The 70`steel guitar boom

Tony Prior · Post by **Tony Prior** » 29 Aug 2012 10:59 am

chris ivey wrote:
i'm proud to say i never had a fringe jacket!

WHAT !

chris ivey · Post by **chris ivey** » 29 Aug 2012 11:34 am

lynn, i love your story too! ....it's too late, baby...ha!

Aaron Smith · Post by **Aaron Smith** » 29 Aug 2012 11:39 am

unlike that post a few back from the hater and microphone dictator here on the forum...I will say from experience after playing those songs for years, Dylan,Nelson,& Kristofferson have had an enormous impact on me and a few of my friends as well, both with their songwriting and singing styles. I began playing pedal steel as a direct result of the hippy cosmic country rock scene from the west coast. I was born in California of the next generation and grew up with the parents old vinyl collection in the late 70's and early 80's. I found Neil Young's Harvest album with Ben Keith playing,and that's the first time I really noticed the instrument and inspired me to want to learn it. Then later I saw Jerry Garcia play and discovered his old friend Pete Grant more recently near me. Forum member Pete is an amazing player and still keeping that cosmic flame alive. He opened for David Lindley a couple weeks ago.

Jake Hoffman · Post by **Jake Hoffman** » 29 Aug 2012 12:10 pm

Ditto on what's been said and who has been named. I followed them all after my initial introduction, obsession, and addiction to the pedal steel guitar in 1969. The artist - Judy Collins on her "Who Knows Where the Time Goes" album, featuring none other then Buddy Emmons. Two other influences - one barely mentioned - were Lloyd Greene (his version of "Canadian Sunset" still takes my breath away); and the other, not mentioned - Doug Jernigan, who I first heard on Vassar Clements' "Hillbilly Jazz" 2-LP release in 1975. I wore the grooves off trying to capture his stuff.

Tony Prior · Post by **Tony Prior** » 30 Aug 2012 1:48 am

well the 70's boom didn't begin in the 70's or mid 70's, the stage was already set going into the late 60's.

I don't think anyone here is referring to Buddy , Loyd or Pete..those guys were already planted firmly in Nashville, they are a given...The boom I believe is referring to the emergence of additional players primarily part of the West Coast, Mid West Country Rock genre...of which many players have been named...That is where many of us came from on the Instrument....we didn't start with Nashville , we discovered the great players as a result of the era...I for one never heard of Buddy, Loyd, Pete etc..until AFTER I jumped into the scene...I didn't even know there was a such thing as an Emmons Steel...It wasn't like Norwalk Ct was filled with Country Music or adds for Steel Guitars in the late 60's...but everyone knew who Garcia was, and Poco, etc....I saw Banana with the Youngbloods in the late 60's he had a Fender Steel..that was my exposure...and it was awesome !

Ariel Lobos · Post by **Ariel Lobos** » 30 Aug 2012 6:08 pm

Here James Taylor was really popular in 70 and 80 's , ,with Red Rhodes and Dan Dugmore, it was the music that i first heard with pedal steel when y was a teenager , along with The dukes of hazzard in tv...and Jerry Garcia Teach you Children for sure...and the cartoons in the seventies when y was a child...old Disney films at school , Scotty told me that was Freddy Tavares in the hawaiian guitar ..i was six years but i can remember joking with my friends trying to emulate that sound

Roger Rettig · Post by **Roger Rettig** » 31 Aug 2012 12:33 pm

I'm fond of saying that Buddy Emmons was the catalyst in getting me started - that was after I'd heard his 'Wichita Lineman' on 'Suite Steel' and his obligato on Ray Charles' version of the song. It confirmed to me that a complex chord pattern didn't disqualify the steel from taking part in a music genre.

I know that sounds dumb now - it's a versatile musical instrument, after all, as long as it's in the right hands - but it was all unfamiliar territory to me back then.

Examining the chronology of things more closely, though, I have to give credit to Jeff Baxter of Steely Dan for his wonderfully tasteful parts on two tracks in particular on their second album - 'Razor Boy' and 'Pearl Of The Quarter'! I was inspired to seek out a steel (not as easy in England back then as it would have been here) and start learning. Once again, the chord sequencies weren't exactly commonplace and the steel guitar was the perfect complement to the songs.

I listened to 'Razor Boy' last night in the band-room - everyone (even the young guys!!) loved it!

Like so many others, though, Buddy Cage and Rusty Young worked their magic on me too.

PS: I, too, find Bob Dylan extremely tiring to listen to....

Stephen Silver · Post by **Stephen Silver** » 31 Aug 2012 1:15 pm

My steel guitar epiphany came one night in the summer of 1969. Three friends and I drove from the OC up to the Whiskey a Go Go...we didn't really care who was playing, though I wondered if the Flying Burrito Brothers were a trapeze act.

