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Topic: Hawaiian guitar vs. blues slide guitar: historical precedent |
Dan Beller-McKenna
From:
Durham, New Hampshire, USA
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Posted 8 Dec 2007 4:03 am |
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Ed Sporn's recent posting led me to Dave van Allen's very informative steel guitar timeline. This reminded me of a question I have often mulled: is it the understanding of steel players that the earliest southern, black blues guitarists learned the slide technique from Hawaiian style players? That seems to be the frequent implication in discussions I encounter in print or on line. Certainly possible, but it strikes me as a little surprising if it is true. Is there any source evidence for this? Did any of the early blues slide players say they copped the idea from Hawaiian style players? Are there examples from the earliest (studio or field) blues recordings of black players covering pseudo-Hawaiian tunes? I would not be surprised to hear any of these questions answered in the affirmative: most of those blues players were more eclectic in repertoire than the recording legacy suggests, including all kinds of “pop” music of their day. I just don’t know of any examples.
I ask all of this out genuine curiosity and innocent lack of information, although my assumption would have been that the two styles developed independently. The presence of the diddley bow in southern black culture would offer at least one precedent for slide playing without Hawaiian influence.
Of course, if African Americans developed slide technique independently from Hawaiian style, the next (and equally very interesting) question becomes to what extent, if any, black blues players influenced the first non-Hawaiian steel styles. Not discounting that nearly (if not) all of the early country and swing steel players also played (or at least began on) Hawaiian styles, could there be some cross-pollination happening?
Again, I ask this all in the spirit of inquiry, not to challenge or cast doubt on what others have said or implied: I really would like to know more of what verifiable information exists on these questions.
Thanks
Dan
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Durham, NH
dbmCk mUSIC |
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Steve Norman
From:
Seattle Washington, USA
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Posted 8 Dec 2007 4:09 am
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this is going to sound bizarre, But i have seen wires strung vertically to the sides of houses in Louisiana that were plucked and had a knife or bottle under it sliding and holding it taut. I heard the technique goes back to slave days when instruments had to be improvised. Jugs, voices, stompings on porches etc. Old Black Bottleneck blues players seem to have had this sort of influence. The slide is more rythmic in use than what you hear in Hawaiian.
I know that in Louisianna, there was a pretty big distinction between what would have been a called a dobro sound and a bottleneck sound. I know that using the term Dobro to describe lap reso style is incorrect, but I that is the distinction I always heard communicated by guitar players. I think the lap style evolved along separate paths than the bottleneck.
_________________
GFI D10, Fender Steel King, Hilton Vpedal,BoBro, National D dobro, Marrs RGS
Last edited by Steve Norman on 8 Dec 2007 4:19 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Dan Beller-McKenna
From:
Durham, New Hampshire, USA
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Posted 8 Dec 2007 4:17 am
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Steve,
that is the "diddly bow" I mentioned. (And, yes, that's where "Bo Diddley" got his pseudonym).
Dan |
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Steve Norman
From:
Seattle Washington, USA
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Posted 8 Dec 2007 4:21 am
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ahh,,gotcha
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GFI D10, Fender Steel King, Hilton Vpedal,BoBro, National D dobro, Marrs RGS |
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basilh
From:
United Kingdom
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Posted 8 Dec 2007 5:02 am
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Obviously Irrelevant.
Last edited by basilh on 8 Dec 2007 5:55 am; edited 1 time in total |
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David Mason
From:
Cambridge, MD, USA
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Posted 8 Dec 2007 5:16 am
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There's an Indian instrument called the "veena" that dates back to at least the 12th or 13th century. One method of playing it involves sliding on the strings with a glass egg-shaped "bar". The history of the transmission of the technique is murky - there's no specific names of who begat whom - but one theory holds that an Indian sailor brought the technique to Hawaii, somewhere in the late 17th or early 18th century. Techniques can arise independently, and people sure can make up theories.....  |
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Mike Perlowin
From:
Los Angeles CA
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Posted 8 Dec 2007 5:32 am
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The article dates the first use of the steel in country music as 1925. That's 2 years after Sylvester Weaver first recorded his "Guitar Rag." (He recorded it a second time in 1926.)
_________________
Please visit my web site and Soundcloud page and listen to the music posted there.
http://www.mikeperlowin.com http://soundcloud.com/mike-perlowin |
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Dan Beller-McKenna
From:
Durham, New Hampshire, USA
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Posted 8 Dec 2007 6:08 am
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Basil,
why'd you take down the article link????????
