Lap steel guitar

Spanish guitars were introduced into the Hawaiian Islands as far back as the 1830s.[1]^:11 The Hawaiians did not embrace the standard guitar tuning that had been in use for centuries.[2] They re-tuned the guitars to make a chord when all the strings were sounded together, known as an "open tuning". This was called "slack-key", known in Hawaiian as "ki hoalu",[3] because certain strings were "slackened" to achieve it.[1]^:11 Hawaiians learned to play finger-style this way, creating melodies over the full resonant tones of the open strings, and the genre became known as slack-key guitar.[3] About 1885, after guitar strings made of steel[4] were available, Joseph Kekuku, on the island of Oahu developed and popularized playing an open tuning while seated with the guitar across his knees while pressing a steel bar against the strings.[5] Hawaiians followed Kekuku's lead and began playing guitar across the lap instead of the traditional way (held against the body). Playing this way became popular throughout Hawaii and spread internationally.[5]

Hawaiian music and the sound of the steel guitar became a popular musical obsession or fad in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century.[6] In 1916, recordings of indigenous Hawaiian music outsold all other U.S. musical genres.[7] This popularity initiated the manufacture of guitars designed specifically to be played horizontally. The archetypal lap steel guitar is the acoustic Hawaiian guitar.

1931 prototype of the "Flying Pan", a lap steel which was the first electric guitar of any type

These early acoustic instruments were not loud enough relative to other instruments, but in the early 1930s a steel guitarist named George Beauchamp invented the electric guitar pickup.[8] Electrification allowed these instruments to be heard; but it also meant their resonant chambers were no longer essential.[9] This meant steel guitars could be manufactured in any design, even a rectangular block bearing little or no resemblance to the traditional guitar shape.[5] This led to table-like instruments in a metal frame on legs called "console steels".[8]

There are three types:

• Acoustic lap steel guitar: The body is basically a traditional Spanish guitar which has been modified to be played on the performer's lap. The modification is to raise the strings higher off the fingerboard than a traditional guitar which can be done by raising the instrument's bridge and its nut.[10]

• Dobro-type guitars or National guitars: These are usually acoustic instruments with a large aluminum cone under the bridge, called a resonator, to increase volume. They may have reinforced necks or square necks necessitated by thicker strings and increased force on the instrument when strings are raised.[11]

• Electric lap steel guitars: These guitars are designed to be played horizontally and feature an electric pickup, so they do not require any resonant chamber. Guitars in this category may differ markedly in external appearance and include instruments made from a rectangular solid block of wood.[6]^:13 In addition to the lap-played model, others may have more than one neck making a heavier instrument built on a frame with legs known as a console steel.[6]

Over centuries in Western countries, the traditional Spanish guitar developed a near-universal tuning of ascending fourths (and one major third) consisting of E-A-D-G-B-E;[2] however, no standard existed for the Hawaiian open tunings (guitar tuned in a chord). The Hawaiians simply tuned to a chord that suited the singer's voice.[3] Beginning in the days of slack-key guitar in the 1850s, Hawaiian tunings came to be as closely guarded as any trade secret, handed down in families.[3] Many players de-tuned their instruments when they not playing them to keep others from discovering how they were tuned.[12]^:159

How the lap steel is tuned is a crucial foundation on which steel guitar style is built.[13] The tuning determines the notes that the player has available in a chord and affects how notes can be played in sequence.[13] The tunings that evolved in Hawaiian music in the 1930s provided templates which became a foundation for the playing style of later musicians.[13] The addition of a sixth interval into a tuning had a dramatic effect on the steel guitar because it created numerous positions and playing pockets which were not accessible in a straight major chord.[14] Tunings with a sixth interval are popular in Western swing and jazz, while sevenths are often chosen for blues and rock music.[15] To expand options for different chord voicings, lap steel manufacturers added additional necks to their instruments, each tuned differently. The most common lap steel tuning is the C⁶.