The boys in the finest Nudie suits, Graham drunk, singing great songs and whatever that contraption that the old guy was playing just mesmerized me.

I had already heard Rustys steel on Kind Woman, and the sweethearts album, but it was seeing and hearing Pete live that made it happen for me. Within about 2 months I had a Fender 400.

From there I had a chance meeting (after lifting a backstage pass out of a limo....shhhh!) with Cage (seriously tripping that night) as opener for the Dead at the Ahmanson Theater. He gave me his phone number and the next week I was off to Sausalito and spent several days with him. I still have the copedent chart he drew out fout for me (10P/10K). Cage turned me on to Crawford, Emmons, Hughey, Green, Black.....well, up until the mid 80's that's what I did. Now I am happy to play occasionally (most of the country bands in the bay area suck or have bass players that drink too much...lol) so I barely play out any more, but such is life. I don't miss the bad pay, the long drives, the late nights, the less than accomplished part timer (that's really where I draw the line.....great music can make up for bad pay, but the combination of bad pay and bad playing....ACK!) I don't love it enough to take it out of the house for a $50 dollar bar gig where the bartenders only words are "Turn it Down". And I am real happy that Bobby Black plays every other month in the town where I live and Joe Goldmark comes through with his great band every so often. Haven't seen Zirbel in a while, but I dig his playing as well.

Seeds and Stems just came up on my playlist.....Bobbys playing still makes me smile almost 40 years later.
S

Joachim Kettner · Post by **Joachim Kettner** » 1 Sep 2012 2:28 am

Back than I had the impression that California Country was more liberal than Nashville Country, only just by looking at the clothes and hairstyles of the acts.

Bob Blair · Post by **Bob Blair** » 1 Sep 2012 5:03 am

Joachim, I think that the fact that there were folks that had,say, the appearance of being "hippies", or "freaks" (which was also a word much in vogue back then) was part of what made it seem more ok for a lot of young people of the sort who attended Woodstock and Festival Express to dig the music. "Liberal" is a word that has come to have a particular political connotation which would endanger this thread. But yeah, you had these long haired guys, some of whom were already rock stars, doing music which was country. It became suddenly OK for wannabe hippies (which, I freely admit, describes my teenage self) to like country music. Gram had long hair and his Nudie Suit had pot leaves on it - absolutely those were symbols that attracted the young hippie crowd. Jerry Garcia, an icon to the Bay Area hippie scene, played steel guitar on NRPS country songs. Commander Cody and his band all had long hair and sang of being "down to seeds and stems again" on their first album, and again that made it ok for some folks who professed not to like country music to like them. But however it started and whatever made it all attractive to an audience that thought it was too cool for Nashville, it led a lot of people to the realization that one of the things they really liked about the music was the country aspect of it. So pretty soon a lot of us weren't just listening to FBB, the Byrds, Commander Cody and on and on - we were listening to "mainstream" country as well. I think back to Festival Express in Calgary when I was still in high school - other than Ian and Sylvia and GSB (who I was familiar with and greatly admired from my folk music interests and the TV show and such) the other country-infulenced acts that were there were a complete surprise to me and I think most of the crowd. FBB (sans Gram - in fact I have read that Festival Express was the first post-Gram appearance), NRPS - they were entirely new to everyone I talked to and completely unexpected. You had three steel players there - Cage, Sneaky and Garcia. That sort of thing must have been going on all over the place. Somewhere in those years (before or after I went to Festival Express, I have no idea) I bought Sweetheart as a 99 cent "delete" (remember those - albums with the hole punched in the corner) at Sears and there were the Byrds doing unabashedly country music full of an instrument I must have known was steel guitar, but I really knew almost nothing about it. I started singing country songs in my "folksinger" gigs, and got teased for it (though the real problem was probably not the music so much as I sucked, but no one told me I did, or at least not many people did). A few years down the road I was sitting behind a pedal steel. That has to be a pretty typical story for anyone who was part of the 70's wave, I would think. And then suddenly it was all drugstore cowboys and those stupid mechanical bulls!

Joachim Kettner · Post by **Joachim Kettner** » 1 Sep 2012 6:23 am

I completely agree with your perspective Bob.

Bob Blair · Post by **Bob Blair** » 1 Sep 2012 7:13 am

Even with all the typos!?! I just went in and edited a few of them, and I still bet I didn't get them all.

Tony Prior · Post by **Tony Prior** » 1 Sep 2012 3:19 pm

Joachim Kettner wrote:Back than I had the impression that California Country was more liberal than Nashville Country, only just by looking at the clothes and hairstyles of the acts.

Not sure it would be described as liberal ..but certainly different !

The era made it totally acceptable for very plain vanilla life style people, like me...to become hippies !

It was totally "IN" !

