The Steel Guitar Forum

After my lesson from Buddy Charleton today I asked him if he had ever listened to Joaquin Murphey and as we talked about that he also brought up Slim Idaho as a player that played in a style similar to Joaquin.
I have spent the past hour trying to find out more about Slim and find I am not making much progress. So far I know his real name was Dewey Hubbard Aderhold Jr, and he is buried just down the road from me in Buckingham Co Va and died in a motorcycle wreck in 1948 when he was about 25. Buddy said he used to ride to gigs on his motorcycle with his steel strapped to his back?
I know he recorded with Moon Mullican and Cowboy Copas and used to play on the WRVA barn dance in Richmond and maybe even recorded a few sides of his own?
What I have not been able to find is a way to buy or listen to any recordings he was on---any suggestions?
Thanks Jay

Jay,

Have you tried an advanced GOOGLE search? .... or BING?

Jay:

He is on these Copas tracks:

I'm tired of playing santa claus to you
Texas red
Are you honest
Don't let them change your mind
I'll pay the price
Where you goin'
Jamboree
Opportunity is knocking at your door

Only known solo recording is Slim Idaho Trio: Impossible released on Super Disc 1009. Not on LP or CD as far as I know.

His last recording is probably Claude Casey Juke Box Gal/I’m Living in Dreams; MGM 10279; not re-released as far as I know.

Moon Mullican; he is on these sessions; the WESA items are Westside Label CD reissues from England; maybe still available?

February 1947 King Recording Studio, 1540 Brewster Ave., Cincinnati, OH - Moon Mullican (Jethro Burns [gt], Homer Haynes [gt], prob. Red Herron [steel], Slim Idaho [bass]. Producer: Sydney Nathan)

019 K2293 THERE'S A CHILL ON THE HILL TONIGHT 783/WESA 800

020 K2294 COLUMBUS STOCKADE BLUES 684 996/WESA800

021 K2295 JOLE BLON'S SISTER 632/LP681 LP937 WESA800

022 K2296 I'M GONNA' MOVE TO MY HOME BYE AND BYE 734/CHD458 BB9022 WESA800

023 K2412 FOGGY RIVER 613/LP 555

May 1947 Clifford Herring Sound Studio, 1705 W. 7th St., Fort Worth, TX - Moon Mullican (Jethrro Burns [gt], Homer Haynes [gt], Slim Idaho [steel], ? [bass])

024 K2482 I LEFT MY HEART IN TEXAS 673/Ace CHD458 Bronco Buster CD9022 Westside WESA 911

025 K2483 TRIFLIN’ WOMAN BLUES 45-1060/CHD458 WS2001 DCD-7813 MV-04 WESA 911

026 K2484 WHY DON’T YOU LOVE ME 745/LP681 WESA 911

027 K2485 OH ! SHE’S GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN 761/LP681 WESA 911

May or June 1947 Clifford Herring Sound Studio, 1705 W. 7th St., Fort Worth, TX - Moon Mullican (Jethrro Burns [gt], Homer Haynes [gt], Slim Idaho [steel], ? [bass])

028 K2490 THE TIE THAT BINDS 745/Westside WESA 911

029 K2491 OVER THE WAVES 684 996 EP293/Audio Lab AL1568 Westside WESA911

030 K2492 SWEETER THAN THE FLOWERS 673 45-5354 EP214/LP 555 LP710 LP890 LP1027 WESA 911

031 K2493 SAVE A LITTLE DREAM FOR ME 45-1078/Westside WESA911

Slim plays Texas Playboy Rag in a Tommy Magness live 1947 broadcast on this CD from 1997: Virginia Traditions: Early Roanoke Country Radio Global Village CD 1010 (1997); the Magness broadcast is 15 minutes and is track 14, the final track on the CD.

Paul Howard:

Somebody Else’s Troubles, Oklahoma City, Honest As The Day Is Long, Lazy Morning

Member of Jack Gillette and His Tennessee Ramblers along with Marvin Taylor, Benny Kissinger; and Curly Collins. WRVA, Richmond, VA. Don't know if they ever recorded.


Here is his obituary:




Here is his gravestone:





Here is one tune (Jamboree with Copas) to give you an idea:

http://picosong.com/nVh

Here is the only decent pic I have found:




By all accounts he was a pistol personally and as a player.

Mitch, glad you posted all that information about Slim Idaho, including the Tune. I believe that is the first time I have ever heard Slim play to my knowledge. Too bad he died at such an early age.

