Why did you start to play the Steel?

Gary Carriger · From: Victoria, Texas

Will be revealing my age here, but somewhere around 1963 / 1964 Ray Price came out with a song "You Took Her Off My Hands, Now Please Take Her Off My Mind". It had a great steel solo (the chimed intro still inspires me). I had also acquired a Dwayne Eddy plays country instrumental album about the same time. It had great steel playing on it. The combination of those two influenced me to take up steel.
It wasn't until several years later that I figured out (from the stylings & feeling), that the player on both was, of course, Buddy Emmons.
30 plus years after the fact - Thanks Buddy !!
Gary

Gary Carriger · From: Victoria, Texas

Will be revealing my age here, but somewhere around 1963 / 1964 Ray Price came out with a song "You Took Her Off My Hands, Now Please Take Her Off My Mind". It had a great steel solo (the chimed intro still inspires me). I had also acquired a Dwayne Eddy plays country instrumental album about the same time. It had great steel playing on it. The combination of those two influenced me to take up steel.
It wasn't until several years later that I figured out (from the stylings & feeling), that the player on both was, of course, Buddy Emmons.
30 plus years after the fact - Thanks Buddy !!
Gary

Gary Carriger · From: Victoria, Texas

Sorry for the repetition, but obviously I am having some computer difficulties.
Gary

Jack Francis · From: Queen Creek, Arizona, USA

You needn't mention your age.....repeating yourself over and over says it all.
YUK-YUK
Jack

pdlstl · From: Mineral Wells, TX

.....wimmen!

Dave Diehl · From: Mechanicsville, MD, USA

John Hughey! Years ago I heard him play at the Capitol Centre near Washington DC with Conway Twitty. It sounded so beautiful and appeared to be coming from everywhere. I just had to do it from that point.

Frank Parish · From: Nashville,Tn. USA

Yes Al that was no doubt one of the tunes I was learning at the time. But actually I went and played a country gig when I still was playing drums and a steel player named Danny Williams was there and I was hooked right then and there. It was just like when I was a kid and just starting out to play all over again. I'm looking forward to the next instrument if it'll do that again.

VERNON PRIDDY · From: ELIZABETHTOWN; KY. USA

Lloyd Green's Sound Got Me Started. SONNY.

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SONNYPRIDDY

John De Maille · From: On a Mountain in Upstate Halcottsville, N.Y.

Lloyd Green and JayDee Maness were responsable for attracting me to the steel guitar.The Sweetheart of the Rodeo album, by the Byrds, did it. I couldn't believe the sound I was hearing. It took me till 1973 to finally get a steel,though. I really fumbled around for many years trying to learn to play the damn thing though. It was a very close circle of experts back then, until I met the founding members of the P.S.G.A. Then the floodgates opened up, thanks to the club. I realized how terribly wrong I had been playing, and started immediately to correct all my self taught mistakes.
My love for this instrument and it's sound, has multiplied many times over the years, and I hope I can play it till my last day on earth.
Steelingly Yours,
John

Kevin Lamb · From: San Bernardino, CA, USA

It chose me.
No sane person would elect play an instrument that uses all apendages....and still thinks the brain can keep track of it all. LVL...and now a push forward? The next legendary steel player will be a mutant that grows a thrd leg.