Andrew Roblin · Post by **Andrew Roblin** » 2 Sep 2012 4:21 am

Very funny about the sudden appearance of drugstore cowboys and mechanical bulls, Bob!

Well written and well told, too.

Andrew Roblin
International Sho-Bud Brotherhood & Sisterhood
Member # 79
Janitor

Bent Romnes · Post by **Bent Romnes** » 2 Sep 2012 5:06 am

William Lake wrote:Bent, would you be thinking of Dylan Thomas perhaps?

William, what made you think that I could be thinking of Dylan Thomas? The discussion has been Bob Dylan all along. Anyway...

Donny, as is being said, by Chris, me and others, Dylan was more than "merely to get students interested enough to attend classes."
I attended a grade 10 English class as an adult, where the teacher was a Dylan nut and did, in fact teach the whole class based on Dylan's writings. Chris is teaching the same on a university level.
Don't get me wrong, I am not a Dylan fan per say. Roger Miller is more my kind of writer. But one has to respect Dylan's command of the language.

Better get off my soap box and let this nice thread get back to its original intent.

Bob Blair · Post by **Bob Blair** » 2 Sep 2012 6:25 am

Thanks Andrew. It's always fun to remember how all that came about for me. Hard to believe it was so long ago.

admin · Post by **b0b** » 2 Sep 2012 7:03 am

Olli Haavisto wrote:John Wesley Harding -67
with Pete Drake

- Kind woman -68
- Pickin up the Pieces -69
-Burritos -69
-Cage joins Ian and Sylvia -69
-Pure Prairie League 1st album -70

Like I said I`m not claiming anything, just toying with the idea. I don`t really care

Above is a rough timeline of when the great country rock steelers established themselves on a major scale.

The big early influences for me were:

Byrds - Sweetheart of the Rodeo 1968 (Lloyd Green, JayDee Maness)
Geoff & Maria Muldaur - Pottery Pie 1968 (Bill Keith)
Flying Burrito Brothers - Guilded Palace of Sin 1969 (Sneaky Pete)
Grateful Dead - American Beauty 1970 (Garcia)
New Riders of the Purple Sage - NRPS 1971 (Garcia)
Neil Young - Harvest 1972 (Ben Keith)
Commander Cody & LPA - Hot Licks, Cold Steel & Truckers Favorites 1972 (Bobby Black)

plus the hit singles "Someday Soon" (Emmons, 1969), "Teach Your Children" (Garcia, 1970) and "Top of the World" (Emmons, 1972)

... and then I discovered country music.

admin · Post by **b0b** » 2 Sep 2012 7:15 am

Bobby Black on "Hot Licks, Cold Steel & Truckers Favorites" was the first time I heard the C6th neck. It really turned my head around.

Gary Spaeth · Post by **Gary Spaeth** » 8 Sep 2012 6:19 am

i think ringo struck the match with act naturally. rick nelson did hello mary lou on the ozzie and harriet show even before that. the earliest steel by a pop group i remember was the box tops i met her in church in early 68.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDDBRt8_O1w.
i don't think anyone mentioned rick nelson's live at the troubadour with tom bromley. that, suite steel and judy collins' buddy sessions sent me way over the edge.

admin · Post by **b0b** » 9 Sep 2012 9:04 am

I don't remember The Box Tops, Gary. That track was cool. Who was the steel guitarist? Did they have any other songs with steel?

Bill Ladd · Post by **Bill Ladd** » 9 Sep 2012 9:28 am

b0b wrote:I don't remember The Box Tops, Gary. That track was cool. Who was the steel guitarist? Did they have any other songs with steel?

b0b -- I bet you do remember them. Listen to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toBl4rvT ... re=related

Post by **b0b** » 9 Sep 2012 9:42 am

Uh, yeah. Now I remember.

Bill Ladd · Post by **Bill Ladd** » 9 Sep 2012 9:53 am

b0b wrote:Uh, yeah. Now I remember.

Nah man, don't be embarrassed. I'd never heard "I Met Her in Church." and never would have guessed it was the Box Tops if I hadn't seen it. And I'm a fan of them and Big Star and Alex Chilton (RIP).

Gary Spaeth · Post by **Gary Spaeth** » 9 Sep 2012 10:42 am

i couldn't remember either and kept thinking it was the hollies till i googled the title. i forgot about the album version of crimson and clover by tommy james had a steel part in it too. the 45/airplay version didn't have it and i only heard it some years later. anyway when i heard met her in church it just floored me so i never forgot it. no idea who's playing steel on it.

Joachim Kettner · Post by **Joachim Kettner** » 9 Sep 2012 12:40 pm

The Box Tops had at least another track with steel on their rendition of "I'm Movin' On" on "Non Stop". It sounds similar to Elvis Presley's version from "Elvis in Memphis" where the steel player was John Hughey.