Which song do you think almost killed the PSG /Country Music

[Bo Legg]

Here is my choice for the song that when it hit the charts it just about killed the Pedal Steel Guitar and country music after that.
Ray Price took a few voice lessons and decided he was going to be the Frank Sinatra of Country Music(complete with big orchestra). click on the red.
You're The Best (That Ever Happened To Me)
Can you believe the title!? Should have been titled "The Worst Thing That Ever Happened"

[Jerry Overstreet]

I don't think that song or any of his other ones from that period had any effect at all on the future or acceptance of the steel guitar in country music.

That Price era may have heard some grumbling about his individual direction, but any effect on the industry as a whole was minimal if at all IMO. I don't think any one single artist, including Ray Price or song, had/has that much clout. That's my feeling.

[Lane Gray]

Even before the advent of pedals, the steel guitar was emblematic of traditional country/hillbilly music.
Ever since 1924 and Vernon Dalhart out selling Bradley Kincaid, There has been a tension between the Uptown element of the music and the traditional element.
In the 1940s, you had Eddy Arnold versus Ernest Tubb.
In the late 50's in early 60's, Ray Price was on our side. In an effort to make more money and sell more records, he switched sides And became, to my ears anyway, Perry Como in cowboy boots.
In the late 50's and early 60's, You had patsy Cline ( She was not on our side, she was Peggy Lee in a Nudie suit: Notice how Owen Bradley hid the fiddles and steel in "Crazy", "She's Got You" and "Sweet Dreams") on the Uptown side arrayed against Jean Shepard and Kitty Wells.
currently, we have Brad Paisley and George Strait standing against just about the entirety of NashVegas.
Because it will always appeal to the pop music side of the audience, the Uptown stuff will always outsell the traditional.
I firmly believe that the tension between the Uptown and the traditional indicates that the music form remains vibrant and relevant. That doesn't mean I have to like the crossover crap

[Niels Andrews]

Crossover sucks. The bottom line is the only thing that matters is what people buy or pay money to go listen too? No individual musician can ruin an instrument or affect an industry. People vote with the off button or channel changer and credit card. The music World is fickle, always has been, always will be, just this thing we call life.
I like the fact we don't all play just hillbilly music (whatever that is?)

[Lane Gray]

Hillbilly is what they called it before 1957 when DC area station owner Connie B. Gay coined the term Country.
But the hardedged country sound will always have a market: Wayne Hancock seems to do acceptably, the Derailers et al...
personally, I will play whatever kind of music the cats around me are playing, and I will enjoy it.

[Niels Andrews]

That is, what it is all about, isn't it?

[Theresa Galbraith]

Lane's refreshing attitude is to be commended!

[chris ivey]

'i couldn't stand 'for the good times'. pure schmaltz..no edge. a sad era of recording.

[Dave Grafe]

Conway had a couple there that I don't even want to repeat the titles of....

[Erv Niehaus]

You just can't beat "Hillbilly & Cowboy" music!




And then it all went down the dumper when they switched to "Country & Western"!

[Steve Alcott]

Four words: Peter Cooper; Lloyd Green.

[Eugene Cole]

Here is my choice for the song that when it hit the charts it just about killed the Pedal Steel Guitar and country music after that.
Ray Price took a few voice lessons and decided he was going to be the Frank Sinatra of Country Music(complete with big orchestra). click on the red.
You're The Best (That Ever Happened To Me)
Can you believe the title!? Should have been titled "The Worst Thing That Ever Happened"

No song almost killed the PSG. Quite the contrary happened. Refined PSG's by people like Paul Bigsby came in to being during the 1950's. The PSG had established a niche in Swing, Jazz, C&W, and Country before 1962. I do not mean to slight the Multi-Chord or any of the other earlier PSG instruments, but the development of changers that re-tuned the guitaz on-the-fly and dynamically really came alive during the 1950's.

I do not think that any one song killed Country Music. The introduction of the PSG signaled the end of the Country Music era. I think of Country music as being primarily a style which predates the PSG and electric instruments. However lots of Country music is fun to play on the PSG and electric instruments.

The so-called "Nashville Sound" marked the beginning of the Pop influenced then-modern Country music which was essentially a new genre of music.

Country music continued to be recorded and performed after the Nashville Sound came in to being. However some artists adopred or otherwise migrated to the Nashville Sound. This point in History I should point out; was marked by record companies having lots of conrol over what they would release/distribute. To say this another way: back then artists were leveraged by the contracts that they had with their record companies to do things the way the record company wanted them done. If you had a contract to a certain number of albums for a company an artist could not simply go to another company until they had met the requirements of their existing contract. This sometime meant that several records were done under the thumb of a record company before an artist could get a new and hopfully more artist-friendly contract.

Getting back to the core question: when the record companies created what they thought was a more profitable version of Country music they really created a new and distinct genre of music and forced that genre on artists which they already had under contract.

This is of course merely my opinion. But I am inclined to point my finger at the record companies more than the artists for the decrease in the quantity of Country music recordings in the 1960's.

