Posts filed under 'Steel Guitar'
It looks like the triple-neck steel guitar that Leo Fender made for Noel Boggs is up for sale for $60,000. That’s only $20K a neck, which seems like a real bargain for a guitar that was played on sessions with legends like Bob Wills, Gene Autry, Spade Cooley and the Sons of the Pioneers. According to the listing, it was also used to create the Martian ray gun sound effects from George Pal’s film War of the Worlds. Now, how cool is that? -MJS
September 18th, 2007
Here’s an amazing clip from around 1930 of Eddie Peabody and his Beach Combers playing the Electraphone, which appears to be four electric instruments (tenor guitar, plectrum banjo, Hawaiian guitar and mandolin) mounted to a table. I’d hate to have been the roadie that had to load that into the van.-MJS
May 16th, 2007
We were sorry to hear about the passing of pedal steel guitarist Sneaky Pete Kleinow. He was best known for his work with the Flying Burrito Brothers, but he played with just about everyone of note in the late 1960s and 1970s including John Lennon, Joe Cocker, Frank Zappa and Stevie Wonder. Because they are so mechanical, pedal steels tend to attract tinkerers, and Kleinow was no exception. Along with his musical endevors, Kleinow worked as a special effects technician on movies like The Empire Strikes Back, Gremlins and The Right Stuff. He will be missed.-MJS
January 10th, 2007
Gerald Ross at the Hawaiian Steel Guitar Association has posted some fabulous photos from the International Guitar League’s conventions from the 1940s, an era when, as you can see from the photo on the left, kids played steel guitar instead of video games. As he explains: “The Oahu company was started in the 1920’s by Harry Stanley during the Hawaiian music craze. Mr. Stanley produced a series of music lessons under the Oahu Publishing label, as well as affordable steel guitars and guitar accessories. He also set up a nationwide network of Oahu studios and music teachers to meet the demand.
“Most Oahu musical merchandise was available by mail order and Oahu salesmen went door-to-door, getting parents to sign up their kids for lessons. Each year Mr. Stanley had a convention and competition for Oahu students and teachers held at a hotel somewhere in the US. The students belonged to an organization called the International Guitar League (IGL) - these pictures are from their conventions.
“Kitter Stanley is the daughter of Harry Stanley, the founder of the Oahu company. Oahu as many of you know was based in Cleveland, Ohio and provided Hawaiian steel sheet music, strings, picks and instruments to the world in the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s. Each year Oahu would sponsor a convention for the organization they founded “The International Guitar League”. Kitter Stanley found an entire box of photos from these conventions and donated them to the HSGA. I scanned them and Amy Pace built a page to display them.”-MJS (Thanks, Andy!)
January 3rd, 2007
Here’s a good article about Michael Stevens, the guy who built Junior Brown’s double-neck guit-steel.-MJS
December 5th, 2006
When Jason and I went to the Newport Guitar Festival a while ago, we took some time to visit a few New England luthiers. One of them was Joel Eckhaus, who builds ukes, tenor guitars, mandolins and steel guitars under the Earnest Instruments brand. Along with being a good builder, Joel is a fine player (he took lessons from ukulele legend Roy Smeck) and can play uke, mandolin and tenor guitar. That’s Joel on the left playing an old Epiphone that was the inspiration for his own Veronica model. The middle photo shows a unique Bourgeois cello guitar that Joel built while he was working there. The steel guitar on the right is loosely based on the old Rickenbacker Bakelite model, but Joel’s is made of wood.
The shots below are from Joel’s workshop. One of my favorite Earnest instruments is the Ceegar Box uke. As you can see in the second photo on the right, Joel has a good stock of “bodies” ready to go. I love poking around builder’s workshops because they always have such interesting piles of junk sitting around. Check out the pile of old horns in the photo on the photo in the bottom row. I e-mailed Joel about them and he said, “I’ve actually been playing around with some of those broken horns that I have in the box. Mark Tipton, who plays trumpet on my CD, came over and we played around with the horns for quite a while…ducktaping various combinations of horns, and slides, and tubes together. We got some interested sounds and shapes, almost like brass vivi-section or something. Mark actually played a solo on a valveless ductape-o-phonium tonight at a jam session.” As you can see in the last photo, a horn bell also makes a nice hat. Oh, and the CD Joel is referring to is Tarnished Reputation by Ukulele Eck and the Fabulous Lacklusters. I’m sure if you contact him, he’ll be happy to sell you one. I got to hear it while I was there and even though it doesn’t have, or maybe because it doesn’t have any valveless ductape-o-phonium on it, I thought it was really good.-MJS
October 21st, 2006
It looks like the triple-neck steel guitar that Leo Fender made for Noel Boggs is up for sale for $60,000. That’s only $20K a neck, which seems like a real bargain for a guitar that was played on sessions with legends like Bob Wills, Gene Autry, Spade Cooley and the Sons of the Pioneers. According to the listing, it was also used to create the Martian ray gun sound effects from George Pal’s film War of the Worlds. Now, how cool is that? -MJS