In the U.S. Mainland in the early 20th century, after the annexation of Hawaii, the Hawaiian "craze"[16][6]^:8 was in full force, as evidenced by radio broadcasts,[17] stage shows,[12]^:31 and motion pictures[6] featuring Hawaiian music.[18] Hawaiian guitars and lessons for youth were widely available, sold by mail-order and door-to-door sales.[1]^:11 Pioneer lap steel players between 1915 and 1930 were Sol K. Bright Sr., Tau Moe, Sam Ku West and Frank Ferera. Born in Honolulu, Ferera was the most-recorded of any lap-style guitarists in that time period.[1]^:11 Hawaiian music began to meld into American popular music in the 1910s, a combination known as hapa haole (half-white)[19] which was essentially Hawaiian music sung in English[20] for white audiences.[21] It represents Tin Pan Alley and Hollywood's influence in perpetuating the musical image of an idealized island lifestyle.[1]^:11 Many amateur and professional musicians throughout America formed Hawaiian combos in the 1930s and 1940s.[1]^:11 The introduction of electrified guitars in the 1930s had a profound effect on commercial Hawaiian music which had, by this time, largely merged with hapa haole music.[1]^:11

In the development of lap steel guitar in the early twentieth century, many innovators contributed; among the most prominent were:

Sol Hoopii (pronounced Ho-OH-pee-EE) was perhaps the most famous of the Hawaiians who spread the sound of instrumental lap steel worldwide.[5] He was the first steel guitarist to combine Hawaiian music with American jazz.[1]^:12 Born in Honolulu in 1902, Hoopi was a gifted talent on lap steel from an early age. When he was a teenager, he stowed away on a Matson liner from Hawaii to San Francisco; he formed a trio and became well known in clubs, theaters, movie appearances and recordings from 1925 to 1950.[1]^:12 He combined Hawaiian music with the jazz he heard from clarinet and horn players. In 1929, when the Dopyera brothers invented the resonator to make a guitar louder, Hoopii was hired to demonstrate the new invention at a lavish party in Los Angeles; an investor wrote a check for $12,000 that night.[8] He was a trendsetter in his use of the metal-bodied National Tricone guitar and later the Rickenbacker Bakelite and Dickerson electric steels.[1]^:13

Bob Dunn was a revolutionary lap steel player.[1]^:89 Born in 1908 in Fort Gibson, Oklahoma, Dunn quit school in the eighth grade to join traveling musical troupes.[1]^:89 Dunn recorded with Milton Brown and his Musical Brownies.[22] According to music writer Michael Ross, the first electrified stringed instrument on a commercial recording was Dunn's steel guitar on a Western swing tune in 1935.[23] Formerly a trombone player, Dunn's guitar playing introduced horn-like solos with staccato phrasing of jazz players, and, according to historian Andy Volk, made an indelible influence on subsequent generations of steel players.[1]^:90

Jerry Byrd was born in Lima, Ohio, in 1920.[1] Byrd is credited with developing the C⁶ tuning heard on many country records.[1]^:27 Using tunings with sixths and ninths became common and identifiable with the steel guitar sound.[14] In a 1973 interview on Canada's CBC radio, Byrd said, "I listened to the Hawaiians because they were really the only ones playing the steel guitar at that time."[1]^:28 He said the first really impressive steel player he heard was Leon McAuliffe.[1]^:29 Byrd helped lay the foundation for the Nashville steel guitar sound in a career split between Hawaiian and country music.[1]^:28 With Hank Williams he recorded songs like I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry, Lovesick Blues and A Mansion on the Hill.[24] Byrd also recorded with Marty Robbins, Hank Snow and Ernest Tubb and others.[1]^:28

In the early 1930s, the newly electrified lap steel guitar took a prominent position in an emerging form of dance music known as "Western swing",[5] a subgenre of country music that combined elements of Hawaiian music, jazz and country music.[1]^:88[13] Pioneers of the genre include bandleaders Milton Brown[22] and Bob Wills,[25] who hired and nurtured innovative players including Leon McAuliffe, Noel Boggs, and Herb Remington who subsequently influenced the genre.[25] In October 1936 with Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys , McAuliffe recorded "Steel Guitar Rag" on a Rickenbacker B–6 lap steel with phenomenal record sales.[25] The design of the lap steel and the way it was played underwent continual change as the style evolved.[13] McAuliffe had two Rickenbackers, each tuned differently.[25] The reason for that is the need to have different chords or voicings available. Steel guitarists felt limited in this regard, so leading players began to add additional necks with different tunings on the same instrument.[26] The added bulk and weight meant that the instrument could no longer be supported on the player's lap and required placement in a frame with legs known as a "console" steel guitar, but still ostensibly a lap steel.[5] Prominent players of that era, including Herb Remington[26] and Noel Boggs,[27] added more necks and eventually their guitars had four different necks on the same instrument.[26]

