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Author	Topic: Joaquin Murphy
Michael Johnstone Member From: Sylmar,Ca. USA	posted 14 October 2003 08:29 AM profile In the days before pedals when multineck console steels ruled,open tunings were all you had and a lot of players experimented with odd intervals and so on to give them a musical edge.Individual styles differed from player to player much more than they do nowadays and you could tell in a few notes who you were listening to on the radio.Therefore certain players went thru periods where they were very secretive about their tunings.Murph did indeed relate to me on more than one occasion that he would de-tune his guitar on intermissions.It may not have happened a lot but I'm sure it did happen and I'm sure humor was involved as well - I could easily imaging a scenario where he hid in the wings gleefully watching some futile attempt to cop his tunings. Plus,like Jerry Byrd,Murph could re-tune a guitar in a few seconds so it was really no big hassle for him to have done that.One of his most well kept secrets for a long time was the high B string at the bottom of his C6 tuning(which he came up with)and the low C# which he got from Byrd.He told me with those two strings,it used to drive other guys crazy trying to figure out how he got so much w/out pedals on what seemed like a regular C6 tuning. So he may have only detuned a couple of strings although it would be more like him to carefully re-tune a few strings to some bizarre intervals and let someone steal that. -MJ-
Rick Schmidt Member From: Carlsbad, CA. USA	posted 14 October 2003 10:13 AM profile This is a great thread! Thanks guys
Roy Ayres Member From: Starke, Florida, USA	posted 14 October 2003 12:39 PM profile Another silly little Murph story: Joaquin used to make an odd stacatto-like sound in his throat similar to Woody Woodpecker's laugh. Before I left San Diego, he gave me a picture of himself and autographed it with a little "Squiggly" line a couple of inches long similar to a low-amplitude sine wave. When I asked him the significance of it, he did the stacatto sound.
Roger Rettig Member From: NAPLES, FL	posted 14 October 2003 12:50 PM profile Yes! Thanks for all these wonderful anecdotes - Joaquin sounds like someone I wish I'd known.... RR
HowardR Member From: N.Y.C.,N.Y.	posted 14 October 2003 06:14 PM profile Chas, if you want to email those photos to me, I'll post them.
HowardR Member From: N.Y.C.,N.Y.	posted 15 October 2003 04:28 AM profile Thanks Chas. I expect to post the photos tomorrow. I've been enjoying this fantastic thread immensly. [This message was edited by HowardR on 18 October 2003 at 11:47 AM.]
HowardR Member From: N.Y.C.,N.Y.	posted 17 October 2003 10:22 PM profile Here we go.....
HowardR Member From: N.Y.C.,N.Y.	posted 17 October 2003 10:26 PM profile
John Steele Member From: Renfrew, Ontario, Canada	posted 17 October 2003 11:38 PM profile Unfortunately I have nothing of substance to add to this thread, except, Thanks, guys ! M, C, H, and H, I enjoyed the stories, sound clips and pics alot. Tres cool. -John
HowardR Member From: N.Y.C.,N.Y.	posted 18 October 2003 06:32 AM profile [This message was edited by HowardR on 18 October 2003 at 12:26 PM.]
HowardR Member From: N.Y.C.,N.Y.	posted 18 October 2003 08:55 AM profile [This message was edited by HowardR on 18 October 2003 at 11:45 AM.]
chas smith Member From: Encino, CA, USA	posted 18 October 2003 11:47 AM profile Howard, thank you so very much--chas
CrowBear Schmitt Member From: Ariege, - PairO'knees, - France	posted 18 October 2003 12:29 PM profile Thanx Howard, Chas, Roy, Jody and the rest of you guys for a great thread
HowardR Member From: N.Y.C.,N.Y.	posted 18 October 2003 06:25 PM profile Glad to contribute to such a wonderful thread. Thanks to Chas and Michael Johnstone.
