Winnie Winston, R.I.P.

Carlos Polidura · Post by **Carlos Polidura** » 13 Jun 2005 10:07 am

rest in peace...WINNIE............... another great loss..

carlos

Charles Curtis · Post by **Charles Curtis** » 13 Jun 2005 2:35 pm

Our condolences to his family; this is a huge vacancy. His legacy will be around for years to come.

John Lockney · Post by **John Lockney** » 13 Jun 2005 3:31 pm

I'm glad I had an opportunity to tell him that the "Cloud Dancing" album made my socks go up and down.

Jason Odd · Post by **Jason Odd** » 13 Jun 2005 5:35 pm

Just saw this, I was reading through various interviews, articles and some old emails I'd saved just this weekend, such sad news.

Goodbye Winnie, we miss you.

Michael Haselman · Post by **Michael Haselman** » 13 Jun 2005 7:04 pm

Without his great book I and probably half the members of this forum wouldn't be members. RIP, through your work you'll live forever.

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Marrs D-10, Webb 6-14E

Klaus Caprani · Post by **Klaus Caprani** » 13 Jun 2005 10:15 pm

Winnies book came with my steel, including this scratched and floppy analog recording, which I actually listened a lot to while preserving it by ripping it to CD.

I read this book a lot, and for me it conveyed the basics about steels and playing them in a great way. Basically Winnie was my first teacher, through this book and record.

I'm sad to hear about Winnies passing, and sad that this community has lost yet another valuable member.
My condolences goes out to his family.

Winnie Winston R.I.P.

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Klaus Caprani

MCI RangeXpander S-10 3x4
www.klauscaprani.com

Winston Street · Post by **Winston Street** » 14 Jun 2005 5:39 am

This gentleman contributed tons to the steel guitar and its players.. Another really sad day for our "Steel Guitar Family".

All my condolences to his family and friends.

Wink

Al Marcus · Post by **Al Marcus** » 14 Jun 2005 9:37 am

A sad day indeed. I was playing and teaching guitar for almost 20 years.
When Winnie's Book was published,

I got one with the old 45 rpm record in it.

I realized right then that Winnie had made an astounding breakthrough for the steel guitar players.

I am glad to have met him in 1977 at St.Louis and we had lunch and a nice talk. I will always remember that. R.I.P....al

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My Website..... www.cmedic.net/~almarcus/

Larry Bell · Post by **Larry Bell** » 14 Jun 2005 10:46 am

I also met Winnie briefly in the mid to late 70's in St. Louis and we have EMailed occasionally in the meantime. I was aware that his health problems were serious but hadn't realized how serious. My condolences to Winnie's loved ones. He was a unique person who made incredible contributions to the brotherhood of steel guitar.

What many may not know is that even though he didn't play the usual E9/B6 U12 setup (he always used the D string on 9), he gave many of us who were there from the beginning the idea that C6 (B6) changes could be used on the bottom end of an extended E9 setup. I owe Winnie and Reece for teaching me that lesson and I've been using it ever since. Truly innovative thinking from a very gifted man (in more ways than one).

Peace be with you, Julian Winston.

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Larry Bell - email: larry@larrybell.org - gigs - Home Page
2003 Fessenden S/D-12 8x8, 1969 Emmons S-12 6x6, 1971 Dobro, Standel and Peavey Amps

Brendan Mitchell · Post by **Brendan Mitchell** » 15 Jun 2005 3:46 am

R.I.P. Winnie Winston

steve takacs · Post by **steve takacs** » 15 Jun 2005 4:03 am

Condolences to Winnie's family. Just returned from China and was reading my backloggged PSGA newsletters late last night Thoroughly enjoyed Winnie's take on the products at Scotty's 2004 convention. It reminded me how often he did those writeups for the PSGA newsletter. I will then pull out the Winnie and Keith Steel Guitar Bible and play through all of it this week, look up to the sky, wink, and thank Winnie for all the lessons & music he tossed our way. steve t

Jim Meiring · Post by **Jim Meiring** » 15 Jun 2005 4:11 am

many thanks Winnie for the great banjo and steel music you gave us.

Richard Sinkler · Post by **Richard Sinkler** » 15 Jun 2005 8:47 am

Another genious in the steel guitar community taken from us. What a sad day. Rest in peace Winnie. My prayers go out to Winnie's family and friends.

Charlie Wallace · Post by **Charlie Wallace** » 15 Jun 2005 10:32 am

My friend Mary McCaslin from Santa Cruz, CA, asked me to forward this information about Winnie to the Forum:

WINNIE WINSTON
The first time I met Winnie Winston was in the fall of 1974. At the time Winnie's brother Rick lived near Plainfield, Vermont and was running a folk concert series at a local hall. He had set up a concert for Rosalie Sorrels to play with Winnie, who occasionally accompanied her (and other artists) on pedal steel. On the day of the show Rosalie became ill and had to cancel.
Jim Ringer and I were staying at the Philo Records Barn to work on new recordings. Rick contacted Philo to try to find someone to take Rosalie's place so that the concert could go on as scheduled, but with a slight change in the line-up. We ended up getting the gig and the rest, as they say, is history.
I was recording my Prairie in the Sky album and had decided to include the country song Pass Me By (If You're Only Passin' Through). I had been wishing we could find a country pedal steel player to play on that cut. Jim and I had discussed the fact that we did not know any "real country" pedal steel players in the northeast. Country-rock pedal steel players seemed to be everywhere, but real country players weren't commonly found outside of the places where true country music was played and recorded.
When we agreed to replace Rosalie at the Plainfield concert, we were told that Winnie Winston was a fine pedal steel player from Philadelphia. Having both been steeped in country music, Jim and I were skeptical of how country (or good, for that matter) some guy from Philly could be. We decided to just wait and see and make the best of it.
We met Winnie at the hall on the afternoon of the show to rehearse. I didn't mention anything about my recording, and just started into Pass Me By. By the second half of the first verse Jim and I were looking at each other in amazement. At the end of the song I said that I was recording up at Philo and asked if he was available to come up and record a pedal steel part for that song and maybe some others. This was the beginning of a long musical relationship and friendship. Winnie played on most of our subsequent recordings and with us many times on stage.
Only later did we come to realize that he was a lover and scholar of true country music. And, of course, he went on to write "The Book". Over two decades a great many musicians learned to play the pedal steel from Winnie's pedal steel guitar instruction book, which was co-written by fellow bluegrass banjo-pedal steel player Bill Keith. Whenever I would happen to mention Winnie's name to a "younger" pedal steel player, meaning anyone learning to play steel from the mid 1970s on, he was immediately and reverently referred to as "the guy who wrote The Book".
He attended the annual Pedal Steel Guitar Convention in St. Louis and other regional pedal steel conventions. I remember riding up to Darien, Connecticut from Philadelphia with him to attend one convention. Lots of older legendary steel players were there, as well as lots of youngsters. This boy from Yonkers, New York fit right in with all of them.
From the mid 1970s through the mid `80s Jim Ringer and I regularly played in west Philadelphia at the Cherry Tree. Winnie would play with us and we would stay at his increasingly crowded condo a couple miles away. To say that Winnie had lots of interests would be a grand understatement. He taught industrial design at the Philadelphia College of the Arts as his day job, and had a vast knowledge of any number of subjects. Knowing Winnie, his interests in music, art and design, guns, homeopathy and fast cars made sense. (His interest in Homeopathic medicine would eventually take him to New Zealand, where he would become a resident and marry Gwyneth Evans.) He had items related to all of his interests crammed into every cubbyhole and stacked on every surface throughout the condo. At times it was a bit of a problem to find a place to sit, but he always had a bed and lots of great stories for us. He was truly one of the funniest people I've ever met.
Winnie was a great banjo player, who had won numerous contests for his bluegrass playing. What fewer people know is that he was also a phenomenal clawhammer banjo player. This style is also known as frailing or old time, and it's the style I play. Early on I discovered his clawhammer abilities while warming up at his house one afternoon for a show that night. I had recently begun performing my somewhat unorthodox version of Pinball Wizard, accompanying myself on the banjo. I started up, frailing away, and the next thing I knew Winnie was frailing right along with me. Upon this discovery I never, ever played a show with him without doing clawhammer banjo duets on Pinball Wizard and Blackbird.
In our living room hangs a wonderful reminder of Winnie Winston. On one of my first visits to his house in west Philly I happened to notice a large poster on the wall. I could see that part of it had been used for the Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo album, but knew nothing about the entire poster. Winnie explained that it was a poster by an artist named Jo Mora.
Since then, I've learned a lot more about Jo Mora, including the fact that he lived for many years in the Carmel / Monterey area of California, about an hour away from where my husband Greg and I now live. This poster had originally been done for the Salinas Rodeo. Winnie's copy was one that his parents bought sometime in the 1940s. Last year, in an email, Winnie said that he had left that poster in Philadelphia. He said he would have it shipped to me. After we received it we had it framed and put behind protective glass. I look at the poster every day and it will forever remind me of a dear friend lost.

Mary McCaslin
Santa Cruz, CA

Here's a link to an audio file of the last time Winnie and Mary played together in 1995 at The Cherry Tree in Philadelphia: www.marymccaslin.com/sounds/cherrytree.m3u [This message was edited by Charlie Wallace on 15 June 2005 at 11:36 AM.][This message was edited by Charlie Wallace on 15 June 2005 at 11:37 AM.]

Malcolm McMaster · Post by **Malcolm McMaster** » 15 Jun 2005 11:18 am

Still got my copy of his book from when I started twenty years ago,still read it from time to time.A sad loss for the steel comunity.Deepest sympathy to his family.Malcolm

George Redmon · Post by **George Redmon** » 15 Jun 2005 12:52 pm

So Sad...i still have the book, after all these years. He taught me so much, the fundementals through advanced..even Nightlife! i learned from him....

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Whitney Single 12 8FL & 5 KN,keyless, dual changers Extended C6th, Webb Amp, Line6 PodXT, Goodrich Curly Chalker Volume Pedal, Match Bro, BJS Bar..I was keyless....when keyless wasn't cool....