The Steel Guitar Forum

Herb: Keep the faith, we're still alive and playing the "whiney thing." Jerry Stevens (Stevenson), great steeler, retired, playing casuals and occasionally having guitar pulls with me. Johnny Davis, working a duet, Super guitar player, steeler, (can't sing for beans, just ask him). There are some great players around, just not known outside of California. I'm with you: Jay Dee is one of the best in the world, great guy, and enjoys hearing other steelers as much as any man alive. Very humble person. He told me one time that he's just "another steel player." Yeah, Right! I talked to Al Bruno the other day and asked him if he was taking up the steel. He said Jay Dee told him if he was going to play steel, He could only have two pedals.

I was at the '90 convention and I got to overhear Ralph Mooney, Speedy West, Bud Isaacs and Loenard Zinn reminisce about playing in the Valley back in the '40s. That alone was worth the trip. Speedy at one time mentioned that when he was starting out, he was trying to imitate Joaquin Murphey and couldn't do it, so he had to develop his own style.

Thank you Herb, I guess it's ok for me to crawl out of the cave now and pack up my squalor.

Where's Gary Brandon, he's probably the most listened to steel guitarist in the world, if you don't count Doug Livingston playing the Academy Awards for about 2 billion viewers.<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by chas smith on 17 November 2001 at 12:05 PM.]</p></FONT>

hey herb......it was a joke! my aren't we all getting sensitive in our old age...............(also a joke, herb)

Greg Leisz seems to be doing alright out there.

<SMALL>What we have here is failure to communicate...</SMALL>

<font size=1>Strother Martin in "Cool Hand Luke</font>

Chris
This is no longer an issue for me, but I just want to explain my reasons for my previous post.

No, I'm not getting sensitive in my old age (no joke), I was simply responding to the limited information about your opinions you provided to the forum in your post. If, for example, you had placed one or more emoticons ( ) in your post, I would have thought "oh, he's being humorous here," and I would have never given it a second thought. Notice the several 's after I wrote "OH YEAH!?!?"

But without further information or a clarified delivery, there was nothing inherently "funny" to me about what was written; just the writer's implication that he felt Jay Dee's work was so outstanding that all other guys sitting behind the horn were not even to be counted as steel players.

It's one of the problems of the Internet: what would be funny told in person with the added modifiers of body language, facial expressions, tone of voice, etc., comes out completely offensive in nature when seen only from one perspective, namely reading words on a screen. In fact, I've seen wars break out on this forum and friendships trashed over just such incidents.

I know I usually write really long posts, sometimes (like now) over basically a non-issue. But I do read and re-read them over and over to make sure I'm perfectly clear (or as clear as I can be) in delivering my message before hitting the "send" button. I guess it comes from being in the newspaper advertising business for a decade.

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Herb's Steel Guitar Pages
Texas Steel Guitar Association

<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Herb Steiner on 18 November 2001 at 02:12 PM.]</p></FONT>