I did not like "Teach Your Children." I thought it was a dumb song. Not nearly up to the quality of the rest of the album, but certainly a work of genius compared to "Our House." It had l ess chords than a Travis Tritt song.
Hah! You think I am a CSN(Y) basher! Think again! I attended their very first concert in Chigago. Went AWOL from a base in Michigan's Upper Peninusla to be there....that was three day before the group left for Woodstock .
I did not know that the intro to "Teach" was done on a pedal steel. I thought it was a Steve Still studio trick. Anyway, I thought it was way out of context. Not Jimmy Page enough.
To the point.
I tuned out radio music in the 80's. Never listened again.
Then I heard Clint Black. Whoa! Someone who can write, play,sing...and has a brain in his head! What a concept
That led me to listen to the older guys like Alan Jackson (Waitress) and the more ancient fixtures (George Strait ) - and then the Country legends that lived before time itself (Olivia Newton John and Mac Davis).
So I went to see Clint Black at a County Fair in Heifferville, CA and drove a bunch of miles to see him the next day at the Greek in Hollywood. (Anyone that can yodel a quater mile south of Mulholland and have people open their windows is my kind of guy). What a great sound those guys had.
So I dumped Cable TV and got a dish so I could watch CMT - a discipline in itself. But even Shania has lots of steel guitar in her stuff....Rimes too.
Loved the sound, just had to have one (not a babe - a steel).
So now I do.
Here is the wierd thing. When I started to research what kind of PSG to buy I kept hearing about Emmons. Now, being in advertising and being really logo conscious all my life I remember the Emmons logo from Sunday-nite TV shows long ago. I figured Emmons was a guy that played and died around the time of Hank W.
I hear tell that not only is he still alive but has more hair than me. And is actually very young.
How is this possible?

Bill Fulbright · From: Atlanta, GA

to cut a very long story short:

Doug Jernigan - Album: "Doug & Bucky" - I was in music school at North Texas State Univ. and I was dumbfounded. This was a duo jazz album with Doug and Bucky Pizzarelli. I wish I still had it or a cd remake. totall incredible. I was so motivated, but felt it was so far beyond my reach.

Rusty Young - Poco early '70's
Flying Burrito Brothers
Byrds

I am from deep South East Texas and grew up with real country music. I admit it was not my favorite, like Soul & Blues, and later Jazz. When I was almost 50, and after 40 years of guitar, I decided it was time to get serious and take on a challenge.

I joined the forum, and asked a lot of questions, sold all my old music gear on Ebay to raise the money and bought my Sierera U-12.

Now I study with Neil Flanz every chance I get, and listen and practice steel every day!

This instrument goes way beyond country, and is the most humbling instrument I have ever attempted!

Hope to have a band soon.

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Bill Fulbright
1998 Sierra U12 7x5; Gibson ES-165; Peavey 50-410
ICQ# 2251620 Bill's Launch Pad

Ray Jenkins · From: Gold Canyon Az. U.S.A.

A glutton for punishment and frustration.

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Steeling is still legal in Arizona

RickRichtmyer · From: Beautiful Adamstown, MD

Like b0b, Bill Keith gets the blame for enticing me into playing the steel guitar. I had played electric guitar for years and kind of got into the folk guitar thing in the late 60's. I always liked country music but never thought about playing steel. My interest in folk music led me to become a fan of Ian & Sylvia. They used to dome to DC and play at The Cellar Door. The first few times I saw them, Bill Keith was playing steel with them and I was hooked! After Bill left the group they came back with Buddy Cage and sealed my fate.

The funny thing was that at the time, I was in college majoring in classical guitar. My wife bought me my first steel, a brand new (1973) Sho~Bud D-10 Professional as a graduation present. My fellow music majors thought I was nuts when I told them I planned to take up pedal steel and play country music.

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Rick Richtmyer
Good News

Bob Hayes · From: Church Hill,Tenn,USA

I first noticed the Steel when I was a mid teen...I saw Smiley Roberts in a country Band (Pee Wee Gockey I think) at a school dance or show in Hindsdale, Mass..I also saw the steel player(standing) with Hank Snow at the National Guard Armory in Pittsfield ,Mass..I think it was a Country Show of the STares or something..And I may have seen Buzz Evans..since He lived up the Road in Adams,Mass.
My next big Influence was Tom Brumly(Buck Owens), The Steel player with Hank Thompson, Ralf Mooney (with Wynn Stewart), and some others in Vegas in the early 60's...then a guy I played with Jim Dorsey Whited who was in a band in Germany with Brumly..and last Being exposed to Rudy Gavelto,Pankcake Norris,Clyde Bloodsworth, Buddy Charelton and some other fine stell pickers in the Washington DC area in the late and early 70's.
After I stared playing (or trying)I was trying to copy tHE Buddy's, Loydd, and everybody else, and I still am trying
Grouchyvet

bob drawbaugh · From: scottsboro, al. usa

Smiley..You did inspire me! but my mother made me take lessons anyway.

