The Steel Guitar Forum

I hope you didn't buy this from the owner who lived in Hendersonville, Tn. He has since died.

About 1953 I was asked to play steel with Ernie and his brother Dink. We did a radio show on Armed Forces Network in Munich, Germany. I sort of rooted out a German who had a home made steel and played with them before I came on the scene. I feel rather badly that I selfishly wanted to play and did n...

I seem to remember that Judy, Less Paul and Mary Ford were on the first televised show at the Opry.
Kelso Herston gave me a couple of her albums when he was with Capitol in Nashville. She was Miss Idaho at one time. I would have voted for her. I read that she left public singing in 1980.

Several years ago a teacher in Arkansas was encouraged by his friends to go to Nashville and pitch his songs. His excuse for not going was that he did not have the money for motel etc. They told him he could make the drive and return the same day. His wife was full blooded Indian. They set out early...

It is my understanding that a song can be copywrited but not the title.

As a young airman in Wiesbaden, Germany I met this Hawaiian by the name of Tau Moe. This was about 1952. He and I belonged to the same church and of course played steel. He had been in Europe during the thirties and remained there during WWII. I've heard the story that he loaned some of his official...

According to the Nashville Tennessean a musician community will be built in the near future. They will have a recording studio etc. According to this story it may benefit the musician on the lower end of the pay scale. Many senior citizen musicians in the past have had no place to go once father tim...

Would you go back in time and see on the Opry stage the Crook Brothers,Possum Hunters, Fruit Jar Drinkers, The Gulley Jumprs etc. of the twenties and thirties? All of these guys had day jobs as labors, plumbers, farmers, carpenters and so on. Music was not something you depended on to make a living....

As a retired school teacher.......and the winner for all times are the teachers who wrote, "Happy Birthday to You." This song is sung hundreds of thousands of times each and every year and has for many many years. No, don't even try to come up with a comparable song, there aren't any. Numb...

I really enjoyed the Opry Saturday night. Mel Tillis is true blue country. Twin fiddles wow! and the steel player was great. The whole group was dressed for the occasion in matching outfits, they looked very professional and their stage presence was outstanding.

Was this song written by Pee Wee King and Red Stewart? I saw the market place in old Algiers about 1953. Several of us LDS youngsters flew there as passengers in a C-47. One of the pilots was a friend of mine, a Captain Savage of the Air Force stationed in Wiesbaden, Germany.

I bought a Tweed Fender amp (used) at the old Hank Snow Music Store about 1969 for $50.00. I took it to a music store about five years ago and asked them to re-cover the amp because of the cigarett burns. This guy told me that it was a collectors item and that if it was re-covered it would ruin the ...

I believe Kayton lives in Ridge Top or Greenbrier, Tn. both of these communites are north of Nashville.
The musicians union could give his exact address. You may ask them if he is still active (paid up) and then you ask for an address so he can be contacted.

When I was doing construction work I would sometimes take a radio/casette player with me and play casettes. One of my casettes was by Les Paul and Mary Ford. A young man approached me and asked who was playing the guitar and when I told him it was Les Paul he said, "Well I knew he made guitars ...

I recently bought a tape at a Goodwill store about Pearl Harbor. In the tape at one point was some Hawaiian music being played by Jerry Byrd. I wondered at the time if they would give Jerry credit for this and at the ende there was his name in big letters. I was wondering if his daughters were aware...

I doubt that Garland was ever a member of the Opry. He may have played on the Opry at age fifteen. When "Bashful Brother Oswald" was officially made a member of the Opry, sometime after the death of Roy Acuff, he remarked that he thought he was already a member of the Opry. Playing on the ...

That fellow up there in Hanibal, Missouri wrote a story about this subject.

Faron, what a sad ending. A good reason to give up smoking.

While in Germany I had the pleasure of playing with the brother of Jethro Burns. He was an Army Seargent we called "Pappy Burns." Pappy Burns did the double slap on the upright bass fiddle for the recording of Steel Guitar Ragg...Jerry Byrd no less. The double slap is not that easy from wh...

I asked a very successful song writer by the name of Tony Martin who was my bishop at the time what was the best written country song? Without hesitation he began to sing, "You Don't Know Me," I asked a friend of mine, Kelso Herston if that wasn't a Cindy Walker song? Of course he said it ...

Roy Orbison's wife died in a motorcycle accident. She was driving her bike. Two of the Orbison boys were playing with some hair spray bottles and were lighting the spray. They were killed and the house burnt as best as I can remember. The grandparents were looking after the children. One of the surv...

A few weeks ago I saw a guitar on TV that looked like the rear fender of a 1957 Chevy. Is this a custom made guitar?

Did Rickenbacker reinforce the neck with steel rods in the newer models?

I think we agree, the steel playing was excellent.

According to a friend of mine who was a producer in the music industry here in the Nashville area, the local entrenched steel players though that Pete was somewhat of a joke when he first came to Nashville. Like a lot of us they did not understand that style is probably more important that execution...