The Steel Guitar Forum

Hello folks. Does anybody know who might have been playing steel with Tex Williams? One picture is below. On the reverse side it mentions three artists: Smokey Rogers, Deuce Sprinnens and Johnny Weis. Is any one of these a steel player????

Has there been more than one steel player with his band like Bob Wills.



Thanks.

Geo

I'm not as old as some of you so I could be wrong on this guess but........

but I'd have to say the fellow standing directly above and behind the fellow in the white hat looks like Joaquin Murphy.......

Joaquin also recorded alot with Smokey Rogers, Tex Williams, Spade Cooley, Olie Rasmussen, and Roy Rogers.

I too, played with Tex Williams and Rusty Draper.

That would be Earl "Joaquin" Murphey on steel. Deuce Spriggins played bass; Johnny Weis played guitar and vibes; Smokey Rogers played guitar and sang (mostly the novelty songs like "Big Bad Bill From The Badlands").

Tex played around L.A. right up to the mid 80s when he died and I was fortunate to play steel with him on a few gigs between 1979 and 1982. I remember he had a white Cadillac and would show up at the gig with a highly perfumed blonde lady who carried his boots and clothes bag for him. Nice guy with a lot of stories to tell.

Wayne Burdick and Marian Hall were steel players with Tex after Joaquin's time.

I have an old recording, taped from a record, where Tex introduces Denny Mathis on the steel and I believe Billy Armstrong on the guitar.

I had the privelege of working with the Tex Williams house band at the "Tex Williams Village" dance hall in Newhall, Ca. for a couple of months before he had to to close it to make way for an expanded Freeway which demolished the Dance Hall. Super Fiddler Billy Armstrong was managing the Band and Tex would come up and do a few songs each set. It was the end of an ara, the crowds were dwindling down. After this I belieive Tex did personal appearances without his own Band. This was in the early 60's.

Brad, any idea when or how Joaquin became Joaquin instead of Earl?

Michael Johnstone wrote: a highly perfumed blonde lady who carried his boots and clothes bag for him.

She also carried shots from the bar to center stage several times per set.

There was also Les Anderson, Eddie Mitchell, Fred Tavares and Wayne Burdick.

I remember someone telling me that when Tex got busted for possession of weed, that was kind of the end of his career.

Mike Anderson wrote:Brad, any idea when or how Joaquin became Joaquin instead of Earl?

Spade Cooley gave all his band members nicknames -Muddy Berry, Deuce Spriggens, Tex Williams, Gibby Gibson, Spike Featherstone, Smokey Rogers, etc. I don't know when exactly this occurred, though.

Mike Anderson wrote:Brad, any idea when or how Joaquin became Joaquin instead of Earl?

That all happened at the start of the Spade/Tex thing, where everybody had to have a stage name.

Thanks Brad and Ron! all this time (admittedly not all THAT long) I'd thought he was born a Joaquin.

When Spade Cooley with Tex Williams worked in the early to mid 40's at the old Venice Pier Ballroom, Spade used a Steel Player named Dick Roberts. Dick played what I think was a Multi-chord. He had what I called a very strange style with triad pedal changes from one major chord to another. When Spade went into the Riverside Rancho he hired Joaquin and Dick Roberts went with Happy Perryman another Foreman Phillips sponsered Band. I don't remember Happy's real first name but he was a brother of Lloyd Perryman of the Sons Of The Pioneers.

I'm pretty sure the great Tommy Morrell played for Tex for a short while. I think he told me that one time. But that's been along time ago! RP

That all happened at the start of the Spade/Tex thing, where everybody had to have a stage name.

That's correct. Everyone had to have a nickname - preferably one that sounded western or Mexican even if and maybe especially if you were Jewish,Italian or Irish as Murph was.
I heard Pete Kleinow say once that when he first came to California he worked in San Diego with Smokey Rogers in around 1958 and Smokey carried on that tradition. He said it was Smokey that gave him the moniker Sneaky Pete.

Michael Johnstone wrote:I heard Pete Kleinow say once that when he first came to California he worked in San Diego with Smokey Rogers in around 1958 and Smokey carried on that tradition. He said it was Smokey that gave him the moniker Sneaky Pete.