Chris Robbins · From: Biggsville Illinois

John David Call of Pure Prarie Leauge

John Fabian · From: Mesquite, Texas USA * R.I.P.

Hal Ruggs awesome playing on the old Wilburn Brothers Show.

John Fabian

Jim Eaton · From: Santa Susana, Ca

I didn't realize just what I was doing and sat down behind a Sho-Bud Maverick that had been gathering dust in the corner of the music store where I had worked before seeing Southeast Asia with Uncle Sam's Canoe Club!
Get the net, we got us another one!
JE:-)>

Wayne Baker · From: Oklahoma

I was hooked when i heard "HAVE I GOT A DEAL FOR YOU". Reba sang it and it had this awsome steel run. i guess i should find out who played on it. i've been a steel freak ever since.

wayne

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Emmons Legrande d-10 w/8&5 Nashville 400, peavey ultraverb II.

Tim Rowley · From: Pinconning, MI, USA

Why did I start to play steel? Funny you should ask, in my case most people don't care why, they just want to know "how" an ignorant guy like me even learned to set the thing up!

Actually, I started playing steel because I was obsessed with the sound! I have appreciated the sound of a steel guitar ever since I first heard one on the radio as a little boy. But when the E9th pedal steel really hit the airwaves in the early 1960's, I was fascinated by that pedal sound. It just "moved" me like nothing else. The playing of Emmons, Day, and Mooney made indelible impressions on my memory even though I barely knew who they were at that time. I grew up in a very rural area, but a number of decent musicians lived around there. There was lots of music to be heard. We didn't have much money so needless to say a steel guitar and amplifier were just beyond imagination for me. But we had a neighbor a few miles away who was an extremely smooth and accurate (not real fast) steel guitar player and when he went to pedals in about 1965 I made it a point to hang out at his house, which was OK because all 5 of his kids were in my age group. I learned quite a bit about steel guitar by watching and listening to him. As I got into my early 20's I became a decent 6-string guitar player and worked with several good steel players in bands. By the early 1970's I had become completely obsessed with steel guitar and knew I really wanted to play one but they just plain cost too much. Finally in the late 1980's I was able to afford to buy a used Emmons push-pull and Session 500 and one thing just led to another. Like a number of other players I confess to being completely self-taught but have been playing with good bands for a number of years so am able to get by pretty well. I'm still obsessed with the sound of a steel guitar!

Tim R.

Smiley Roberts · From: Hendersonville,Tn. 37075

Gary C.
I may be wrong,but,I suspect the steel on,"You Took Her Off My Hands",might be Jimmy Day. If I am,I apologize,in advance.

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Roger Edgington · From: San Antonio, Texas USA

My mom and dad both played steel in the 40s. I grew up with my dad playing sounds like Jerry Byrd, Speedy west, Don Helms, Remmington and others. I thought all music was suppose to have steel.Well,that at least hasn't changed much.
Started playing at 10 yrs old but switched to bass. I really got serious on pedal steel from listening to players of the 50s like Day,Mooney,Emmons, Chalker,Rugg and many others.

Doug Garrick · From: Grand Junction, CO

Bobby Black with Commander Cody on Hot Licks, Cold Steel and Truckers favorites did it for me.

Harry Hess · From: Blue Bell, PA., USA * R.I.P.

Sweet Heart Of The Rodeo

Rusty Young

Sneaky Pete

Regards,
HH

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