If we start puttin' pedal steel in bluegrass, then (sooner or later) somebody's gonna throw a b@nj0 in a Johnny Bush song, or a Ray Price song.

By the late 50s/early 60s, when his sound was dominated by Pete Wade and Grady on guitar, Tommy Jackson, Buddy Spicher, and Shorty Lavender on fiddle and Buddy and Jimmy on steel, the banjo was definitely not a contribution. IMHO, these were the pickers that created the "Ray Price Sound" that we generally all recognize.

Hey, in that period, Ray also cut some real schlocky pop-sounding stuff too, long before the "Danny Boy" era. Most of that material never got beyond album-filler status.

As a parenthetical aside, and as a former bluegrasser, I feel that the playing of mid-50s Earl Scruggs and Don Reno is still the defining sound of the instrument, as great as the contributions of JD Crowe, Bill Keith, Allan Shelton, and a host of other pickers were. Just my personal opinion of BG banjo...

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Herb's Steel Guitar Pages
Texas Steel Guitar Association

[This message was edited by Herb Steiner on 27 October 2001 at 10:57 AM.]

An even better example, and unlike the Wheatstraw Suite, one that the purist bluegrass world *embraces* is JD Crowe's New South 1st album. It's got it all: JD's driving banjo, Tony Rice's fabulous singing and guitar playing, Ricky Skaggs, great material, etc., but also and completely unmentioned in the liner notes and credits: pedal steel and drums!! And it's great! For those steel players that look down on 'grass and banjos (even with a wink), why not give this a listen...and go easy on your fellow fingerpick wearers.

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Olli Haavisto
Polar steeler
Finland

[This message was edited by Olli Haavisto on 28 October 2001 at 12:48 AM.]

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Have a good 'un! JH U-12

[This message was edited by Jerry Hayes on 22 November 2001 at 09:13 AM.]

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  ~ ~
  ©¿©          ars longa,
  mm         vita brevis 
-=�sr€=-

[This message was edited by Smiley Roberts on 24 November 2001 at 06:50 PM.]

As far as I understand it, J&J began to incorporate steel once they began to work the Opry on a regular basis (circa '64?), at first I think their dobro player started to double on steel, while on televised gigs etc they used full-time steelers, hence Smiley.

Later they added steel players as part of the group, something they dropped around the late 1970s I believe.

In regards to the Osborne Bros, for a time Sonny used a sliding bending note 'trick' to effect steel licks, I'm not sure how he achieved it, but it's been mentioned in some articles on the group's attempt to crack the charts in the 1960s.
Obviously it became easier to hire steel players for sessions, but they still had to do something live to fill the part.

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I'd love to hear a hollow-body pedal steel guitar.

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