred to slant.

[Kenny Davis]

Greg - I haven't been watching this thread lately!

After posting the screen grab pictures, I watched the video and noticed the lip syncing on those two songs! I had not watched the videos since 2010. I told Steiner and Todd about it, and we had a little chuckle. I don't even see pedal rods on the Fender! Of all the old shows I've seen of the Buckaroos, this is the only one I can remember that they did that. Buck and especially Don seem to be pretty tickled with themselves over the bad faking. Watch some of Buck's questionable chord changes!

I beleive that Tom decided to make his performance on Together Again a more accurate presentation since his guitar was not complete or plugged in. He went to much greater pains than the rest of the band! I was so freaked out seeing him play the Fender, Sho~Bud, and ZB in those clips I was more interested in getting stills and sending them to Rolene than anything else. I had meant to get back on here and post a disclaimer on the bar slants... I could understand the slant on the 5 chord, but not all the others! You'll have to admit he would probably play it pretty accurately without pedals!

[B. Greg Jones]

Kenny, I got a kick out of it too. And you are right, some very rare footage of Tom playing a Sho~Bud. Tom probably could have played the whole song without pedals and done it in tune. He always had perfect pitch and hearing like a bat!!!! LOL Sure do miss talking with Tom!!!

Greg

[Ron Pruter]

Lane. That's a nice change but the eighth fret move in your example sure sounds more like a C# Dim to me. It strongly leads to the Dmin.in half step increments. What do you think? I'm also amazed by how in tune the 5th and 6th string sound with such a slant on my Emmons SKH.