Jay, next time you see Buddy Charleton tell him that all his buddies on the Steel Forum are glad to know he is doing well and still playing and giving lessons. I believe Buddy is a living legend among steel guitar players.
Thanks for your interesting post.

Mitch,
As usual you are a wealth of good info and pictures, just having that list of tunes he played on should save me from wasting money buying the wrong stuff and that tune you posted certainly gives me an idea that hearing a little more of his approach is worth the effort. I love players that play with such a controlled sense of abandon that you can get to know their personalities a little bit just from their playing style, certainly from the immediate post war era Joaquin and Speedy fit this description and now I can add Slim to that list too!

Mitch Drumm wrote:
By all accounts he was a pistol personally and as a player.

I believe Buddy played in some bands that Red Herron played fiddle in the 50's prior to joining ET and heard from Red that Slim was a wild man! But I thought he was one of those western swing guys from out west and was very surprised to find that he was an east coast guy---at least at birth and death!
Thanks again, and by the way---where is Veronica Lakes??

Roger, Buddy and KayLee only have dial up internet and don't get online very often, if at all so may not see any of this but I will tell him next time I see him.
He may be a living legend but he is also a kind and gentle man (not to mention a good teacher) and if anyone reading this has contemplated taking a lesson from him I say stop thinking about it and call Wanda at Billy Cooper's Music and schedule one today---$45.00 an hour---such a deal!

Thanks Jay, if I lived closer to Billy Cooper's store I'd be there Monday morning for a lesson.

As you know, you've been very much admired by me......for your ability to get in there and dig for this oft' times hidden/secretive details of some of our finest, unknown, early day players.

I too, appreciate your latest contribution here of Slim Idaho. It's one thing to hear names repeated over and over but when you have no way to connect their name to a style/sound we've heard for years on a wide variety of records.........it's like so much treasure at the bottom of the ocean.

I'd like to ask you as a personal favor that hopefully others might likewise enjoy equally with me, to have you pick out steel players we've all heard down thro' the years, yet have never had the ability to identify them.

Cowboy Copas, KING label, had a variety of steel players but aside from JERRY BYRD's roll, I have no idea who the others might be. "Heartbroken" is just one such tune. Strong steel but no idea who it is.

Any chance we could persuade you to take an artist like Copas or Williams, Sr., and find a good record featuring the steel, let us know who it is, etc.
I for one, would be extremely grateful to you for undertaking such a gargantuane task.

It's odd that the date of birth for Slim is different on his obituary (April 20, 1924) than the one on his headstone (April 28, 1925)! I wonder how that happened..........JH in Va.

Here is another tune featuring Slim from early 1948, just a few months before he passed away. IT is likely his last recording. The vocalist is Claude Casey.

http://picosong.com/ng4

Wow. I've never heard either of those tunes. Really fantastic and distinctive playing. And, talk about your serendipity, Slim Idaho is mentioned by Ray Montee as the possible mystery steel player on the Hawkshaw Hawkins thread. But, alas, that tune was recorded in '55 and Slim was gone by then.

What I stated still stands..........

However, the statement was made without any prior knowledge about Slim Idaho. It was merely a comment.

Interesting topic..Let's see if anyone has anything to say.

Jerry Hayes wrote:It's odd that the date of birth for Slim is different on his obituary (April 20, 1924) than the one on his headstone (April 28, 1925)! I wonder how that happened..........JH in Va.

Also, I noticed that the obituary didn't mention that he was a steel guitar player.

At first glance I thought we were talking about "Ken Idaho," musician and comedien with the great Waco, TX band, Jimmy Heap the the Melody Masters. Super players and great entertainers, imho.

I played with the first "radio band" after graduation from high school in 1947 and our saturday night gig was at the Busti (NY) firehall. We changed into our western clothes upstairs in the club rooms where there was a big old floor model radio. We listened to Sunshine Sue (femcee of the Old Dominion Barn Dance on WRVA) For me to hear live steel was a big thrill and I usually took my intermission with my ear glued to WRVA listening for Slim's second solo of the evening. I was listening to Sue as she announced Slim's untimely demise that day in a motorcycle accident! It was a saturday night show, which contradict's the obit which says Slim died on a Sunday?? Around that time Warren Shanner from Salamanca (NY) came to our saturday night night square dance and asked me who my favorite steel player was.....I said Slim Idaho....he said what about Jerry Byrd.....I said is he steel player?.....Warren said "The best in the world" I said you'll have to show me.....(A naive farm boy?? Me!)
Next time he brought me a whole stack of acetate 78s recorded by someone Warren had contacted through letters back & forth from Jerry! I played them with the earphones on after I got home and WOW! didn't know you could do that with a steel guitar!? How many others of us got the same thrill hearing Jerry the first time?! I spent the rest of my learning years with the C6th trying to hear how he did his things? God must have blessed me with good ears so that I could understand his playing and was fortunate to meet him one early Monday morning at WLW studio C in April of 1949. Never forgot what a great gentleman and musician he was! We all owe him a great debt! Herb Remington told me when I met him in Atlanta @ Carl Dixson's first show.....if it hadn't been for Jerry Byrd we'd all still be playing the A6th tuning!
Of course if Bud Isaacs hadn't recorded "Slowly" we still might be w/o pedals??

