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What Is Billy Robinson Playing?
Posted: 10 Aug 2011 4:34 am
by Dennis Burling
I can't make out the name on the steel guitar Billy is playing in this video. I'm not familiar with the older steels or I would probably recognize it at a glance.
Sure sounds great.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zY1uL3kf ... re=related
Posted: 10 Aug 2011 4:44 am
by Mike Neer
That's a Derby 10 string which Billy designed. Isn't Billy great?
Posted: 10 Aug 2011 5:21 am
by Dennis Burling
Mike Neer wrote:That's a Derby 10 string which Billy designed. Isn't Billy great?
He sure is, I could listen to him all day
Posted: 10 Aug 2011 6:22 am
by Anthony Locke
His playing is really smooth...makes those bar-slants look easy. I really like the tone he gets too.
Billy Robinson is one of our finest 'elder' players,
Posted: 10 Aug 2011 2:43 pm
by S.M. Johnson
For those of you that find BILLY ROBINSONs' steel guitar playing to be really great, one has to assume that you might not have been introduced to Billys' playing on the Grand Ole Opry's Prince Albert Show, back in the late 1940's.
He was with Red Foley's Cumberland Valley Boys and teamed with Grady Martin and Hank Garland on lead guitars. This is when Foley was recording with DECCA Records. Billy played a single neck BIGSBY while Grady played either his single or double neck standard BIGSBY guitar. The sound these two developed back then was the sound that nearly all of your older players of today aspired to as they were learning the ropes of playing steel guitar like the pro's.
I'd strongly recommend for YOUR listening enjoyment that you research on YOU TUBE or where ever you can find them, some early day Foley stuff, like "Careless Kisses", "Tennesse Border", "Tennessee Saturday Night", "Tennessee Polka", "I'm Throwing Rice", "Kisses on Paper", "Sunday Down in Tennessee" and countless others of that era. You could also give a listen to Carl Smiths' "I Overlooked an Orchid".
Billy's TONE and styling was second to none. At just 18 years of age he was indisputably TOP DRAWER.