Was pedal steel your 1st ?

John De Maille · Post by **John De Maille** » 12 Jul 2001 1:18 pm

Started playing guitar when I was 8 yrs. old. Started my first band when I was 16, playing folk-rock on a Rick 12 string. From there, I went to more of a country rock scene, using a Fender Tele with a B-string bender, which I still play today. Finally, got gloriously hooked on steel guitar, thanks to Lloyd Green and J.D. Maness. Purchased a used Sho-Bud Maverick in 73', and started to teach myself. VERY TUFF GOING. Am now still playing my 78' Rusler, and learning something new everyday. It never ceases to amaze me- this instrument, I love so much.
John

Bob Hayes · Post by **Bob Hayes** » 12 Jul 2001 11:04 pm

Ray,
The bass player dosn't ALWAYS get the dirty looks...maybe as much as the drummer!! Here lately the Steel picker has when he gets his fingers caught in the strings and drops his bar on the guitar player's toe

Colin Goss · Post by **Colin Goss** » 13 Jul 2001 11:23 pm

At the age of 30, never having played any instrument in my life, saw an Emmons 3+1 in the local music shop - very cheap. So I bought it to see if I could get a tune out of it. Eventually I did, enough to play at the British Steel Guitar Festival eight times. Amazing what you can do if you REALLY want to!

Michael Johnstone · Post by **Michael Johnstone** » 14 Jul 2001 12:57 am

Started out on a Silvertone F-hole archtop acoustic(probably a Harmony)that I ordered from Sears while living in the south of France in 1958.My teacher at the time was heavily into Chet,Merle,Scotty Moore and Mickey Baker and laid that on me.Later,in 1962,I was into Nokie Edwards from the Ventures and twangy surf guitar in general.Then,I went to Castle Heights Military Academy in Lebanon,Tennessee with Duane and Gregg Allman in '63 - '64 and Duane hipped me to Bobby Bland,James Brown,Freddy King,etc.and showed me how to play R&B turnarounds,+9 chords,the solo to "Honky Tonk" etc.and by the time the Beatles,Byrds,etc.came out,I was playing pretty fair guitar for my age(17-18) I played blues,rock and what I used to call "funk that passes for jazz" up untill the early 70's.In 1972,I was working in a music store in Norfolk,Va. as a guitar repair and setup man,when somebody traded in a Fender 400. I used to sit around and try to play it instead of working - so the boss finally told me I could have it if I would please just get it out of the store and fool with it on my own time.Right about then,I heard Rusty Young w/Poco,Bobby Black w/Cody,and also Buddy Cage with the New Riders.I said: "That's it! This is what I gotta do!" So I got a black MSA single 10 w/5+4 and headed for California.That's where the kind of steel I dug was being played.Soon I discovered Emmons and everybody else who was doing anything worthwhile on the instrument.I took a few lessons and my teacher told me that since I knew a lot of theory,I should find a sh!++y country band and start playing 6 nights a week immediately - which I did.Since then,I've just been playing catch up.I only wish I'd been playing steel from a younger age when skills are gathered more quickly. Oh Well......... -MJ-

Moon in Alaska · Post by **Moon in Alaska** » 14 Jul 2001 12:43 pm

I started in 1948 -- I was 16 at the time --- My first steel was a $29.95 Sears "Silvertone" 6 string lap steel. Made my own homemade pedal in the mid- 50's, did not have a real pedal steel until 1962, when I purchased a new Fender-400.

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Louis Schubert · Post by **Louis Schubert** » 14 Jul 2001 7:58 pm

I am a BASS PLAYER as well as a steel picker. Those who don't think bass counts have no knowledge of James Jamerson. I am a follower of Jamerson to the n'th degree. Does bass count? Yes, it does. Don't be undone.

Jim Cohen · Post by **Jim Cohen** » 14 Jul 2001 8:25 pm

Let's see... At age 10, I thought I was gonna be Bobby Rydell. So I sang around the house. Volare! Whoa-oh-oh-oh!"