By the late 1940s, the steel guitar featured prominently in the emerging "honky-tonk" style of country music, developed in Texas and Oklahoma bars and dance halls (called honky-tonks).[28] It featuring a simple two-beat sound with prominent back-beat.[28] Honky-tonk singers who used a lap steel guitar in their musical arrangements included Hank Williams, Lefty Frizzell and Webb Pierce.[28]

Don Helms (1927–2008), born in New Brockton, Alabama, played steel on recordings by all three of these artists and more than 100 Hank Williams songs including Your Cheating Heart, I Can't Help It (If I'm Still in Love with You) and Cold, Cold Heart.[29] He played a double-neck Gibson lap steel using an E⁶ and a B¹¹ tuning.[1]^:59 Helms' playing style helped move country music away from the hillbilly string-band sound popular in the 1930s and toward the more modern electric style that took over in the 1940s.[29] His guitar intros, leads, and fills have been widely imitated for fifty years.[1]^:57 Other classic country recordings featuring Helms' work were "Walkin' After Midnight" (Patsy Cline) and "Blue Kentucky Girl" (Loretta Lynn). Many recordings of that era (1950s) were made using a steel guitar tuning in a sixth chord, often a C⁶ sometimes called a "Texas tuning".[30] Using tunings with sixths and ninths became common and identifiable with the steel guitar sound.[14]

Dobro guitar - Dobro guitar played standing. Note height of strings off fretboard

The Dobro or resonator guitar is a lap steel guitar with a resonator cone designed to make a guitar louder.[31] It was patented by the Dopyera Brothers in 1927,[31] but the name "Dobro", a portmanteau of DOpyera and BROthers, became a generic term for this type of guitar. The dobro never became popular with blues players who generally preferred a similar resonator design, the National guitar which had a metal body. In the opinion of music historian Richard Carlin, the Dobro probably would have disappeared from the musical scene had it not been for a couple of influential players: Pete Kirby and Uncle Josh Graves (Buck Graves).[31]

Pete Kirby, known as Bashful Brother Oswald, was born is Sevierville, Tennessee, in 1911. As a young man, he met a Hawaiian man who called himself "Rudy Waikiki" at a house party and was fascinated the guitar he played on his lap.[32] Kirby said, "That's when I first heard someone play something like my style...I'd go home and get my guitar and do the same thing"[32] Kirby played a steel-bodied National guitar with Roy Acuff on the Grand Ole Opry dressed as a yokel doing a comedy act in a wide-brim slouch hat and overalls.[32] Kirby introduced this unusual instrument to a mass audience. His dobro attracted interest and fascination; he said, "People couldn't understand how I played it and what it was, and they'd always want to come around and look at it."[32] He stayed with Acuff for 53 years.[32]

Buck "Josh" Graves (aka as "Uncle Josh Graves") born in 1927, played Dobro in the pioneering Bluegrass band "Flatt and Scruggs" in 1955.[13]^:49 Graves played a role in establishing Dobro as a common fixture in a bluegrass band.[31] He honed a style to compete with his virtuoso bandmates.[13]^:49 To do so, he abandoned Hawaiian stylings and adopted hammer-ons and pull-off notes to combine open strings with fretted notes rapidly; additionally, he adopted a three-finger picking style taught to him by Earl Scruggs.[13]^:49 Graves elevated the Dobro to an enduring instrumental voice in Bluegrass that could complement the banjo, fiddle, and mandolin.[13]^:49

Dobro fell out of favor in mainstream country music until a bluegrass revival in the 1970s brought it back with younger virtuoso players like Jerry Douglas whose Dobro skills became widely known and emulated.[31][33]