For some reason I always thought that Sneaky Pete was a graphic artist from Holland before coming to America to become a professional musician. I see that he was born in 1934 in South Bend, IN.

His performance on the "Live At The Avalon" shows by the Flying Burrito Brothers in April 1969 is absolutely amazing, as he was the only instrumental soloist and he carried the show superbly backing up Gram Parson's vocals. Existing only as bootlegs from the radio broadcast on KPFA for almost 40 years before Amoeba Records released a 2CD set in 2007 from tapes from the Grateful Dead archives. (My R-to-R tape ran out near the end of Long Black Limousine so that flap-flap-flap-flap is permanently embedded in my brain cells. )

http://www.amoeba.com/buy-stuff/detail/ ... --218.html

Steve Ahola

P.S. So did he did play an 8 string PSG with a B6 tuning? The tuning on b0b's site shows that his B6 tuning was exactly like the G-A-C-E-G-A-C-E tuning, but 1 fret lower in pitch. I think that the copedent might be interesting in giving C6 lap steelers some ideas for pitch bends either by fingers or by palm levers, or slides too for that matter. I thought that he had a very slippery/slidey sound that was quite unique.

http://www.b0b.com/tunings/stars.html#b6pk

I believe Joaquin got his stage name because of the part of California he was from, The San Joaquin Valley.

I'm pretty sure Murph was born in Hollywood. Check with Johnstone.

Smokey's real name was Eugene Rogers.

Deuce Spriggens' name was a total alias. His first name was George, and his last name (which I cannot at the moment remember) was a loooong Germanic name.

Pedro's name was Larry DePaul.

I knew Cactus Soldi's real first name at one time, and it will probably come back to me at about 4 o'clock in the morning. I'm occasionally in touch with his kids so I can ask them.

In related news, the real name of Harry Sims, the great fiddle player in the Plainsmen, was Simowitz. The bass player in the Plainsmen, Clem Smith, was named Paul Smith at birth.

I believe Tex Williams first name was "Jack". This could have been a nickname for "John". Deuce Spriggins also had a Brother with the name of "Ace Spriggens". He was also a Musician Once in a while he would come by the "Red Barn" in Lomita, Ca. with Carolina Cotton. They might have been married but I'm not sure.

Billy T.
Right on about Ace Spriggens!! He and Deuce and Tex Atchison had a trio that used to play at the campfire at Knott's Berry Farm! My parents used to take me out there way before Disneyland was built.

I think Tex's real name was Sollie Williams, he came from Indiana or Illinois, I can't remember which. But he started with Spade as Jack Williams, because I have an autographed fiddle from 1942 with his autograph carved in it as "Jack 'Tex' Williams."

There are a lot of other autographs on this fiddle, which is a prize that was awarded for winning a waltz contest at the Venice Pier. Spade's whole band signed the fiddle. Among them are Denver Dehne, Arkie Perryman, Pedro 'Yi Yi' DePaul , Billy Hughes, Sonny Olivera, Dick Roberts, Rusty Cline, Eddie Bennett, and of course, Spade and Foreman Phillips. I also have a photo of this band.

You prob'ly knew some of those fellers, huh?

Herb, you were right about Joaquin's birthplace. He did however, receive his stage-name in reference to The San Joaquin Valley.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-enter ... 25337.html

For Herb Steiner:

Herb: Here's one maybe you know. When Tex Williams recorded "The Leaf of Love" the Steel sounded to me like it was Eddie Martin's style of playing. I think this was in between Joaquin and Wayne Burdick. What Say You !

Billy
Tex recorded "Leaf" a couple times, once for Capitol and once for Decca. According to a discography that I have, the Capitol cut from 1946 has Eddie Mitchell as steel guitarist. It could be faulty record keeping, or was there a guy named Eddie Mitchell that was around LA at the time?

This was prob'ly when Murph was still with the Plainsmen, right?

Herb:
Now I am pretty sure it should have been Eddie Martin. In retrospect I think I even talked with Edddie about it. I don't recall hearing of an Eddie Mitchell. There was a time when times got tougher that the Western Caravan was not using a Steel Player.