The Steel Guitar Forum

Does anybody recognize the steel player in the photo. This was cropped from an image of Hank Penny’s Radio Cowboys with Boudleaux Bryant. Boudleaux wrote "Pee Wee" under the steel man in the photo. Looking at Hank Penny's steel players - possibilities are:

Eddie Duncan
Jimmie Colvard
Ralph Miele
Eddie Martin

Thanks for any info.

Jimmie Colvard? I'm not sure if he was even born when this photo was taken, and I never heard of him playing steel.
http://hillbillycountry.blogspot.com/20 ... -road.html

More on this subject..
https://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtop ... die+martin

Looks like Martin to me, as below.

I thought Penny typically referred to Boggs as Pee Wee, but maybe he called all of his steel players Pee Wee?

Definitely not Miele. Looks nothing like him and he typically had a moustache in the Penny era.

Not Duncan, that's him on the far left in the pic below with The Tune Wranglers.

Barry: Jimmy Colvard the guitar player and Jimmy Colvard the steeler with Penny, Roy Rogers, and Claude Casey are 2 different people. They MAY be father and son--I've never been able to confirm that.

3 pix of Jimmy the standard guitar player below.

Thanks to all for your expertise and fast response. It does look like Eddie Martin. Thanks again Mitch Drumm and thank you all for a fascinating discussion on a topic I know little about but finding extremely interesting. Plus unseen photos of Leon Rhodes and Tater always fun.

We are labeling the Felice and Boudleaux collection and are and entering Eddie Martin as the steel player. This is a match - even the picking hand and the bar hand:

not trying to hijack the original post on Penny's steeler ID,but Jimmy colvard came up and he was a monster 6 string picker
https://youtu.be/Mc5WLLjsd7c

Jimmy Colvard / Thumbs Carlisle: guitar
Beegie Adair: piano
Bobby Dyson: bass
Buddy Rogers: drums

Beegie is still working!

Robert, I'm sure I know a lot more on Colvard than anyone,
He was the first guitar player I worked with back in the late forties, He was 15 at the time, He was Leader on several Opry type shows and used me on all of them, If you
would like a ton of info on him, Email me at aludeen@aol.com It's been a long time since meeting you in Nashville. Regards. AU

Al - Of course I remember you. Hope all is well. I don’t know much about Jimmy Colvard and will e-mail you today. Thanks very much. All this info is very useful because Colvard worked for many country artists over many years. Also - the Felice and Boudreaux Bryant collection will be posted online on the Country Music Hall of Fame website and I will post the link as soon as it is uploaded. This will include the uncropped Eddie Martin photo. Thanks again to all who replied. The Steel Guitar Forum is a basic resource for the study of country music.

Speedy West told me a great Eddie Martin story about his time with Hank Penny...

Hank had an afternoon audition at the Bostonia Ballroom in San Diego for a daily TV show being produced, and he and the band drove down from LA to do the audition. Eddie was a big drinker and Hank told Eddie to stay sober for the afternoon. But Eddie did get drunk that day, fell asleep in the car, and completely missed the audition.

Hank was totally pissed off, woke Eddie up, and yelled at him "damn it Eddie, I told you to stay sober but you got drunk anyway and missed the whole damn audition "

Eddie replied "Aww, that's okay Hank... I ain't mad."



The way Speedy could tell a story like that was priceless!

I have an mp3 interview of Speedy from 1974 in which he says that by late 1947 Eddie Martin had been using a fishhook welded onto the end of a coat hanger to pull the strings on his steel. Speedy mentions that Martin was deceased at the time of the interview.

I'd upload the interview, but my old standby Picosong seems to be extinct.

I'm wondering if the huge console Martin steel shown above is the steel in question?

Speedy says Martin's method had no stops, so Speedy contacted Paul Bigsby to improve on Martin's idea and commissioned the guitar we all know.

Wasn't that for $750?? Half the price of a new Ford at the time.