The Nite Owls steel player...

[Gary Mortensen]

I've just stumbled upon some recordings on YouTube of the Nite Owls, from the late thirties (I Saw Your Face In The Moon, Who's Sorry Now?).
Some lovely steel playing is featured, does anyone know who that might be?

[Mitch Drumm]

Bob Symons. First pic is with the Nite Owls, circa 1937. Second with Curley Williams on bass, 1940s; third with Dave Rogers band, late 1940s.

[Gary Mortensen]

Mitch, thanks every much for your reply with the fine photos! I'm now a definite Bob Symons fan!
Gary

[b0b]

Came across your forum and thought I’d share this tidbit with you. https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituar ... Y.facebook

Robert Symons her father actually wrote the lyrics and music to “The San Antonio Rose” That’s the real Rose of San Antone in photo. The steel guitar he played is a Rickenbacker pre-serial number, and is still around.

[Bill Fisher]

Really great. I enjoyed this. Does Mr. Symons receive writer credit on the records that were made? Just curious.

Bill

[b0b]

Not really. Authorship is disputed.

Here things get complicated. The accepted version of events, detailed by Wills’ biographer Charles Townsend, is that Wills and several band members attempted to write lyrics but that the final draft was mostly written by Wills’ trumpeter and announcer Everett Stover. Stover was a capable lyricist, but at least since the early ‘40s, there has been a counter claim that the original lyric was written by a San Antonio-based musician named Bob Symons, who recorded for the same label as Wills but with a local act named the Nite Owls. As early as 1943, a newspaper blurb named Symons as the song’s author and Symons’ widow maintained to her death in the 1990s that her husband (who died in 1976) had written at least the lyrics and sold them to Wills for $30. The Symons family has kept a copy of what they say are the original lyrics, close-to-final version that Wills recorded but with intriguing differences. While disputes over the authorship of famous songs are common, there is a reasonably strong case for the accepted version of the song’s evolution and it remains possible that Symons had some hand in the song’s development.

Source: https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/nat ... ioRose.pdf

[Erv Niehaus]

Sounds similar to Leon McAuliffe and the Steel Guitar Rag.
Erv

[John Herb]

Anyone have any clue where the steel is now?