I had a chance to glance at it, and it looked extremely interesting.
Dan
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Durham, NH
dbmCk mUSIC |
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David Doggett
From:
Bawl'mer, MD (formerly of MS, Nawluns, Gnashville, Knocksville, Lost Angeles, Bahsten. and Philly)
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Posted 8 Dec 2007 9:59 am
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Well, I'll be interested in seeing any historical documentation that is available. But I think the idea of a single linear evolution of slide or steel playing is unrealistically simplistic. One would think virtually every culture with stringed instruments would eventually experiment with slide playing, whether vertical or horizontal. It may have been independently reinvented either in Hawaiia or in the black South, or both. But it could easily have come from the deep roots in India to Hawaii, and also from India to Africa and then the black South. There are many instruments in Africa, and since that is where we all came from, slide playing may have gone from Africa to India.
The diddly-bow could have come from Africa, or could have been invented by African-Americans. Who will ever know? Hawaiian steel guitar was a very prominent popular craze all over the country in the '20s. It certainly was an influence on early southern slide players, black and white, even if some of them were already playing African derived slide instruments. In the '30s and '40s The Black Ace was playing Delta style blues on a lap National tricone. Although they may have dabbled with Hawaiian style slide, both the black and white sounthern players quickly took slide playing into their own cultural genres. Brother Oswald played country influenced versions of things like Hilo March, but also developed a purely country style of lap steel. Likewise, the older Sacred Steel players in Florida played some Hawaiian sounding stuff on lap steels, but went on to established their own gospel-blues tradition,. So clearly, the Hawaiian steel craze of the ‘20s influenced everyone on the mainland. But that doesn’t mean there was no slide playing in the South before that. Mississippi Fred McDowell (who actually came from Tennessee) learned slide blues by putting a steak bone on his finger. Was he imitating Hawaiian sounds, or reinventing the technique for himself? He also considered his blues to be related to Appalachian reels.
So everything influenced everything else going back from the American South to Africa and the British Isles and Europe, and going back from Hawaii to Asia (India, China and Japan, the Philippines and Polynesia) and to Europe (Portuguese guitars, English hymns). But at the same time it seems unrealistic to think that later slide players couldn’t reinvent the technique themselves and must have learned it from some other earlier culture. Nobody is that stupid and uncreative. |
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Steve Norman
From:
Seattle Washington, USA
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Posted 8 Dec 2007 11:01 am
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I agree with Dave about the historic documentation. There wont be any till very late, after any outside influence has already manifested itself. Remember that history has been written by white folks,, and if not found important it was ignored. (people still think the banjo was invented by a hillbilly for example). Not much documentation of southern music styles white or black was undertaken till the 60's. My family grew up in rural Arkansas and Louisiana. My dad played guitar and learned it in an area that was pretty much poor white and black dirt farmers. He always told me that the "Dobro"/"steel guitar" sound and the bottleneck sound were unrelated, and that Black people had been playing with slides long before it became popular in the US mainstream. And I just dont see pre-radio era rural southern Black people having contact with too many Hawaiians. If White rural southerners where cut off from the rest of the world,,than Black rural southerners where even more cut off. We are talking utter poverty here, as in owning NOTHING. Musical instruments where made from reeds, bones, guts, gourds, garbage etc. Yet out from it comes bottlenecking. There is just no way Hawaiian styles could have reached there.
I think the Hawaiian trend in the twenties had more to do with influencing urban jazz guitarists and guitar manufacturers than rural African Americans. I think the rural African American style came from something else. As far as black musicians that broke out of obscurity at the time,, They surely allowed popular music to influence their writing styles to be competitive, and they would play the latest equipment.
My point about the diddie bow, is that if you hear it played,, and compare it to older deep south bottleneck styles there is a noticeable similarity in execution. A very percusive pick technique with the slide adding more of an embellishment than a melody. Hawaiian music on the other hand seems to have a very different execution. More melody and less percussive. This is reflected more in the urban blues styles.
Also,, if you look at the american mountain dulcimer, and look at some of the things being called diddie bows, you'll see similarities in tuning, dad afa etc. So that is another potential source, the Dulcimer seems to have developed on its own in the Appalachians very early in american history (pre-5 string banjo). There is a cross cultural exchange that happens with African Americans and poor whites in the rural south. The African banjo gets absorbed by the Scotch-Irish crowd, Irish Jigs manifest themselves as tap dancing in black areas, so it makes since that the dulcimer could cross those same lines. This begs the question of why did the African Americans play their dulcimers with a slide? I think the wall mounted diddy bows already familiar to rural southern African Americans was the source. Then later when radios became more widespread, and Hawaiian music was being broadcast, African American slide guitarists became influenced only then.
the only other possibility I can see, is that some Scotch Irish sailer brought back Hawaiian music to a rural area in the south and it barrel rolled. This seems unlikely.
