The Steel Guitar Forum

you gotta check this out.. so cool.. Its Buck and the Buckaroos on the old Jimmy Dean show.. What is SO cool is twofold.. Not only does Jimmy introduce each band member after "My Heart Skips a Beat",but he asks Tom to play Buds Bounce.. and Tom rips it up on a Fender 1000!!!.. First time I have seen TB using the Fender on video.. I know he used one early on in his Buckaroos days, but I have never seen footage of him playing anything but the ZB... enjoy this nugget,,, bob
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkNsqdGm ... re=related

I agree Bob!! I also think thats the "Together Again" guitar...boy I would like to know what happened to that guitar,maybe someone here knows....Paging Tom Brumley.......lol

Also notice that Buck is playing a 12-string acoustic, which is unusual for him.

How long did Willie Cantu play for Buck? I find it interesting to see a Hispanic playing in a country band, back in those days. Here, where I live, about every country band has at least one Hispanic picker. One, that I know of, doubles on steel and guitar.

and Don Rich's fingers are twice the length of the average human....

This band was very tight and that Fender steel sounds awesome.

Dan

Brumley's playing through a tweed Bassman, too. I wonder if that's Buck's old bassman? He and Don used to travel up and down the west coast with a bassman tied onto the trunk lid, and gigged with two mics and two teles plugged into it ("well, it's got four inputs so...").

All I can say is this, any well set up old Fender amp makes the properly "pickuped" steel sound like a great vintage old steel.. Back in the day, guys sounded great with Bassmans, Bandmasters, Twins, Showmans... whatever...

It goes to prove, you don't need a 4oo watt rack system with state of the art digital effects,pre amps,steel drivers, buffers,compressors,optical volume pedals and 20K pickups that are better suited to being used as line transformers. These guys sounded great with minimalist equipment by todays standards... All you need is good writing, singing and playing to sound great... IMHO, we have lost our way a bit and are concentrating too much on the gear ... lets just play the music... bob

Jon Ross from Maine wrote:Brumley's playing through a tweed Bassman, too. I wonder if that's Buck's old bassman? He and Don used to travel up and down the west coast with a bassman tied onto the trunk lid, and gigged with two mics and two teles plugged into it ("well, it's got four inputs so...").

The amp that Tom Brumley is playing through on that show was a late '50s Tweed Bandmaster. I recorded the show when it was on RFD-TV a few months ago and you can see the amp has 3 speakers like the Bandmaster, instead of 4 like the Bassman.
The amp Don is playing through is a 4-10 tweed Bassman, that has been painted or recovered black. Doyle is using a new(for the time) 2-15 piggy back Showman amp.

How long did Willie Cantu play for Buck?

From January 1964(when he was 17 years old) till September 1968. I think he got drafted and was the first of the super-group to leave. Tom left a few months later.
Willie still plays around the Nashville area these days.

Thanks, Alvin.

From the same show:
http://www.youtube.com/v/wz6KzGeEX6o

Those clips were a treat. Thanks for the posts.

You can tell that band is super tight from the first drum fill

Buck on a 12 String is something I thought I'd never see. It's as odd as Buck performing "Above and Beyond" with Don Rich on a Gibson, and the Steel parts beining covered by Piano!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MWdTw5Dl9w

In the clip b0b linked to, J.D. says he's taking Dons place, but he sings the lead and Buck sings the harmony. He sounded like Don(or Don sounded like him).
In the last clip, it seemed strange not having steel, but I was glad to see Jim Shaw. He is a really fine person, who was just trying to pay his way through college by playing piano when Buck hired him.

I don't think that 1000 he's playing is the "Together Again" guitar.

On the album Together Again/My Heart Skips A Beat, the songs "Close Up the Honky Tonks" and "Together" have distinctly different tonalities. Tom told me that by the time they recorded "Close Up," Fender had replaced the Together guitar with a newer 1000, and that he'd preferred the older one.

TB's "Bud's Bounce" is why I got into this contraption in the first place...

Herb, you are absolutely right. That is the 2nd Fender 1000 that Tom used. The amp that Don is playing through is actually the "Together Again" Bassman. Tom sent the amp back to Fender to have reverb installed and when he got it back they had recovered it in black tolex!!! He still has that amp to this day.

Greg

It's well known that Buck and the Buckeroos tuned down a half step.

However on the first clip, "My Heart Skips A Beat", Don is not tuned down, Buck is. It's clear Don is playing in A, and the sound is A (not Ab). Buck is playing Bb positions.

Mr. Brumley's steel is also tuned a half step low, so he plays in Bb positions for that song.

The steel's half step low tuning is very obvious on "Bud's Bounce" where you can see he's playing out of Bud Isaacs' original F position, but the sound is E.