The Steel Guitar Forum

Let's see a picture of who started you playing steel!
This my Daddy that sit me behind his steel when i was 9 years old! I love him so much and miss him so bad!

thanks!
kenny

Kenny, a wonderful tribute to a great man and a father!

As for me, nobody in particular got me started on the steel. However I have people like my sister Tina, to thank for getting me interested in playing the rhythm guitar when she was 16 and I was 14.

Then I have Pete Drake, Tom Brumley and Lloyd Green to thank for making me sit up and pay attention to the pedal steel.

Then I have the world's best teacher, my hero, Jeff Newman to thank for opening doors in my mind and showing me how simple steel playing really can be. He taught me what little I was able to retain.

A friend of my dad's left an old bakelite rick at our house and I messed with that some, but it was Herby Wallace who really did me in. I was very lucky that Herby had a store called the Music Mart just around the block from us. I road my bicycle there a lot when I was a kid. I was very impressed by the calibur of some of the musicians who visited Herby there. He had a lot of old early steels like Gibsons, Fenders, Multikords and other funky stuff to look at. I tried to soak up as much of his atmosphere as I could, and Herby was very patient. I know I asked a lot of questions and must have really been a pain. I started lessons with Herby when I was a senior in school, I was most likely still a pain, but at least now I was paying Herby for his time. I must say, I paid Herby for one hour lessons, and I never got away from Herby in one hour. He really did seem to enjoy spending time with folks who had an interest in the steel.
Herby's music mart was the kind of community music store that is about a thing of the past now. I know now how lucky I was to have him as a neighbor.

Lloyd Green and JayDee Maness with their find playing on the Byrds "Sweetheart of the Rodeo" album. Before hearing that record I never listened to country music and had no clue what a pedal steel was.

Always loved steel,was a guitar picker for over thirty years,A band I played in years ago,The band leader was a friend of Lynn Owsley,Some times Lynn would come down and work the weekend with us,I stood next to him would look over his shoulder while he played. Knew then I had to play that thing. Got one in a couple of months got a job playing it. This was over twenty years,Have'nt played sixstring since. Don't even own one. So I guess Lynn did it to me. YOU BETCHA, DYK?BC.

It was a faceless stranger selling violin and steel guitar instruction with the Oregon Conservatory of Music door-to-door, Instructor Leo Skipton. He'd heard my mother had a remarkable 'child' and they didn't want 'that child' to miss out on a musical education.
How 'bout that?

I didn't know anybody personally who played steel guitar, so I got my inspiration from TV.

In my case, the fire was lit by Rusty Young ("Kind Woman"), then more fuel was dumped on the fire by guys like Scotty, Emmons, Newman, Anderson, Franklin and Jernigan.

I don't really play steel - 'play with it' possibly. Bass and guitar was my thing back then. However, the influence to leave home and have a go in the music world in my case came from a few generously long conversations with Gerry Hogan. He gave me the courage to get out and try it. He also gave me a lot of information regarding where to go to meet musicians and bands in and around London.
It was a move well made - thanks Gerry.

what got me started was going to see Marty Robbins, when i was 15 years old. and watching James Farmer as he would modulate ,Marty into another song with out stopping. after that it was Ralph Mooney on Wynn Stewarts records.

Buddy Emmons' Flying Fish albums "Buddies" (with Buddy Spicher & Lenny Breau) and "Minors Aloud" with Lenny Breau. Beyond inspirational to me.

Well Little Roy and don Helms. I lived 2 blocks from Hank and his band members hung out at the american Guitar studio, where Nan and I took lessons.
Also Fred Cronier that played with the country band for the campain of Big Jim Folsom while runnig for
Governor of Alabama

ernie

I had always been interested in the pedal steel, but Bob Hoffnar definitely sealed the deal for me. Great player, great teacher, great guy! If you have the chance to have a lesson with him, take it!
Steve

Buddy Emmons. Someday soon solo, and it was all over for me. The first time I heard it, I was not even sure what a pedal steel was, but I knew at that moment that's what I wanted to do. To this day it's understated beauty in perfect marriage to and lyric and melody makes me weep. Pure perfection.

As a kid, I always wondered what instrument I could play, and while I was figurin' it out, I heard great steel sounds by guys like Bruce Bouton, Paul Franklin, John Hughey, Sonny Garrish, and Dan Dugmore, but at the time, I was tryin' to figure out what instrument to play and I'd started lovin' the steel when I was nine. While I'd been playin' keyboards by ear with one hand in 1996, a band called Ricochet had released their first single called "What Do I Know" and I loved how the steel solo sounded and I realized later on that the steel was played by Ricochet's steel player Teddy Carr and I then decided in 1998 that I really wanted to play steel. So, that same year, I went to Dollywood and met steel guitarist Stoney Stonecipher and he got me interested in playin' steel. The guys I heard on those records all made me want to do it and are now my heroes, and it makes me glad that I'm a steel player now and always, even with cerebral palsy in my left hand. Stoney's the man who got me started playin' steel after hearin' those records.

Brett

Little Roy Wiggins on the Eddy Arnold recordings. Jody.

A great guy from Douglasville Georgia named James Morris nicknamed (Whitey). He built some steels with the great late Mac Atcheson from Stone Mountain Georgia in the 1960's from what I hear and I also have one of those custom built D-10 guitars. Nice guy and mighty fine player. When he died he willed me his Sho Bud Pro 2 and thats what I play today.
WC Edgar

www.wcedgar.com

www.myspace.com/wcedgar

Agnes K. Roberts, my NIOMA teacher. She was a real "Pistol" and a great organizer. My Mother signed me up and made sure I practiced. Later on when I was playing in Dance Halls at 14 years old I think Mom had second thoughts !

Frans Doolaart on TV with a lot of Hawaii-Girls dancing around him He was playing his self-built Dooley-special.I was 10 years old.
When I told him that for a few years he was very amused
I believe Frans is not among us anymore.....

I was in a Sunday Night Church function for teenagers in 1970 (BYF-Baptist Youth Fellowship)at the First Baptist Church of Van Nuys.

The music that night was provided was by a group called "The Rice Krispies"- The groups nucleus was made up of three family members,Wayne, Jimmy,and Joe Rice. This Country/Bluegrass bands 3,4,5 part vocals sent chills through the audience

One of the Rice brothers, Jimmy,took a seat at the pedal steel and " brought the house down" when he launch into one of the most popular intros on American Airwaves from 1970-"Teach Your Children".

The sound went thru me like only a pedal steel can do. I have been obsessed with the sound ever since.

The group later changed there name to "Brush Arbor", winner of the ACM "vocal group of the year" in 1974.

Check 'em out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XIfvGs3crk

Thank You Jimmy Rice.

dean

Hi Ray Montee,
I think I may have had the same salesman call on my parents back in 1944.

b0b...
In that picture of me I'm playing the Sho-Bud that he sold me.