The Steel Guitar Forum

Some great playing here....
https://www.reverbnation.com/deancharle ... 98-matilda

Changed title to refer to the correct last name.

Very cool! I am intrigued with his tuning and total abandon style! Those big chords,aggressive licks etc. The song sure sounds like Jean Shepard singing.

I will preface this by saying the man is a better player than I will ever be but...it sounds like practicing on the bandstand to me.

Killer!

I need to come over here more often. I just listened to 4 newly discovered Vance Terry recordings and now this, and it isn't even 8 o'clock! Julian Thorpe Tharpe? is quite the mysterious player. That was amazing.... Thanks for posting that.

That is amazing!!!!! NM

I just went back and read a bunch of old threads about Julian. I haven't been a member very long. Such a sad and strange story. Seems to be a lot of baggage surrounding this.

Every link to his music was a bad link. I found one song on Youtube with Jimmy Bryant, a short clip of him talking and tuning his guitar and some really rare expensive records.

What a shame. Some of the most incredible playing on any instrument I have ever heard. His music should be more available.

Just to be clear before I get in too deep, are we talking about Julian Tharpe?

Yes, its Julian Tharpe..

Remarkable ability!!!

A bit 'over the top' in places? Maybe, but how I'd enjoy having that capacity and muting it with some good taste.

He really was a great player, and the fat chords remind me of Curly.

I was fortunate enough to catch a Ray Price show with Blondie Calderon and Julian Tharpe and 3 female violinist from the Atlanta symphony. What a show!

Some old threads with some insight.

His "F9th" had a lot of natural similarities of a C6th with D's placed all over... Dm-"almost"-Dorian which in a C6th looking at the D string become evident too.

He recorded some very Late 60's/Early 70's styled PostBop/HardBop Album with Maurice Anderson in the early times.
Two very different men, but with a like inclination for modern Jazz in Steel Guitar. Maurice can be heard doing some of that "Jazz-Chicken-Picking" Tharpe was so very effective at... Zane Beck could be heard doing that quite well too in that time. Regretfully, some of the style proved to not stand the test of times and thus became a lost art.
ZB too, played a unique E13th with 5P & 5K which was very "universal"... just at a very pleasant higher "E"-tuning-based-pitch, very much like a "Swinging E9th". Zane King still plays evolutions of that tuning and nobody would be able to tell much the difference compared to E9th/C6/B6-Universal.

Keep in mind, in those times, many greats of PSG were not part of the Nashville A-Team and quite a good number of the early second generation in PSG were exposed to PostBop, HardBop, R&B, Soul (which all had Be-&-PostBop elements) in their younger musical heydays and thought the instrument had it to break into non-country music big time.


Discussion about the tuning:
For those who have joined here not Decades ago, Earnest Bovine is one who contributed a lot to understanding alternative tunings and some of the physics behind them. Here is his take on ONE of Julian Tharpe's setup and tunings:
www.steelguitarforum.com/Forum5/HTML/001039.html


20 string MSA:

https://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtop ... sc&start=0

On page 2, Maurice Anderson commented years ago about the "Joint D10" 20-string MSA they built him, and seems to indicated that JT changed the tuning and setup quite radically from the original idea of putting some sort of E9th and 6th tuning in the same "level" to an center-tuning with added strings on top and the bottom.
Which seems to suggest that JT went thru constant experimenting with tunings.

Here is Dan Burnham's YouTUBE videos on the Julian Tharpe tuning found on one 14 string BMI:

https://youtu.be/qFw8UuYi2zU
https://youtu.be/jq0FyETE6kc
https://youtu.be/EqNmpI4pBFo
https://youtu.be/a_yOtbp4ztY
https://youtu.be/fw_MHPHnDJo
https://youtu.be/0sAvsdctPD0
https://youtu.be/uSxxNNELBnA

... J-D.

Here's a photo of Julian's setup Sho-Bud JET 14 given to me by my buddy Boogie Sherrard who got it directly from him at one of the shows.

J D Sauser wrote:Some old threads with some insight.



... J-D.

Thanks for posting all these links JD. There was so much happening with the steel guitar back in the late 60's early 70's. It seems like jazz, the instrument went through a rapid development and has arrived at somewhat of an arrested state. Are there any live links to his music anywhere? It is hard to believe there wouldn't be more available. I see he recorded at least 5 albums. I am going on the hunt for these!

Really enjoyed this! Very well played and vocal was fittin right in