At age 12, I knew I was gonna be George Harrison. So I took up the guitar. Played it right through my second year of college when I heard Rusty Young play "Kind Woman" with Buffalo Springfield, and it was all over for me. I stumbled into Scotty in St. Louis, and haven't touched a 6-string hardly at all ever since. In fact, each time I do, it's just too depressing, cuz my guitar playing hasn't progressed one lick since 1972 and I can't stand hearing myself play it anymore.

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Bob Hayes · Post by **Bob Hayes** » 15 Jul 2001 4:16 am

Louis,
Bass players are important.I was one.But it's like an "inside joke" If you make a mistake..or any body makes a mistake..BLAME THE BASS PICKER OR DRUMMER"!a couple of "notable bass players( steelers) are The Big E,Johnny Cox.......That should be another thread.."what other instuments do you play..(or have tried to play), ot "think you can play""?

Rick Garrett · Post by **Rick Garrett** » 15 Jul 2001 9:00 am

My first was a regular 6 string acoustic guitar when I was about 6 or so. Banged around on it for awhile and then at 13 my first steel was my 10 string Ricky lap steel. Stopped that at 15 and played acoustic again for years THEN I finally got myself a Legrand and have enjoyed it the last 3 months. Yeah yeah I know Im green as a gord.

Everyone had to start somewhere.

Rick

Jim Bob Sedgwick · Post by **Jim Bob Sedgwick** » 15 Jul 2001 11:43 am

I owned the first fuzz tone. A harmony guitar that someone sat on during a hayride and broke the top (large crack) Payed 3 dollars for it. Every time you struck a string, automatic fuzz. Played trombone in grade school through college, six string. I heard Jimmy Day with Ray Price in 1959. That did it. Bought my first steel in 1980. Now play 90 percent pedal steel, 10% lead guitar.
Isn't music fun? And it pays so great too!

Charlie McDonald · Post by **Charlie McDonald** » 10 Jun 2005 6:04 am

Bongoes in the 4th grade choir concert.
My mother said she didn't even know I played them.
Should have stuck with bongos.

David Mason · Post by **David Mason** » 10 Jun 2005 6:58 am

Piano at 6 or 7? A gruesome but blessedly brief school-band clarinet experiment. Rubber bands stretched across drawers and thumbtacked into place -> electric bass 12-25, electric guitar from 13 on till now, including gobs of slide. I actually got a pedal steel in trade for an electric Peavey T-60 about 1984? It was a Shobud with card symbols fanned across the front. Some idiot had tuned the first two strings lower than the rest, so I traded it for something or another, probably some beer (I know, I know, don't even start). Guitar + slide all along, nut raisers etc. I got my Carter single C6th in 2001.

Post by **Dave Mudgett** » 10 Jun 2005 7:47 am

Not by a long shot. Started with classical piano (with a little boogie woogie thrown in, I liked the older stuff and Jerry Lee/Little Richard) from 1961-66, with a brief foray during summer 63 into acoustic guitar at a month-long summer camp. Ya' know, Kumbaya and Blowin' in the Wind. The Beatles hit, I hated them initially, piano got more focused. My teacher, though classically oriented, was a great boogie woogie player. She could reel out Professor Longhair kind of stuff, I watched in amazement.

I started changing my mind about some of the newer rock as it got better (IMO), then the blues thing hit, and got an electric guitar in '67, and I've played guitar since (except several years off in grad school in the early 80s), standard and bottleneck. I played mostly blues, rock, and some country/country-rock back then. I used a lap steel some, mostly blues and rock in open D or open G.

I got more seriously into bluegrass and jazz guitar in the 80s, and started working on banjo and a bit of dobro in the 90s. I got a pedal steel in 98, and didn't really start playing till 99 after I joined the Stone Poets. For a year, I worked pretty hard to learn the basics, then went back to grad school for a couple of years, pretty dormant. But then got back at it again seriously in the last couple.

