I may have the chronological order a bit off, but the following is to the best of my knowledge.
When Bud Isaacs drove 30,000 steel players crazy with his recording "Slowly" with a little back up from Webb Piece, the three most popular tunings for non pedal steel were:
E
C#
B
G#
F#
E
D
B
E
C#
A
F#
E
C#
A
F#
E
C
A
G
E
C
A
F
Bud Isaacs simply attached a lone pedal to his steel and pulled a G# to and A and pulled his upper B to a C#. So with one pedal Bud in affect combined (for the most part) the top two tunings above.
Of course we all just HAD to have it. I have not a clue to what Bud's whole tuning was only that he went from a I chord to a IV chord or a V chord to I chord with this one pedal.
And all of us used coat hangers, bailing wire and fishin line to do this on our double and triple necks. Mostly Fenders.
It stayed this way for quite a while. Bud was making Webb Pierce millions pushin a pedal. And we copied "note fer note" everthin Bud did. Other steelers for other stars started a doin it too!
Then came along a young JB maestro who probably didn't git any sleep because he done thunk up a way to embelish the sound the rest of us was adoin drivin our wives crazy doin the I to IV or V to I diddy. Course no way did she enjoy that repetitious sound like we did. Specially at 3 o'clock in the morning as we kept sayin,
"man I do love this sound"
But this young man by the name of Buddy who?
decided to split that lone pedal into 2 pedals. NO silly, he did not take a hacksaw and saw the pedal into. Read my fangers as Gomer Pyle once said. "One and a Two". Or ifn yer from the great state of Taxes it is uno, dos,
Yes Buddy now had 2 pedals. And ona them sapsuckers pulled the G# to an A and the other one pulled the B to a C#. Now as always in life, when a feller has 2 (dos in taxes) choices, some of us peapickers going to do it one way and the other adoing the tuther way!
Such was the case with 2 "still wet behind the years" hillwilliams by the name of Buddie (the name's Buddy! and don't you fergit it Carl!!) and Jimmy done and went and proved the previous paragraph to be true.
Buddy bein a "Damn Yankee"
had enuff larnin to not have to count on his fangers so he done and went and labelled them "pushin pedals" A and B. But that scoundral Jim done and went and split his into B and A. Dang his hide anyway.
So now we could get purtier sounds that would again drive our wives crazy all night long as we "rocked a bye baby" on them pedals, as she yelled at 2:45 in the morning,
"Will ya turn that dang thang off and come to bed?" Course as always we paid about as much attention to her as we did out Sunday school teacher tryin to keep us outa trouble!
Some where along in there, ole Bud (don't call me Bud #@#$%$$#@!) decided to add an F# (our first string now) to his git' tar but since this Bud don do NUTHING lack NOBUDY else, done went and putt that strang as the bottom strang. Can you imagine anyBUDy puttin a treble strang on the bottom.
Well Imagine it. Cuz that is what that young kid did!! You had to use yer dang thumb pick to pic that strang. And down at the first fret, it took 3 men and a "fat lady sings" to press that bar down on it
Then an ole country boy by the name a Ralph Mooney done went and added another strang. That ole whippersnapper done and went and putt a high G# and huked it up to that confounded B pedal. I got so mad at him fer a doing it, I coulda hung him out ta dry cuz my Fender 400 was the breakinest G string breaker you evah saw. Oops, skuze me, G# string breaker.
Continued on the next thread post cuz good ole boy bob done went and putt a limit on the amount of words in a post GRRRRRRRR!
<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by C Dixon on 18 July 2001 at 02:49 PM.]</p></FONT>
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