_________________
GFI D10, Fender Steel King, Hilton Vpedal,BoBro, National D dobro, Marrs RGS
Last edited by Steve Norman on 8 Dec 2007 11:41 am; edited 1 time in total |
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basilh
From:
United Kingdom
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Posted 8 Dec 2007 11:27 am
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| Dan Beller-McKenna wrote: |
Basil,
why'd you take down the article link????????
I had a chance to glance at it, and it looked extremely interesting.
Dan |
Professor Anthony Lis is at the South Dakota State University and teaches the history of American Country Music:- His Bio |
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Scott Shipley
From:
The Ozark Mountains
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Posted 8 Dec 2007 11:37 am
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Somewhat unrelated, but I hold the dubious distinction of being the only guy in the history of The Station Inn in Nashville to ever play a veena on stage there. Got away with it twice. Was with a band called "The Blue Dragons" with myself, Billy and Terry Smith, Robert Bowlin, and Shad Cobb.
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Darrell Urbien
From:
Echo Park, California
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Posted 8 Dec 2007 11:40 am
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| David Doggett wrote: |
| Mississippi Fred McDowell (who actually came from Tennessee) learned slide blues by putting a steak bone on his finger. |
A-HA! But HOW is that possible when I have an article right here that states he ONLY ate pork until 1931??? 
| David Doggett wrote: |
| So everything influenced everything else going back from the American South to Africa and the British Isles and Europe, and going back from Hawaii to Asia (India, China and Japan, the Philippines and Polynesia) and to Europe (Portuguese guitars, English hymns). But at the same time it seems unrealistic to think that later slide players couldn’t reinvent the technique themselves and must have learned it from some other earlier culture. Nobody is that stupid and uncreative. |
Thank you for that, David. |
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basilh
From:
United Kingdom
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Dave Mudgett
From:
Central Pennsylvania and Gallatin, Tennessee
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Posted 8 Dec 2007 12:18 pm
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Those are interesting articles, Bas. I concur with this statement:
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| No one really knows where or who invented the slide sound, sometimes played with animal bones, bamboo shoots, blades, pipes or regular glass bottles. But one thing is for sure, is that no American musician could ignore the successful contribution the Hawaiian sound created at the turn of the century. |
To me, one of the difficulties with establishing iron-clad historical precedent for something like this type of genesis is that these styles of music developed, in their earliest stages, extremely far outside the mainstream written-history culture. I think first-hand written contemporaneous documentation is minimal. At least for blues and African-American music in general, music and history tended to be handed down aurally and orally. I don't think this hindered the music development or preservation of general history within its community. But by the time the mainstream academic culture who does this kind of rigorous documentation got into the picture, I think the original sources were either dead or very old. This doesn't mean one can't figure anything out - but I think it makes it pretty difficult to pin it down that tightly. Memory of long-ago events can be vague, self-serving, and I believe there were a lot of African-American musicians working outside the mainstream for whom there is no real record. It may seem like that's not that important, but I'm not so sure. The main source for learning was nothing like for mainstream musicians, IMO.
With all that said, based on what listening and historical reading about these styles I've done, which is probably much more extensive on blues than hawaiian music, my sense is that the earliest genesis of each was independent. I agree with David D. that it seems overly simplistic to think that there was a single evolutionary path for all slide instruments, and the development of instruments by African-Americans does not fit with that idea, IMO.
For example, Western 12-tone instruments are missing some of the true African-music tones, and I don't think it's any accident that the earliest African instruments and early banjos, derived from African instruments, were fretless. I have always thought that an important reason blues musicians have been so into slide is that it gave them a good way out of the "tyranny of the 12-tone scale". So I agree with Steve that improvised instruments were common - both for reasons of economy and also to get something that did what they wanted.
But I do think that most if not all popular music styles borrowed from wherever they felt like. Some early musicians were, no doubt, largely cut off from mainstream culture, but not all, IMO. Because of the huge Hawaiian music boom in the early 20th century popular music world, and having listening to a lot of old blues, my sense is that the direction of that flow of information was strongly skewed in the Hawaiian-to-blues direction. I believe I hear that influence and evolution in blues slide playing through the 20th century. But that's just one man's impression.
