The Steel Guitar Forum

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rqtf9ITv ... re=related

This is fun! Someone please explain the doll to me lol

Man, that dude was a FREAK! Very cool!

Firstly, his name was ALVINO REY, (not Ray). Anyway, the doll is in the shape of a guitar.
His fame came with the "talking guitar" routine.
I was never sure as to just how he did it...
I heard he had an electronic gadget attached to
his neck going through the guitar to the amp and
it was his electronic voice combined with the steel guitar which gave the effect of talking. However in this clip I cannot see how this could be happening
so the mystery remains. I'm sure someone out there knows the secret of the TALKING GUITAR OF ALVINO REY...?

George, As I understand it Alvino used small speakers held to the throats of either the King Sisters or some man off stage and the steel sound was piped through the speakers into the throat and "shaped" by their tongue and mouth and then miked!! Pete Drake used speaker drivers that put the steel sound into a small flexible hose that went in your mouth and was "shaped" and then picked up by a mike !! I had one and used it back in the 60s, was quite effective !! Alvino was the first to do this !! It's the same principal as used by people who have lost their vocal cords thru cancer and talk using a vibrating tube that generates sound thru your throat into your mouth !! Hope this info helps !!! Eddie "C" ( the old non-pedal geezer )

Thanks Eddie...sounds logical. I have never heard PETE DRAKE doing the talking routine. At any rate, Alvino's act was very clever.....agree ?

That must have been pretty cutting edge for the time! And it makes me smile how also "gimmicky" things back then seem so much more charming than today's forced "show business".

Thanks for posting - made me revisit this great clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywOuZnvbGqM

(And, I do think Alvino Rey bears a striking resemblance to French director/actor Jacques Tati:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDc7mC24Uck - watch 0:56-1:10!)

Fred

Pete Drake had a hit record back in 1964 called "Forever" that featured his "talking steel guitar". You can hear it Here. Drake's "talk box" was later used on hit records by Peter Frampton and other rock guitarists.

Alvino Rey was way ahead of the curve with the talking steel guitar in the late 1930s. He didn't use the tube in his mouth like Pete did. Like Eddie said, Alvino would have his wife, Louise, modulate the signal from a throat mic, according to what I have read.

It's a shame that so many of the awesome techniques displayed by Alvino, Speedy West, and other steel players of yesteryear are nearly a lost art today. Bar crashes, chord chimes, boo-wah tone knob tricks, and other wacky techniques added so much energy and personality to the music.

Here's a later clip of Alvino playing what looks like a Fender 1000 pedal steel, doing what he does best! Click

was there something up with his left hand or was that just his grip?

Oh, man, I miss the Lawrence Welk show—seriously. So many great players and guests. Was Alvino using only a thumbpick on that clip? On the King Sisters clip I love the way the tenor player's sitting there looking at him like he's a total goofball. I see he used full fingerpicks on that one.

was there something up with his left hand or was that just his grip?

He seems to have a very tight grip on the bar, with his little finger tucked under the bar. Maybe that's because he lifts the bar up off the strings so much, as part of his technique. In the first 54 seconds of that Lawrence Welk Show clip Alvino lifts the bar off the strings over 50 times!

Steel players who came up during the Swing era, 1930s, 40s, early 50s learned some interesting techniques IMO because the music called for those sounds... Swing is all about punchy rhythms and accents, and improvisation.

Speaking of bar technique and bar slams... I once heard Jeff Newman say that a steel player should never pick the bar up off the strings. He said "the only time you should take the bar off the strings is at the end of a set when the band takes a break". Oh, how times have changed! and styles have changed! In fairness to Jeff, he was speaking to a group of students and teaching them how to get a smooth sound.

Hey Doug...did I miss something ? I didn't find the link on your thread re: ALVINO and the 1000 ??? Thanx.

bump. Sorry...I didn't notice the word "CLICK"

George. Look at the end and click on the word "CLICK".

Are you meaning to say.........

Is what we're supposed to understand is........

Has this all been a hoax........

WHERE WAS THE "CUT-OFF" Switch we've been hearing so much about? It's been discussed here on the FORUM so much.

Do you suppose Speedy West developed his affect by watching Alvino?

For the boo-wah effect he's using the tone control. For the "talking steel guitar" effect in the earlier clip, his wife is offstage with some kind of a "throat mic". She mouths the words, which modulates the signal from his guitar. What an innovator Alvino Rey was! What an artist and entertainer! I admire his creativity.

This was probably the very best of many examples I've seen, of a player smacking the bar up and down on the strings........ Nor real problem getting the job done. Nice and clean affect......

BUT.... WHERE is the infamous CUT-OFF Switch? The one Joaquin Murphy supposedly had on the right hand end of his BIGSBY in an earlier post.

The one someone posted an example of on an early day
BIGSBY........was it or something else, I'm not sure.

Ray, are you saying... the idea that a "cut off switch" is Necessary to pay boo-wah sounds is false? ...and this clip proves it? If that's what you're saying, I agree with you!

Doug........ I THINK I understood what you may have said and I'm pretty sure I agree with you; but then again, I could be in error. Just remember, GOD is watching you and if you keep trying to mess with an elderly person's mind he WILL GET YOU!

ALso, as you pointed out, his use of the TONE CONTROL eliminates entirely the notion that one has to have one of those monotanous DOO-WAH foot pedals.

Ray You definitely don't need one of those monotanous
pedals to get a DOO-WAH,but is'nt that one under your
BIGSBY ?

THAT, is a Bigsby, vertical VOLUME CONTROL

and......

A Left to Right, Base to treble, TONE CONTROL.

TONE CONTROL bass to treble back to bass real fast=DOO-WAH

I used the boo-wah tone control trick on my recording of Cold Cold Heart (below). It's about 2/3 of the way through the song (1:25).

Boo-wah works best on older guitars where the tone goes from all bass to all treble very quickly. The tone control on today's guitars have a more gradual sweep... and little to no boo-wah. That's progress.

That talking steel sound is done to good effect on Jim Reeves's "I've Enjoyed As Much of This As I Can Stand." I don't know who the steel guitarist was, though.

Didn't someone do a song about a guitar that the line went my mama was a Gibson and my Daddy was a Fender and they call me the mind bender that used a voice box? and if I remember right Jeff Beck used the tube thing a few times too.
my 2 cents worth

Not a "biggie" but I was playing my Sunday brunch gig at the Catamaran a few weeks back and I met a family who live in the house next door to where Alvino lived in Salt Lake City.

They of course held Alvino in the highest esteem, said he had been a real gentleman. They said the son still lives in the house. Alvino had shown them the basement that apparently was a complete recording studio... and a lot of other interesting things ... I got the impression Alvino was a real class act.