Al Marcus Member From: Cedar Springs,MI USA	posted 18 October 2003 09:36 PM profile Back in 1972 about, I went to Harry's Capri in Phoneix, Ariz where my good friend Jimmy Yates was playing 6 nights a week on his PP Emmons(what a sound with that twin reverb). Well, Murphy was there and we all sat at a table and had a couple of drinks , but not him , as he was drying out at the time. Jimmy ask him to sit in, but he wouldn't as he hadn't played in a while. Jimmy then wanted to talk to Murph, so asked me to relieve him on the bandstand. So I got up and played a couple of slow dance tunes on his C6. "Stars Fell on Alabama" and "Don't take your love from me". After the job we all went to my house in North Phoneix mountains and my wife made a nice snack for us. Murph saw the black home built guitar I had with the multi-kord changer(it is on my website) and he strummed a couple of chords, then he just leaned over the guitar , didn't touch the pedals, and just tore up and down that fretboard like you wouldn't believe. I had Alvino Rey's E6 tuning on it. (Incidently, back in the 40's Alvino would'nt tell me his tunings. So I just listened and when he did a strum all the way I remembered the intervals, and that is how I got it. They were secrets in those days. ) He just played great. I should have kept that guitar for posterity. I'll always remember that night. Then He went on to Calif. I never saw him again....al ------------------ My Website..... www.cmedic.net/~almarcus/
Ron Whitfield Member From: Kaaawa, Hawaii, USA	posted 23 October 2003 05:50 PM profile I hate to see this cool thread die. So, after hearing a 'later era' Cooley w/Murph live performance of the '58 hit 'Rock Around the Clock', I'm curious as to how long JM continued with Spade during this final strectch of their careers. I'm aware of the 4(or so) last cuts recorded by Murphey for Cooley in the late '50s, but hadn't heard proof that he was on the road with him at that stage. If in fact he did anything after this point, what were Joaquin's last 'prime time' efforts?
Chris Scruggs Member From: Nashville, Tennessee, USA	posted 23 October 2003 10:07 PM profile Think of this: Joaquin Murphy's Bigsby was the FIRST Bigsby musical instrumant. No Joaquin Murphy Bigsby steel, no Merle Travis Bigsby guitar. No Merle Travis Bigsby guitar, no Fender Telecaster. No Fender Telecaster, no Stratocaster, Precision Bass, Jazz Bass, Etc. And if Fender hadn't of become a six string guitar manufacturer and electric bass inventor, they might of become no more than a second rate pedal steel manufacturer after "Slowly" came out and changed every thing, oh, but wait a second here, "Slowly" was played on a Bigsby! Do you see what I'm gettin' at here? No Joaquin Murphy, no pedal steel, solid body guitar, or electric bass. Basically,NO MODERN MUSIC AS WE KNOW IT!!! So it all comes back to Joaquin Murphy. Is this a far fetched idea, or does it have merrit?
chas smith Member From: Encino, CA, USA	posted 24 October 2003 12:07 AM profile Well Chris, nobody appreciates your sentiments more than I do, but we might have to make a couple corrections. http://www.bigsbyguitars.com/history.html Now the way I heard it was,Bigsby was a biker and so was Merle and they met at the track where they struck up a conversation that led to the drawing. The way I heard it was Joaquin's T-8 was the successor to the D-8 lap guitar (not the one that I have which was Dec '48) and either this followed the one with the six regular pegheads and two sticking out the end of the guitar or it was that one, modified. We really have to give Alvino Rey credit for being the most visible player in a position to get a manufacturer, (Gibson, 1938) to put pedals on a guitar. If one person could be called the inventor of the electric bass, it should go to Paul Tutmarc, in 1933. However, the Pantheon of Steel Guitar, in the world-according-to-Chas, has Joaquin up on the top level with Jerry Byrd.
David L. Donald Member From: Koh Samui Island, Thailand	posted 24 October 2003 04:32 AM profile I just got two compilations of Spade Cooley's bands on Amazon. Swinging the Devils Dream and With Tex Williams A Western Swing Dance Date with Spade and Tex. I haven't listened to all 3 cd's completely yet, but what I have heard is very cool stuff. Murph is on a lot of cuts and the other steeler(s) ain't bad either. Some is a bit dated on the corny side of the late 40's but still technically fine arrangments, like indian themed stuff with strings and flutes etc. But there is so much great stuff here, and it really swings. Swinging the Devils Dream has a good booklet of history also. Spade and Tex has some great tunes also. I am glad I got both, for the music and for early Murph.
Jody Carver Member From: The Knight Of Fender Tweed~ Dodger Blue Forever	posted 24 October 2003 07:27 AM profile Chas Thanks for your post.It is nice to see people such as yourself and Michael and Paul Warnik and Mike Black keeping the flame burning. Makes me feel like it was only yesterday. Hi David.

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