The Steel Guitar Forum

As musicians, I agree that country (or whatever musical venue) and jazz go together. When I was in Nashville in the early 70's, the musicians played the "corn" (country) to make a living but most of them that I dealt with would rather play jazz and some of the jam sessions at musician's homes I went to were all jazz.

Even tho country is not as structured as some forms of music, it is still not a "free form" music as Jazz and the various jazz interpretations are much broader. A lot of the "western swing" probably borders more on the jazz side than country.

My 2 cents

Author Wondrich mentions Noel Boggs' solo on "September Song" on the recently issued Hank Penny "Crazy Rhythm" CD; in fact, Noel is not playing on that cut at all. The solo is on standard guitar and is likely being performed by Benny Garcia.

Quite a dissertation, Russ. Is this guy a musicologist?

I swear I didn't write it.

An article from TIME was posted the other day somewhere here on the forum. Now something from the NY Times. The Pedal Steel and western-style music are gettin' some "respectable press."

Sam in AZ

and we need all the press we can get

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Janice "Busgal" Brooks
ICQ 44729047

I like both.

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CJC

...and then there's Bill Frisell...

Golly, and to think that I almost lived through all that! Whew!.....al

Hey guys did you know that Art Pepper the jazz sax man, who played with various quartets, big bands, etc.. used to play in one of the Palomino Club's house bands?

Yep, in 1959 he was part of the Tune Toppers, which almost entirely consisted of ex-members of Gene Vincent's Blue Caps, who were pretty much all from Carolina and had been playing in country bands before Gene took them on and showed them Texas, NY, the West coast and some of them even made it over here on tour with him. (By here I mean Australia)..
Not something that many Art Pepper fans seem to admit too.
At various times Art refleacted on the period as time spent with a North Carolina rock band, or playing a hillbilly bar with the house band.

The comments above bring to mind a personal experience.....back in the 60's I was working a local TV show where Gene Sullivan was a guest once, and was doing his (and Wylie Walkers) country hit "When My Blue Moon Turns To Gold Again". Joe Settlemier (who was a student of Benny Garcia at the time) was the guitar player on the show, and when Joe's guitar break on the song came, he winked at me and did one of those wild Howard Roberts rides that he did (and does) so well....I can still see the expression on Sullivan's face (God bless him, he is long dead now) at what Joe did to his slow, dreamy, country song.<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Gene Jones on 04 December 2000 at 09:18 AM.]</p></FONT>

One more observation and then I'll move on....someone above said that musicians in the 70's played country to make a living but played jazz on their own time. In the 50's and well into the 60's many western swing musicians called country music "hillbilly" and refused to play it even to make a living. Example: A popular story making the rounds in the 60's was that Chalker quit Hank Thompson's band because he didn't want to do any more of that "s---kicking" music. I don't think many musicians thought Hank's band of that era was country, but then Chalker had his own agenda...and even he had to eventually lower his standards when he finally went to work on the Hee Haw Show to make a living.