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Gerald Ross
'Northwest Ann Arbor, Michigan's King Of The Hawaiian Steel Guitar'

Gerald's Fingerstyle Guitar Website

[This message was edited by Gerald Ross on 15 November 2004 at 04:45 PM.]

From time to time Shot would make 7-strings for himself but ended up selling them first. A person in Canada once contacted me to sell a black one with Shot's initals that he thought (and said) was Shot's personal guitar and as a result wanted a fist full of money for it. I passed, since I can account for the ones that he built and played and that wasn't one.

The majority of the Dobro sales were and still are for that matter, to the Bluegrass crowd since they wanted a brighter sounding instrument, I suspect because they set their standard on Josh Graves and his G#-tuning sound. Some tend to try to make the dobro sound like a banjo, which I don't think does the dobro justice.

Shot played a 6 sting Dobro when with Johnnie and Jack and kept expermenting until he found the sound that he wanted. The key was in the arched back and larger body, with a Dobro cone and of course, the E tunning.

After 1962, on the Melba, Melba & George, Roy Clark, Louvin Brothers, Carl Butler and Shot's own sessions you hear that sound. He's even on a Johnny Cash track.

His dobro style has its roots from when he played a 7-string Rickenbacher when with the Bales Brothers.

Paul Beard will make you a 7-string since he has necks for his "Mike Auldridge" 8-strings. He now spins his own cones and what a sweet sound they have. At his booth in St. Louis this year they had a 7-string that was tuned to D-6th (I think). I couldn't really compare the sound of it that well to my E tunned Sho-Bud 7-sting due to their tuning but it didn't sound bad at all.

Ric

This tuning, using slants on strings 1 and 3, will give you his sound.

Up on the neck he tended to play strings 2 and 3, together with a swipe at 1 and 2, together, thrown in.

If playing in the key of E, he'd use several long single string runs and single string slides into the note. A good example (1962) is on George Jones, Melba track “I’d Jump the Mississippi” where he does a real neat and extended lick, or as he put it: “That runs so long you almost had to unplug it to stop.”

His favorite keys for instrumentals were A,C, D and E (not necessarily in that order) unless another key was dictated by another instrument (steel, fiddle or guitar) on the song. Of course on vocals, the singer called the key. He never used a kapo since he felt, as do I, that it robs the guitar of its mellowness and limts any slide ups to the root cord.

His favorite was “All Smiles Tonight” (D), the best version using his pedal-bro (1962) on Starday, which will be re-released soon and the one he grew tired of from over playing it was “Ft. Worth Drag” (E), really called “Beer Hall Frolic”.

He wanted to take the dobro into another dimension, away from being associated strictly with G-tuning and Bluegrass, which it had been by the 1960s and I think he did, indeed. His term: “I don’t want it to sound too Bluegrassy.”

(Mike Auldridge has been able to do that as well, with is 8-string tracks and playing from time-to-time with a C6th tuning)

But Shot fit in well with a bluegrass band. If you get a chance, listen to him on the session with the Osborne Brothers 10/17/1957:
SHE’S NO ANGEL
(IS THIS) MY DESTINY
ONCE MORE
TWO LONELY HEARTS

or Roy Clark’s LP “Roy Clark and Friends” (1974)
or on a pile of the Louvin Brothers tracks (1962-3)
or the George Jones-Melba Montgomery bluegrass offerings (1962-3)

I sure do miss him, but then, don’t we all?

Ric

The ShoBros made at ShoBud by Shot (after 1973) and his staff had Dobro cones.

Some years ago when the Quarterman cones came out, I had one put in a Gretsch-built ShoBro and it resulted in the loss of its mellowness. It now has more bass but gives a tinner "plunking" sound on the high end, which I don't care for. I wish that I hadn't done it but now I understand that the cones that Paul Beard is spinning have an over-sized flange and can be fitted into the larger hole that had to be made for the Quarterman. Paul's cones sound very near to the original Dobro spun cones.

So if you can't get an original Dobro cone, try Paul. If you don't know it, Paul (a great guy with a quality product) is super busy and there is a wait, which is great for Paul but bad for us.

Roy

[This message was edited by Roy Thomson on 22 November 2004 at 04:38 AM.]

rnnelson1@msn.com.