The Steel Guitar Forum

I was looking at these solo clips, and it looks like Curly used his back neck for E9.


https://youtu.be/b75msHFynvU

I heard Curly was asked to play the front neck. Everyone knew it was good fro country music. So Curly had the C6th put on the front and E9th on the back. Killer player and smart man as well.

Ha! That's funny. I've heard that he could be contentious at times - that's one way to solve a problem of people asking you to do something you may want to do differently.

Contentious is a word one might use to describe Curly. When I was in Nashville at Jeffran College in '77 0r '78, I went and saw Curly at the Hall of Fame Lounge. I introduced myself and told him what I was in town for and he picked up a Gibson ES-335 and didn't play steel again for the rest of the night. I might use a different word than contentious. He acted like a jerk! I went to see Doug Jernigan at The Station Inn and he was just the opposite! He came over and sat with us on breaks, played unbelievable Pedal Steel and was a gentleman in every sense of the word!

Once I acquired enough savvy to understand and appreciate what he was doing (for this is really necessary to talk intelligently about famous players), he became one of my favorite players, one of the true innovators on the instrument. By all accounts, Curly could sometimes be mean and obnoxious. And sadly, that stifled his career, fame, and fan base. Still, he remains one of the giants of the instrument.

Here's one of his most memorable things...

https://www.reverbnation.com/stanhitchc ... -hitchcock

This seems to be an appropriate time to mention that I still have around 150 copies of the concert DVD I made a few years ago.

The DVD is 2 hours of non-stop playing.It was made from 2 concerts Curly gave in 1986. Both concerts were videotaped, and somehow I ended up with the tapes. I made the DVD in order to preserve these historic performances.

The price of the DVD is $17.50.15 bucks for the DVD, and the rest to cover mailing expenses.

Mike, is there any E9th playing on the DVD? While I am very much impressed by Curly's jazzy C6th stuff, it just isn't my cup of tea at all – as opposed to his country E9th playing (which the man himself supposedly hated...)

Per Berner wrote:Mike, is there any E9th playing on the DVD?

Some, not a whole lot. It's maybe 90% C6.

worth buying just for his rendition of Long Black Limousine on E9!

Whilst it can, and must, be readily ascertained I am not the resident expert on anything, I would heartily recommend buying the DVD from Mike. Chalker's playing is phenomenal on either neck of the guitar and watching him is a treat. And... if you don't relish all of his playing the DVD is worth buying just to hear the lead guitar pickers. Bobby Caldwell on some cuts and I can't recall the other picker right off; however, he is fantastic as well.

A bonus from buying the DVD from Mike is that you will enlarge your circle of acquaintances in a very positive way. Mike is a super fellow with whom to do business and he is a superb picker as well. I would recommend getting the Chalker DVD and picking up a copy of Firebird Suite, I believe that is the correct title of Mike's cd, at the same time.

I appreciate the kind words about me and my CDs. Anybody who is interested can hear selections from all 3 at the links in my signature. Nut this thread is about Curly Chalker, nor me.

For those ho do not already know the story, Curly gave 2 concerts in December on 1986, both of which were videotaped. The first of these was produced by the late Jack Lox, at the club he owned. Jack produced 6 steel guitar concerts. 5 of these featured a single artist, playing all day. Besides Curly, these included Doug Jernigan, Jimmy Day Mike Cass, and Buddy Emmons and Phil Baugh together. The other concert featured sets by Red Rhodes, Jay Dee Maness, Johnny Davis (who played the guitar at Curly’s concert,) Our fellow forumite Ron Epperson, and myself.

All of these concerts were videotaped. Sadly, all the tapes were lost when Jack died.

I asked Jack if he would allow me to make a copy of the video of Curly’s concert, and he agreed.

2 weeks later, Curly gave another concert at Scotty’s Christmas Party. This was videotaped by Johnny Cox. Scotty and I traded copies of each other’s tapes.

The DVD is the footage of these 2 concerts.

Now that Scotty is gone; I don’t know if his tape survived. So I found myself sitting on this important historical footage. I felt that it HAD TO be preserved. I felt that I owed it to the steel guitar community to make sure it wasn’t lost. So I hired another of our fellow forumites, Mike Brebes, to create the DVD master, and had 1,000 copies made.

In my opinion, Curly was one of the greatest steel guitarists of all time. He preferred the C6, but was also a great E9 player. I urge those of you who are not already familiar with his music to check out his recordings,

I feel this DVD of him in concert is a really important historical document. Here is a clip from it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBIgG9TuSyk

Good stuff guys. Mike, I will get in touch about the DVD. I worked with and hung out with a steel player from the 60's era (I imagine) named Frankie Morrell when I was a young and hungry player (about 19 or so). Sadly, he died about 1983 but, he told m,e a lot of cool stories about the old days. I always remember him saying that Curley Chalker had more music in his little finger than everyone else had in their whole world.