Hank Thompson's steel guitarist

Chris Renna · Post by **Chris Renna** » 24 Nov 2011 10:16 am

Hi, I recently got The Quintessential Hank Thompson CD and loving the steel playing. Does anybody know who the lap steel player(s) was/were and what tunings they used?

thanks,

Chris

Charles Kleinert · Post by **Charles Kleinert** » 24 Nov 2011 10:59 am

That CD covers a lot of groud, Bert Rivera was the featured Steel guitarist with Hank Thompson from 1961 - 1971 witch is included in this CD. Most if not all of Hank Thompson's steel men played Pedal Steel, and part of the time there were two playing with Hank.

Great Music

Chris Renna · Post by **Chris Renna** » 24 Nov 2011 11:35 am

Thanks Charles, I will see what I can find about Rivera. It sounds like there are a lot of lap steel tunes on the CD and those are the tunes I am curious about.

Charles Kleinert · Post by **Charles Kleinert** » 24 Nov 2011 1:00 pm

Chris:

If you are interested in Bert you might check out his web site; www.bertrivera.com
He is a super player and a just a great person, a real gentleman.

chuck

Bob Tuttle · Post by **Bob Tuttle** » 24 Nov 2011 3:43 pm

Here are some others who played with Hank over the years:
Bobby Garrett
Bob White
PeeWee Whitewing
Curly Chalker
That's just off the top of my head. I'm sure there were more.

Ray Montee · Post by **Ray Montee** » 24 Nov 2011 4:10 pm

I surely enjoyed my visit to the Bert Rivera web site.

He's a mighty fine player and he does a truly great job on "I Don't Know Why"......... I've been leaning more and more toward the old pop standards and he convincingly demonstrated how well adapted they are to the steel guitar.

Thanks again for sharing.

Russ Wever · Post by **Russ Wever** » 24 Nov 2011 4:54 pm

I've got a CD of Hank Thompson & The BVBs
radio transcriptions from 1952 and Curly
Chalker is one of the non-pedal
steel players on it.
~Russ

Chris Renna · Post by **Chris Renna** » 25 Nov 2011 8:08 am

Thanks for the replies. Love Rivera's playing. Sounds like Thompson had a lot of steel players so it may be difficult to figure out the tunings. I am going to see if I can learn some of these licks from the Thompson recordings using C6 for now. I look forward to hearing the radio transcriptions from '52 which I just found here: http://therockingipsy.blogspot.com/2009 ... casts.html

Roger Shackelton · Post by **Roger Shackelton** » 26 Nov 2011 11:30 am

Lefty Nason Was One of Hank's Earliest Steel Players.
Perhaps Around 1947 or 1948.

The Steel Guitar Forum

Hank Thompson's steel guitarist

Hank Thompson's steel guitarist

Many thanks to you!