This musical genre, now called "sacred steel", began in the 1930s church services in the "House of God", a small African-American denomination where the steel guitar emerged as an alternative to the church organ.[34] Darick Campbell (1966–2020) was a lap steel player for the gospel band, the Campbell Brothers, who took the musical tradition from Pentecostal churches to international fame.[34] Campbell played a traditional Hawaiian lap steel:[34] a Fender Stringmaster 8-string (Fender Deluxe-8).[1] He regulated the volume up on top of the guitar with his hand as he played and used a wah pedal.[1] Campbell was a master at mimicking the human singing voice with his guitar. He said, "My method is to always think of my guitar as a voice".[1] Campbell played many music festivals, and his renown in rock and jazz circles was not well-received by church leaders.[34] Campbell recorded with The Allman Brothers and Medeski Martin and Wood.[35]

Lap slide guitar is not a specific instrument, but a style of playing lap steel usually in blues or rock music.[36] Players of this type of music may play lap steel with a flat pick or with fingers instead of finger picks.[1] Pioneers in lap slide include Buddy Woods, "Black Ace" Turner (who used a small medicine bottle as a slide),[37] and Freddie Roulette.[36]^:326 Turner played a National Style 2 squareneck Tricone guitar on his lap.[37] Some lap slide players also played a conventional guitar flat against the body using a tubular metal or glass slide around a finger a technique known as slide guitar. The term "bottleneck" was historically used to describe this latter type of playing.[36]

The expense of building multiple necks on the same guitar made lap steels unaffordable for most players, and a more sophisticated solution was needed.[5] Many inventors sought a mechanical linkage to change the pitch of strings on the steel guitar. Gibson introduced a pedal steel guitar as far back as 1940, but it never caught on. About 1946, Paul Bigsby revolutionized the pedal mechanism greatly improving it.[38] Bigsby made guitars for leading players of the day, including Joaquin Murphey and Speedy West.[39]^:22 Nashville guitarist Bud Isaacs received one of Bigsby's guitars in 1952 with two pedals.[40]^:190 It was a wooden double–eight string.[39]^:32 He experimented with the new pedals in an E9 tuning, trying to imitate the sound of two fiddles playing in harmony; he came upon something new.[40]^:190 Isaacs tried it in a 1953 recording session on a Webb Pierce song called "Slowly".[41] He was the first person on a hit recording to push the pedal while strings were still sounding.[5] Other steel players strictly avoided doing this because it was considered poor technique and "un-Hawaiian".[5] Music historian Tim Sterner Miller described Issacs' innovation as "... two pitches changing in contrapuntal motion against a sustained common tone..."[40]^:190 The song became one of the most-played country songs of 1954 and was No. 1 on the Billboard's country charts for seventeen weeks.[41] Isaacs' guitar became the first pedal steel guitar on a hit record.[42] More importantly, the sound was immediately recognized by lap steel (non-pedal) guitarists as something unique that was not possible[lower-alpha 1]^:190 to achieve on their instruments.[6][40]^:190 Dozens of instrumentalists rushed to get pedals on their steel guitars to imitate the unique bending notes that Isaacs played.[41] In the months and years after this recording, instrument makers and musicians worked to recreate both Bigsby's mechanical innovation and Isaacs' musical innovation.[40]^:191 Even though pedal steel guitars had been available for over a decade before this recording, the instrument emerged as a crucial element in country music after the success of this song.[6] The pedals allowed playing more complex and versatile music than it was possible on lap steel.[40]^:192

In the early 1950s many country steel guitarists changed from lap steels to pedal steels. Some prominent lap steel players, including Noel Boggs, Jerry Byrd and Joaquin Murphey refused to switch. According to music historian Rich Kienzle this decision hindered Boggs' later career.[25] Speaking about the pedal steel in a 1972 interview, Jerry Byrd said, "Mechanically, there were a lot of bugs, you couldn't keep them in tune, and that drove me crazy".[43]^:46 Byrd continued, "So I decided to stay with what I had and keep my identity and ride it out...[So] I never made the change-over."[43]^:46 Joaquin Murphey stayed with the non-pedal lap steel long after his contemporaries had switched over.[1]^:103 He stayed with his C6 tuning and felt that the new Nashville-standard E9 tuning was, in his words, a "gimmick".[1]^:105 He stated in a 1995 interview, "I can't do all that fancy Nashville stuff and I hate it anyhow".[1]^:105

• Slide guitar
• Lap steel ukulele
• Pedal steel guitar
• Steel guitar

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Lap steel guitars.

• Hawaiian Steel Guitar Association – An organization which promotes the development of lap steel guitar with worldwide membership.