[Lane Gray]

Niels, How can you say crossover sucks?
it is carefully planned and flawlessly executed, designed to have mass appeal and limited emotional content. But as it's that well done, it can't suck.

[Johan Jansen]

I can't think of a song or artist that destroyed a steelguitar-performance. But...I can think of a lot of linedance-crap that killed the countrymusic-scene!
JJ

[Lane Gray]

Eugene, how can you say pedals on the steel killed Country Music, when the term got coined a year AFTER "Slowly"?
I'd say it marked a turning point, just as the electric guitar did a handful of years earlier.
Or you could say that the PSG, along with the solidbody electric guitar, killed Hillbilly music, making it a throwback form. Just like the hillbilly bands did to the solo acts and duets did a generation before.

[Richard Sinkler]

Lane said:

personally, I will play whatever kind of music the cats around me are playing, and I will enjoy it.

I feel the same way. Even if I HATE a song, I will still enjoy playing it because I ENJOY PLAYING THE STEEL GUITAR, period.

I even find it enjoyable to play the new country stuff (and even enjoy listening to a lot of it).

[Eugene Cole]

Eugene, how can you say pedals on the steel killed Country Music, when the term got coined a year AFTER "Slowly"?

Lane; sorry if I confused you.

I did not say that "pedals on the steel killed Country Music." What I saiad is: "I think of Country music as being primarily a style which predates the PSG and electric instruments. However lots of Country music is fun to play on the PSG and electric instruments."

Regardless of when the term Country was coined what I know as Country music which includes "Hillbilly", but also includes Carter Family, Roy Acuff, and what is now called "Old Time", and early Bluegrass.

I did say "The introduction of the PSG signaled the end of the Country Music era" and I could have worded that better. What I was thinking is that the PSG gaining popularity in the 1950's was a precursor to the advent of the Nashville Sound" which did include PSG.

Electric Steel guitar was certainly present in the latter part of the Country music era. Don Helms playing on Hank Williams recordings is a great example of Country music which included electric Steel from the Country era and genre.

[Niels Andrews]

Hey Lane,
I was thinking artist not music. I retract my previous statement. Different subject.

[Lane Gray]

Eugene, I beg to differ on The Nashville Sound including the steel guitar. TNS marked a step away from that sort of thing. TNS was the crossover sound in which the string section and nylon string guitars replaced fiddle and steel. It marked one of the points when the uptown aspect drove the bus and the traditional aspect made a retreat, except for the Bakersfield Boys.

Niels, Mainly I was picking on your choice of words when you said it sucks. On its technical merits, it is remarkably well done stuff.
Regardless of the fact that it is technically good music, I don't want that crap in my radio either.

[Brint Hannay]

Niels, Mainly I was picking on your choice of words when you said it sucks. On its technical merits, it is remarkably well done stuff.
Regardless of the fact that it is technically good music, I don't want that crap in my radio either.

Lane, your semantic distinction there is interesting. In my own usage, saying something "sucks" and saying it is "crap" mean pretty much the same thing.

[Lane Gray]

:-P
In my own defense, crap has laudable uses, most notably as fertilizer. But literally, I do not want it on my plate nor figuratively in my radio.

[Leslie Ehrlich]

Ray Price took a few voice lessons and decided he was going to be the Frank Sinatra of Country Music(complete with big orchestra)

Switching to the Nashville Sound was the best move Ray Price ever made. His voice sounds best with the full orchestra and a more laid back sound. I've heard his earlier stuff, and with the exception of 'Crazy Arms', I don't care for it.

The only guys who did that old honky-tonk style country music really well were Hank Williams, Lefty Frizzell, and Earnest Tubb.

[Lane Gray]

I think Justin Trevino and Dale Watson do ok, and Faron was pretty good.

And I'd rather hear "Soft Rain" than Danny Boy.
YMMV (and apparently does).

[Alan Brookes]

There was a trend during the early 60s when country stars such as Jim Reeves and Marty Robbins started relying more on lush strings than fiddles and steel, and people started to lose the idea of what country music really was. "If Jim Reeves is a country star, then this must be country music" was what the average listener came to believe.

The same thing happened when folk singers started commercializing, and when Rock & Rollers started putting in all sorts of minor and diminished chords which were more like jazz than rockabilly.

Nowadays, music is so mixed up that it's difficult to define what is what, and the old definitions have changed.

You can't blame singers for wanting to sing in several different styles, but it confuses the public.
Bob Dylan wanted to be a rock & roll singer, and he was in the audience waiting for Buddy Holly to appear the day he had his plane crash, but he became famous for folk music, while all the time having an appreciation for blues and country. It comes as no surprise then when his albums become a complete mixture of everything he liked, just like Elvis's did.

Some performers solve this problem by having two different stage names. John Williams is a good example. He's become known as one of the all-time great classical guitarists, but he also has a rock group called Sky. If he hadn't classical guitar fans could well have bought his rock albums and become disaffectioned.

[Erv Niehaus]

Hank Williams had the same problem.
When people dropped their silver in the juke boxes, they expected to hear a certain kind of music from Hank Williams.
When Hank wanted to record something in the spiritual vein, they attached the moniker of "Luke the Drifter" on him.