Still - I don't see how to answer the genesis question definitively. I agree that academicians love to float theories about everything - hey, that's what we do, and I think it can be very useful. But the acid test is putting the empirical knowledge up to the theory. In this case, I think a lot of the "hard" empirical knowledge out there is somewhat fuzzy. Just my opinion. |
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John Billings
From:
Ohio, USA
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Posted 8 Dec 2007 2:52 pm
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"the Hawaiian trend in the twenties "
Steve, I seem to remember reading somewhere, perhaps in something that Baz posted, that the first touring troops came Stateside in about 1894/5, and that they were instantly and immensely popular. They toured extensively. So, the music was getting wide exposure much earlier than the Twenties. Perhaps musicians in the rural south heard the sound, liked the sound, kinda figured out a way to get the sound, and then proceeded to develop it on the own. |
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Steve Norman
From:
Seattle Washington, USA
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Posted 8 Dec 2007 3:41 pm
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Could be! I was referring to the radio boom mostly,,But I really think you can hear a distinction between 2 major slide styles on old recordings, melodic versus percussive. I think the melodic slide style was influenced by Hawaiian, but not the dreg, stomp blues styles. I believe they are older. Check this out
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDRoHoQldqc&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61R_Hb1DLXU
_________________
GFI D10, Fender Steel King, Hilton Vpedal,BoBro, National D dobro, Marrs RGS |
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Steve Norman
From:
Seattle Washington, USA
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Posted 8 Dec 2007 3:46 pm
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here it is folks,,watch the whole thing,,he switches to the reso, and this is my point
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zkgimysll3o&feature=related
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GFI D10, Fender Steel King, Hilton Vpedal,BoBro, National D dobro, Marrs RGS |
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Dave Mudgett
From:
Central Pennsylvania and Gallatin, Tennessee
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Posted 8 Dec 2007 6:49 pm
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Good examples, Steve. I think that captures well what I was talking about also.
I know plenty of blues fans who either don't care for this kind of thing, or are completely unaware of it. I think it's a separate line in the family of blues music - a line that is more directly tied to African music, and has much less Western influence. |
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Steve Norman
From:
Seattle Washington, USA
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Mike Perlowin
From:
Los Angeles CA
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Posted 8 Dec 2007 7:45 pm
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I've forwarded this thread to my friend Barry Hansen. Barry, who is known to the world as "Dr Demento" is actually a very serious roots music historian with an encyclopedic knowledge of such matters. I'll post his comments as soon as he sends them to me.
Napoleon Strickland sounds very much like Fred McDowell. The 2 men may have had a common influence, or Strickland may be copying McDowell's style of both singing and playing. (In 1964 McDowell played a series of gigs here in :.A. and I wrangled my way into being his chauffeur for the week, so I got to hear him a lot, and even copped a couple of lessons.)
_________________
Please visit my web site and Soundcloud page and listen to the music posted there.
http://www.mikeperlowin.com http://soundcloud.com/mike-perlowin |
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Alan Brookes
From:
Brummy living in Southern California
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Posted 8 Dec 2007 8:03 pm
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http://www.jonroseweb.com/c_articles_bumbass.html
Check this out. A simple instrument consisting of one string stretched and plucked is liable to be invented independantly by any group of people eventually.
The instrument known in Europe as the BUMBASS has been played since prehistoric times. Over the last thousand years it has been embellished with rattles, bells and whatever else you want to nail onto it. But basically it's a stick with a stretched string, and a bridge of some sort, often a pig's bladder, but you could use a hollowed nut or anything else. You can strum it, bow it, run a bottle up and down it, or whatever else you can think of. |
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Edward Meisse
From:
Santa Rosa, California, USA
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Posted 8 Dec 2007 10:31 pm
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| There is just no way Hawaiian styles could have reached there. |
I wish I could remember the exact reference for this. But I remember reading about a guy traveling the world and finding people with wax cylinders of Sol Ho'opi'i in the most remote parts of the Arabian desert, among other places. I think we'd all be amazed at how cultural influences get around.
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Amor vincit omnia |
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Darrell Urbien
From:
Echo Park, California
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Posted 9 Dec 2007 12:13 am
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| Just think, today you can probably find the same to be true of Britney Spears' music. |
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Steve Norman
From:
Seattle Washington, USA
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Posted 9 Dec 2007 2:17 pm
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in one hundred years on the lip synch forum they will be having this same argument about her
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GFI D10, Fender Steel King, Hilton Vpedal,BoBro, National D dobro, Marrs RGS |
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