Mark Metdker · Post by **Mark Metdker** » 10 Jun 2005 8:40 am

My Dad owned a gas station when I was young. One day when I got home from school (1st grade) there was an electric guitar and a little Gretsch amp in my room. A guy owed him some money and offerd it as payment. He gave it to me and I learned on my own.

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JW Day · Post by **JW Day** » 10 Jun 2005 8:47 am

while setting around the barracks singing some of hank's ole blues songs a dear black friend of mind came in the room.he say man," dis just what we be looking fur". I had never had a bass in my hand, but he was very talented and I was somewhat musically inclined.In about an hour he had taught me enought to get by for the night. that was in 1964,I never looked back, finally moved to the steel in 76.The black gentleman and myself are still dear friends to this day. thats been over 40 yrs.

Mark Lind-Hanson · Post by **Mark Lind-Hanson** » 10 Jun 2005 9:13 am

I started with piano & cello in 2nd grade, recorder & trombone in 3rd, ukulele in 4th and then (after seeing A Hard Days Night and walking out thinking "uh=huh- THAT's what I'd like to do") pestered & pestered my parents for two years til they broke down & bought me my first electric (Sears Airline) when I was 11. Alomost concurretly I began lessons on flute, which I gave up in a similar discouragement as with trombone- couldn't quite get into the embouchere[sp?]. The year after the electric came I got a nylon string acoustic and began taking "hootenanny" style folk-club type lessons. At that point I also got an autoharp, which I stupidly sold four or five years later, but which turned me on totally to 6ths and suspendeds etc. Then a banjo, at 15, and I played that rather steadily for the next four years while trying to get exposure through the high school talent show circuit and plain old going out on the street & busking it. That kind of thing is a rife adventure when you are that age, though I wouldn't reccomend it to anyone these days esp if they'd like to be known as more than a harmless eccentric!
When I was 19 or so I picked up a copy EB-3 bass which I really loved, and slavishly aped Phil Lesh for a year or so before I realized that was the wrong way to go about playing bass- at least, for ME it would be.
I got back into piano along the way and picked up one or two acoustics and "better electrics, al of which got ripped off, unfortunately. Finally I settled on a copy Les Paul which nobody would touch, intheir right minds, and had it customised, which is my "main" 6 string. I took some composition & theory courses at a local music school w/ former Dead pianist Tom Constanten & some private lessons(I had already begun writing some string pieces & orchestra pieces, but what this was best for, for me, was the feedback I got from someone with considerably more experience in that area)-
Two 1/2 years ago I took my severance pay from an "activist" job that had progressively become more & more painful & bought what is my (first, hopefully, not last) pedal steel. I go back & forth from steel to 6 string and I think my playing on each improves with time... though I am NOT JSUT yet playing out, I have finally begun playing with other people (friends) who don't mind what I do. At least I haven't heard anything bad about my playing yet! GIve it time, I'm sure I'll hear about it SOMEPLACE...

Ray Minich · Post by **Ray Minich** » 10 Jun 2005 9:28 am

I tried a Gibson F hole hollow body guitar for 3 weeks in 1963. My dad bought it at a pawn shop. Darned strings hurt my finger tips. A few weeks later my dad watched a fella play a double neck at a local watering hole and then he built me a 6 string steel. It didn't hurt my finger tips anymore. It's been all uphill from there (and some downhill, and some sideways...).

Dick Wood · Post by **Dick Wood** » 10 Jun 2005 10:37 am

I started playing professionally on bass guitar in 1977 and in 1981 we had a steel player sit in one night and that was it,I was hooked on a life of chimes.

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Cops aren't paid much so I steel at night.

Bob Carlucci · Post by **Bob Carlucci** » 10 Jun 2005 10:37 am

Drums at about 11-12.. switched to guitar at 15 after learning I was better at it that the guitarist I was playing drums for!!

