The Steel Guitar Forum

Maybe you don't see this as an earth-shattering event, but I certainly do... we've had some glimpses of what's in this tape, now Mike's published the whole thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_4y3mnJquQ

Awesome!

Wow, that is just great. What a find. Thanks Stephen and Mike.

Thank you!

What a player Tommy was!

Wow, what a nice Christmas present.

Thanks, Mike! And thank you, Stephen, for the heads up.

That's probably Bill Minor on drums. He was Tommy's favorite drummer. I produced 6 albums in Dallas for various artist with Morrell on steel. He was a genius. I engineered a couple of albums with Bob Boatright and Bill Minor on the drums as well. Bill was such a nice guy. Morrell was my Tequila drinking buddy. All of them have passed on now. I'm gonna order a tombstone and put in my front yard so I can get acquainted with my own death.

Thanks for the info, David. Such a great band and all of them are gone.

Your welcome. I misspelled his last name. They called him Bill "Mountain Man" Miner. Tom used Greg Hardy a lot on drums also. I have some funny stories to tell about Tom Morrell non-music related. He was an interesting fellow to say the least. I'll tell one short slightly music related incident. One day as I got to the studio about 8:00am as usual to clean the recorder heads, demagnetize and run alignment tapes, set up mics, etc. for a session to be produced by Nashville producer and guitar player Tommy Allsup I got a knock on the door about 9:00am and when I opened the door Tom Morrell was standing there with about a $20.00 acoustic guitar in his hand with a couple of missing strings. He asked me if I had a steel guitar at the studio because his got locked up at the nightclub he was playing. I told him I had my Sho-Bud Pro ll with 2 knee levers in the storeroom and he said " That's perfect!" I guess he was gonna use that acoustic guitar for a Steel if I didn't have one. He sets it up and puts his tuning on it and as we recorded that album that day Tommy Allsup sitting next to me just kept raving about how good Tom sounded. Of course I agreed but I never told Allsup that Morrell showed up without a steel guitar. Lol! Morrell was a genius like Emmons. He could hear a recording one time of any steel player and not only did he know how to play it note perfect from hearing it one time but he knew everyone else's part too. He must have had what they call a photographic memory. None of the other players could do that. While they were writing charts Morrell would be reading the newspaper. He only needed to hear the demo one time. Emmons could do that too. Most people don't realize how good those guys were unless they could hang out with them for a while.

Tom Morrell was fantastic. Got to see him in St. Louis and again in Texas, what a player and band.