The reason steel guitar lost favor with the public?

[Jeff Peterson]

Topic, losing favor with the public. Play jazz, attract jazz listeners, compare the buying/listening public to that and you get a certainly smaller percentage of listeners. We listen, and think...that's great! Why isn't everyone listening and buying this? Question's already answered..it's the dang public! Remember, the listening public is nowhere near as astute as we are!..LMAO!!

[Tracy Sheehan]

I first started on piano and violin. After nearly eighty years to my ears a piano still sounds like a piano and a violin (fiddle) still sound the same. When either is played any one with any kind of ear know what they are listening to.





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[Tracy Sheehan]

One knows what they are looking at.

[Jonathan Lam]

Who is getting too jazzy Majority of it is recycled buzzy edmonds licks anyway the peddle steal is a classic instrument stuck in the past maybe that’s why there aren’t so many young players anymore.

[Rich Upright]

The problem is that FM radio has destroyed everything except strict formula garbage music, and turned the average listeners into musical ignorami.
FM radio is the problem.

[Dustin Rhodes]

FM radio is the problem.

How much of the general public even listens to FM radio?

[Fred Treece]

FM radio is the problem.

How much of the general public even listens to FM radio?

Lots and lots. AM too.
https://radioink.com/2019/01/02/2018-by-the-numbers/
My question is, are they listening to crummy music, or the insufferable blabbermouth shows? Either way, the “ignorami” appears to be the result, maybe even the goal.

[Dave Mudgett]

I don't think most of "the public" knows or ever knew much of anything about steel guitar except, to some extent, during the Hawaiian music craze going back from the 1930s and earlier, when salesmen used to go door-to-door selling steel guitars and steel guitar lessons/schools.

Up until the late 60s and early 70s period when country rock was so prevalent, if you didn't grow up in an area dominated by country music, it was rare to see or even hear a pedal steel guitar.

When I first started playing pedal steel in bands, people, including other musicians, looked at me and said, Hey, Don Ho." Preconceptions and stereotypes have frequently followed this instrument around.

[Jim Pitman]

I used to here the following phrase from joe public: "I like country music, but just not the whinny stuff."
I have always assumed folks were talking about he steel guitar with that reference.
I'm getting a bumper sicker that says "I like the whinny stuff".

[Curt Trisko]

I used to here the following phrase from joe public: "I like country music, but just not the whinny stuff."
I have always assumed folks were talking about he steel guitar with that reference.
I'm getting a bumper sicker that says "I like the whinny stuff".

I wasn't around during that era, but I assumed that the assembly line use of steel guitar back in the day grew old to people's ears. We revere the studio musicians of that area, as we should, but the practice of dropping samey-sounding steel into songs as a matter of course does not suit the instrument. Drums, bass, and guitar can get away with it. Steel cannot. It must have been a bad feeling for those studio musicians to not have time or freedom to craft parts for songs except for the ones that were earmarked as big hits.

[Bill McCloskey]

....

[Bill Fisher]

Ernest Tubb died.

Bill