What songs gave you an "ah ha" moment?

[Olaf van Roggen]

New Riders of the Purple Sage 1st Album - Buddy Cage

..the first album of the NRPS is with(=here we go again) Jerry Garcia.

[Joe Goldmark]

As I've mentioned a few times over the years here, "The Hit Sounds of Lloyd Green" was the beacon in the dark. It's an E9 clinic. But, there's also an amazing C6 ride on "Strangers" that epitomizes the way I wish I could play C6.

Joe

[Barry Blackwood]

Maybe not an actual ah ha moment for me, but Four Wheel Drive was the benchmark for me for years..

[Mike Neer]

Take On Me by A-ha

[Charlie McDonald]

You may be right, Mike, I didn't realize until the chorus that the song was pretty well subliminally embedded. Cool.
I believe the Jerry Garcia effect is equally embedded among steelers and people who will want to play it.

[Joseph Carlson]

In the Winnie Winston book there is a version of a song called "Nashville to Bakersfield" that really opened my eyes to a ton of cool ideas.

This isn't exactly the same as the version in the book, but you get the idea:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ByaPvbBQJE

[Jack Hanson]

Sweet Country Music by Milton Carroll.

[David Rupert]

Buddy Cage......did it for me! After finally seeing the New Riders of the Purple Sage LIVE.....I decided that night, to buy a Pedal Steel Guitar.....& become a steel player.
Back in 1975.

I practiced ALL OF THE TIME.....until I was proficient enough to play in a working band. Back then, I was playing 5-7 nights a week. I will always love the decision I made to start playing Pedal Steel Guitar!! Their is NO instrument like it.....ANYWHERE!!

[Brett Day]

For me, it was the first two songs I learned to play on steel-"Look At Us" and "Cold Cold Heart" On "Cold, Cold Heart, Don Helms played a great crying steel solo that I wondered if I could play it kinda like he did, but I do it differently on E9th pedal steel, then there's "Look At Us", which happens to be one of my all-time favorite Vince Gill/John Hughey records. I was thinking about the steel parts on the second verse a few weeks ago when I played the song for my mom and dad's anniversary-I decided to add the steel parts when the fiddle played the second verse, then there's the solo, where the song goes from Eb to E-I usually play the high part at strings three and five on the twenty-third or twenty-fourth fret

[Dick Wood]

For me it will be Highway 40 blues if I can ever figure out exactly what's being played. It's not the speed,it's the phrasing. It goes by so quickly I've always just said to Hell with it.

[Tony Glassman]

If you play pedal steel guitar........ WHY do you tend to
search out 'special licks'?

Because "licks" are often gateways to musical approaches that are new to a player. If a player can learn, emulate and dissect that one special lick, the knowledge acquired can often be reapplied in unexpected ways. In essence, new licks can expand one's musical thought process.

[Allan Jirik]

Hank Williams tunes with Don Helms caught my attention. At age 15 I got a Fender Dual Six and thought I was on my way. Then I started attending package country music shows and looking under the steels at all those rods and stuff... what was that? My steel teacher (Billy Clark of Casey Clark and the Lazy Ranch Boys) taught me Lloyd Green's Skillet Lickin'. I played that in bands in my youth and still struggle with it today. I guess that tune is my aha tune, which sums up my love for the pedal steel guitar.

[David Cubbedge]

Nobody's playing in particular, but learning my own version of "Crazy" taught me a lot about chord melodies on the PSG.

[Gary Hoetker]

Actually, two come to mind that weren't released as singles.

**We're The Kind Of People- Johnny Paycheck at Carnegie Hall LP, Little Darlin Records, 1966, LLoyd Green on Steel

** Close Up The Honky Tonks-Buck Owens MY Heart Skips A Beat LP, Capitol Records 1964, Tom Brumley on Steel

Both can be found on youtube.

[David Peirce]

Pete Drake on George Harrison's "Behind That Locked Door".

[Quentin Hickey]

No 'song' in particular but I get those "ah ha!" Moments when I hear a signature lick off a studio album that I've heard some other steel player previously do. Like when I hear someone do a lick on a YouTube video at one of the steel conventions and think "I've heard that lick a hundred times before but "who's" lick is it??"
And than whammo! I hear it on a studio album of Buddy's or Lloyd Green lol!

[John Billings]

Biggest "ah ha" moments, and a lot of them;
"
But that was on 6 string of course.Elmira Street Boogie."

[Darvin Willhoite]

Tom Brumley's version of Steve Wariner's "Forever Loving You". Then Jaydee Maness came along and knocked it even further out of the park.

[Arty Passes]

I was not a country music fan at the time, but I was listening to "Teach Your Children" in 1974 when I first learning to play. So simple, I was able to picture in my mind how to do it, and kind of flipped the switch. There were and continue to be many more aha moments.

[Jim Cohen]

The entire "Black Album". I remember thinking to myself, "I can not believe that this perfection is possible from a human being. Is this not being played by some kind of precision machine??" I literally fell to my knees.

[Roger Rettig]

Buddy's work on Ray Charles' 'Wichita Lineman' caused me to break down and seek a pedal steel in England in the early-'70s.

After that I have to say JayDee's work always thrilled me. Buddy Cage was another. For sheer pop musicality? Lloyd Green. I loved his tone.

[Don Aycock]

For me it was "Together Again" by Buck Owens. I could hear the changes in the chord where some notes remained constant and others changed. At the time I didn't know what a pedal steel was. When I found out what it was I thought it was the coolest sound I'd ever heard. After that I discovered Emmons, Green, Drake, and the rest.

[Roger Rettig]

Good post, Don - I imagine most of us are initially drawn in by the instrument's capability of moving notes within a chord. Nothing else quite like it!