The Steel Guitar Forum

Download link to John Troutman's academic paper. I confess I haven't read it yet but some cool historical photos are included.

http://johntroutman.weebly.com/steelin- ... uitar.html

Thanks Andy-- I appreciate you taking a look at it! I have really enjoyed and found helpful your books, interviews, and research over the years--
John

Bookmarked

Thank you, John. Really fine work! Back in 2009, I created this video for the Museum of Making Music's exhibition. At the time, I thought bottleneck and Hawaiian steel were two parallel, separate streams. Now I stand corrected! May I please time travel back and update my work? No? Drat!

https://vimeo.com/78741879

Hi Andy,

I've watched this film before --you found some fantastic footage! I think there is room for both arguments to work. As you point out, the idea of sliding something on a string is a concept found all over the world. I think Hawaiians were the first to figure out how to make the concept really work in a musical rather than experimental way on the modern guitar. They took it all over the South long before we see the idea taking off among southerners. So I think that while some southerners were messing around with the idea, Hawaiians were the first to demonstrate for them how well it could work on the guitar and on popular musical genres, in particular. They inspired the concept for white and black southerners, who then did all sorts of their own things with it. So I think we see inspiration and parallel practice working at the same time. And of course southerners were inspiring Hawaiians like Sol H. as well, who really took off with jazz and blues work. And July Paka was playing "Alabama Bound" by 1915, so lots of interaction going on!

Thanks again for reading the piece-- it means a lot. I'm so glad that you enjoyed it!

John

I think John’s article is groundbreaking work. I agree with him that to challenge beliefs held by blues enthusiasts in the origins of the diddley bow is indeed a hard row to hoe. This is despite the compelling evidence of the influence of Hawaiian steel guitar that is assembled in this article. I shared the article with Stefan Grossman when he passed through Adelaide recently. He was appreciative and described it as ‘very interesting and persuasive’ but it was clear to me that he didn’t buy the theory entirely.

I think that there are a couple of factors at play that present difficulties to its acceptance. Firstly, the theory of the diddley bow’s African origins lends a noble and ancient heritage to slide guitar that would suffer if it were considered to be ‘merely’ an adaptation of another style. Therefore challenges to its lineage will be defended despite thin supporting evidence.

Secondly, it seems a difficult (if not impossible) proposition to prove that something did not exist because of lack of evidence. Critics of the theory can point to poor or patchy records before the 1930s at which time the diddley bow could possibly have been in use. While much evidence points towards a Hawaiian genesis of the slide guitar I expect this argument will never be satisfactorily concluded. In any case this article is a fascinating investigation. I look forward to John’s coming book.

Two of the main questions I sought to raise in regard to this issue were...

1) What historical evidence supports the idea that one-stringed zithers ("diddley bows") inspired southerners to develop what became known as the slide guitar style?

2) If no real evidence can support the diddley bow theory, while much more supports another, then why does that theory continue to hold such sway?

What I found was that the evidence supporting the diddley bow theory is incredibly scant, and is principally forwarded by one or two (albeit preeminent) blues scholars.

But I also found, in an answer to the second question, that most other blues historians are in fact quite open to the idea that the style was developed either independently by southerners, or through the inspiration of Hawaiian guitarists.

While I can no longer buy the "diddley bow" origin story, I can buy either of the latter two propositions. Regarding the proposition that Hawaiians played a significant role in inspiring the development of the blues slide guitar style, I found a lot of particularly persuasive evidence that this indeed was the case. And since the article's publication two years ago, I have found more evidence that figures into the book.

The diddley bow theory makes absolutely no sense to me anymore, however, when the other two ideas, and particularly the latter, seem so much more persuasive when looking at the historical record. The funny thing is that I came to this topic assuming that an African instrument DID inspire the southern slide guitar style. But after spending several years immersed in the archives, I had to change my tune. We can only look to the historical record to try to sort through all of this, and the record is expanding exponentially through all sorts of digitization and other archival projects. As a result, I believe we are entering a wonderfully exciting period for revisiting and indeed revising some of our cherished understandings of blues and popular music history. And what I am finding in the archives is that the Hawaiian steel guitar played a much bigger role in those histories than we have previously recognized.

Man, I love my day job! I love this forum, too. I've learned more from forumites than just about anyone else in writing the book, including stodgy historians, ha ha. What a wonderfully thoughtful and productive place!

John