FORD COLE MENTIONED KEN IDAHO FROM THE JIMMY HEAP BAND IN TEXAS. KEN IDAHO WAS SLIM'S BROTHER. I HAD THE PLEASURE OF WORKING WITH KEN AROUND THE AUSTIN TX AREA IN THE MID 70'S. KEN PASSED AWAY A FEW YEARS BACK.

So what was Ken's real name and was he also born on the east coast? Was he also a real character?

When I was with PeeWee Kuban's Band in the early 70's, we did some 'Battle Dances" with Jimmy Heap's Band and on the last set both bands were on stage. Ken was a great musician. Always enjoyed working with Ken. A very funny man and as I said, a great musician. Jody.

Brint Hannay wrote:

Jerry Hayes wrote:It's odd that the date of birth for Slim is different on his obituary (April 20, 1924) than the one on his headstone (April 28, 1925)! I wonder how that happened..........JH in Va.

Also, I noticed that the obituary didn't mention that he was a steel guitar player.

I wonder how many headstones in the USA have a T-8 Rickenbacker carved into them? I'd be willing to bet not very many

On second glance the carving on the headstone appears to be a T-6 but the one in the picture with him looks to have 8 string necks on the outside and a six string neck in the middle but it almost looks like the back six string neck doesn't have all 8 strings on it.

Jay Jessup wrote:I wonder how many headstones in the USA have a T-8 Rickenbacker carved into them? I'd be willing to bet not very many

Probably one less than were actually made like his. Didn't a/the necks on that guitar get broken at some point?

IN A PREVIOUS POST OF SLIM'S OBITUARY THE SURVIVORS INCLUDE A BROTHER KENNETH ADERHOLD. THE GROUP I WORKED IN WITH KEN, WE PLAYED A BAR IN AUSTIN TWO OR THREE NIGHTS A WEEK IN AROUND 76 OR 77. KEN DID COMEDY, SANG, AND PLAYED FIDDLE AND I THINK TENOR SAX. I REMEMBER WORKING OUT TWIN FIDDLE PARTS WITH HIM. HE WAS A GREAT PLAYER AND A GREAT GUY TO WORK WITH.

Hi John. Ken did play tenor sax. Those were the good days. Good western swing and country music. Jody.

Sometimes the weirdest things happen out of the clear blue sky. As I mentioned in a previous thread about Slim, I told the story of my dad and uncle's association with Slim in Roanoke,Va. while Slim was working with Tommy Magness And His Orange Blossom Boys.
I had heard stories about Slim all my life, One was how he would crash the bar down on the strings for chords with his left hand while he played the trumpet with his right. And how fast and clean his singal note lines were. Dad's most used phrase about Slim was " He was way, way ahead of his time".
Now let's fast forward to the present. I'm doing some more research on Slim because I was contacted by one of his nieces, Who by the way lives in the house he grew up in. She only knows what her father said about him. That he was a steel guitar player not much more. I've already sent her the information I have so far but I'm not done yet. There are a few and I mean a few people still around here that remember his Opry days with Paul Howard. So I'm gonna talk to them. Sadlly, my dad passed away in 1993 and his "baby' brother died in 1985 so can't ask them more questions. Everyone I knew in the Roanoke,Va. area that was around then has passed on too. So, if anyone on here has any stories or pictures they can send me via email I'd be grateful for them.
I want to get something together for Slims niece before the next Saluda show as she said she's coming there to meet Teresa and I. This will be her first steel show and I want to make it a special thing for her.
Thanks for letting me ramble.

I'm not getting any sound from this pico-play??

Mitch,
I'm not able to get any audio activity
from neither of the Pico uploads (the
visuals on the Pico posts look proper,
though).
I tried them both at different times,
thinking Pico may have been temporarily
down. Maybe ya could check on them for us.
Btw, thanks so much for all the historical
info & data you provide us with.
~Russ