Pedal steel at 22... still playing steel and 6 string... both at about the same skill level ... not bad, not great...
.... actually the early drum experience helped me a huge amount on the steel.. I pride myself on the "inner clock" I have.. I may not be great, but I DO have good time/cadence/groove/ instinct...bob

Bobby Lee · Post by **Bobby Lee** » 10 Jun 2005 11:17 am

I played guitar and bass as a teenager. Got a steel after I heard Jerry Garcia. Never looked back at guitar, but I still play bass now and then.

Ernie Pollock · Post by **Ernie Pollock** » 10 Jun 2005 11:22 am

Gee, I think I played the alto horn first, then trumpet, then Baritone the Tuba Eb & BBb. then discovered guitar, wow, you can play more than one note at a time on these babies, then onto bass guitar then lead guitar & pedal steel - its been about a 50 year journey for me, wouldn't have missed it for the world, but love the steel guitar the best off all of them, but I still get a great feeling when I hear a John Phillip Sousa march!!

Ernie Pollock

http://www.hereintown.net/~shobud75/stock.htm

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Martin Abend · Post by **Martin Abend** » 10 Jun 2005 2:02 pm

I've played drums since I was 13, and still do, and took up the steel 5 years ago... buit hey, at least I can write and read!

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richard burton · Post by **richard burton** » 10 Jun 2005 2:05 pm

I was heavily into the Stylophone for many years, after watching a Rolf Harris TV programme.
Even now, when I'm playing the steel, I absent-mindedly look for the pen-like thing that touches the keyboard to make the notes.
So much better than fingerpicks.
R B

Dave Grafe · Post by **Dave Grafe** » 10 Jun 2005 2:22 pm

I was banging on mom's piano as soon as I could reach the keys. I was fooling around with great-grandad's hawaiian guitar not long after (used a ruler 'cause nobody would let me play with the brass and steel bars) and I'm sure that's when I caught the bug. My earliest memories are of wanting to play the piano and make machines work, how's that for pre-dispositon to play PSG?

Wandered around the farm playing grandad's chromatic harmonica from about age four, started piano lessons at age eight, flute at age ten, autoharp (talk about a theory teaching machine!) at age 11, then in rapid succession the tuba, trombone, saxophone, double bass (jazz and classical), ukelele, guitar (acoustic at first, then my cousin loaned my his old Epiphone electric), lap steel, back to the bass (this time an electric one), and finally got my hands on a Sho-Bud Maverick (the old blonde and stainlessmodel, 3+0) at age 19 after hearing BE play on John Sebastian's "Rainbows All Over Your Blues.

Thirty-some years later I still play the bass occasionally for money, noodle on the piano at home, and get out the acoustic guitar whenever there's a good campfire to sing to or a song to be written. I know too many great guitarists to get up on stage with one myself - know thy limits!

Funny, I know several great steelers too, but that doesn't seem to stop me from getting up on stage with one of those!
[This message was edited by Dave Grafe on 11 June 2005 at 12:53 AM.]

Robert Thomas · Post by **Robert Thomas** » 10 Jun 2005 2:33 pm

In 1945 a salesman for the American Institute of Music dropped by and wanted to enroll someone in music. It was either a Hawaiian steel gutiar or violin. He thought I should play the violin, but I insisted I wanted to learn to play the steel guitar. My folks said okay. I started on a 6 sting open hole guitar. At age 15 I acquired a BR-9 Gibson, 6 string, electric steel guitar, with a matching Amp. I started playing for dances at community halls, by myself. My folks would take me to the halls and dance and drink and everyone would have a great old time. That was in 1949. One year later I bought a dble. neck Fender Stringmaster. Another 2 years and I bought a triple neck Fender Stringmaster and played it up until 1971 when I bought a brand new Sho-bud Professional D-10 8+2 and added 2 more knee levers. and played that until 1999 when I traded the sho-bud to Herby Wallace for a part payment on a HWP Mullen D10, 8+4. I have never been happier, but at 71+ years of age the Mullen is even beginning to get a little heavy. I am still having a lot of music making on a PSG.