From Singing to Cryin'

From Singing to Cryin’: Towards an Understanding of The Steel Guitar in Country Music 1915-1935 Daniel Neill, Memorial University of Newfoundland Possibilities for research about the steel guitar are working towards an understanding of why the steel limitless. Apart from its musical complexities, the guitar, which enjoyed such faddish popularity in the instrument raises questions about the nature of popu- early 20th Century, has endured as an integral sound lar culture, invention and the aesthetics of acculturat- in country music after falling out of favour with ed music, all of which are worthy of study. (Kahn many other popular genres. 1976, 6) In November of 1979 the journal of the Hawaiian Popular Perception of the Steel Guitar Music Foundation, Ha’Ilono Mele, reprinted an article originally from the Detroit News entitled “Man One does not have to look far to find references to the Who Gave Steel Guitar to Nashville Dies”. In the sound of the steel guitar as a cornerstone of country story, credit for the steel guitar’s historic and indis- music. pensable role in country music is placed firmly and When Hollywood or Madison Avenue wants you solely in the hands of Hawaiian immigrant and long- to think of Nashville country music, they trundle time Flint, Michigan, resident Rudy Waikuiki. It is out the steel guitars. True, they may throw in ban- claimed by the author that Waikuiki’s influence on jo, fiddle and (straight) guitar. But the overriding Beecher “Pete” Kirby (a.k.a. Bashful Brother Os- sound will be the characteristic whine of the steel wald), who would go on to play Dobro for Roy guitar as its been played in Music City since the Acuff), is the reason that the steel guitar became late 40s. (Kienzle 1980, 28) popular in country music. According to the Detroit Also in 1980, Stephen Holden of the New York News, in 1929, Oswald, like many other Southerners, Times deduced that country music’s new wave of had moved from his home in Tennessee to Flint, popularity was both a reaction to the fad of disco as Michigan, in search of work in the auto industry. well as a musical reinforcement of patriotic tradition- When Oswald’s quest for factory work failed, he alist ideals. He observed that “where disco's charac- used his skills as a guitarist and banjoist to make a teristic instrument was the spacey synthesizer, and living performing at house parties hosted by other new wave's an agitated bass guitar, country's essential recently migrated Southerners. It was there that he sound is the nostalgic sigh of a pedal steel guitar” encountered Waikuiki, became obsessed with the (1980, 29). sound of the Hawaiian guitar, and, according to the Broadly speaking, fretting the strings on a guitar Detroit News, single-handedly popularized it with with steel allows for greater volume and clarity of Roy Acuff. tone, more ability for ornamentations like vibrato and The narrative of the aforementioned article, while glissando, and maximum sustain of a note (Kahn providing some interesting facts on a particular in- 1976, 6). These traits allow for a guitar to be a more stance of cultural exchange between Hawaiian and expressive instrument in many respects, but most of North American music, oversimplifies and mytholo- all, they give the guitar the ability to mimic the quali- gizes this interaction for the sake of an obituary for ties of a human voice. This ability was increased fur- Mr. Waikuiki. There is a palpable sense that the au- ther with the introduction of electrical amplification thor is attempting to elevate the contributions of both in the early 1930s, but references to the “singing”, Waikuiki and Bashful Brother Oswald for the pur- “crying”, “whining,” and “sighing” of the steel guitar poses of attracting the interest of readers with a nice are easily found decades earlier. tidy fact of music history for conversation. Unfortu- In 1916, the sound of the Hawaiian guitar in a Los nately (or maybe fortunately for a musicologist), Angeles production of The Bird of Paradise was de- facts of music history are rarely tidy or straightfor- scribed as “the haunting, yearning cry of steel pressed ward and rarely emerge from dialogue between only against the strings of a guitar” (Los Angeles Times two people. As an example of cultural exchange in- 1916, 4). The ability of the steel guitar to emulate the volving race, class, imperialism, commercialization, cry of a human voice made it particularly useful in and mass media, the musical paths travelled by the styles of music which sought to express loss and steel guitar have been no different. heartache. Ray Charles, whose album Modern A critical reading of the Detroit News article rais- Sounds in Country and Western Music highlighted es many questions. This paper is the first step in the common ground between country, soul, and R&B 1 Canadian Folk Music 48.3/48.4 (Fall-Winter 2014) music, was initially drawn to country music because Kekuku actually got the idea to play the guitar with a the musicians “made them steel guitars cry and steel bar from a young stowaway from India who was whine, and it really attracted me” (Chappelle and casually applying gottuvadyam1 technique to a guitar Garofalo 1977, 243). (1976, 5-6). This meeting is supposed to have taken More recently, Joli Jensen described the role of place in 1884, and Kekuku is credited with “invent- the steel guitar as popularized in the influential ing” the Hawaiian guitar in 1885. If Kekuku did in honky-tonk music of Hank Williams: “The pain that fact appropriate gottuvadyam technique and use it to permeates the honky-tonk genre is condensed, I “invent” the Hawaiian steel guitar, it would be the think, in the sound of the steel. It stands for, invokes, first of many types of acculturation the instrument and evokes emotional intensity. The steel guitar of- has been subject to, and when one considers the mu- fers the wail of love and loss that men are too stoic to sical impact of the steel guitar, it becomes a moment express directly, that they try to drown in beer and of unacknowledged importance in American popular whiskey, that they live with and cannot leave behind” music history. (1998, 33). Similarly, Canadian pedal steel guitarist Edward “Pee Wee Charles” Ringwald starkly de- Hawaiian Music on the Mainland scribed the sound of the steel guitar as “the sound of rock-bottom loneliness and heart stabbing isolation. Although the first “Hawaiian music craze” is usually It’s the soundtrack to ecstatic self-pity – the musical cited as occurring between 1910 and 1920, Hawaiian glue holding together the emotion of a song” (Inter- culture and music were present on the mainland be- national Musician 2014,17). fore the turn of the century. America had been politi- cally involved with Hawaii since the 1880s, and Origins of the Hawaiian Steel Guitar eventually annexed the island as a U.S. territory in 1898. Tin Pan Alley songwriters began writing Ha- The physical and musical journey of the steel guitar waiian-themed songs as early as 1896 with titles like and its often fleeting presence in a number of genres “My Honolulu Queen”, “My Gal From Honolulu”, has been fascinating. In less than a century it has de- and “Ginger Lou” often resembling Hawaiian-themed veloped from a slightly modified six-stringed acous- coon songs. Recordings of Hawaiian music were tic guitar into a mechanically complex and musically made by the Edison Company in San Francisco as versatile electrified instrument with up to fourteen early as 1899, but the oldest surviving Hawaiian re- strings. Its musical usage has followed diverse paths cordings were issued by Victor in 1904 (Garrett from its traditional Hawaiian folk roots to many gen- 2008, 168-72). John Troutman’s research places res of Western vernacular and popular music as well troupes of Hawaiian musicians and dancers in the as the sacred steel guitar traditions of the churches of American South as early as 1893 (2013, 32). It the House of God and Church of the Living God. wasn’t until almost two decades later, on September The steel guitar is unique in that its rapid evolution in 11, 1911, that the first staging of the musical The terms of physical form, musical configuration, and Bird of Paradise in Los Angeles (and later on Broad- musical usage have been largely dictated by the de- way) brought Hawaiian music and culture to the mands of the North American popular music indus- masses and awakened an appetite for the exotic in the try. While it is of utmost importance to the sacred American popular imagination. The immense popu- steel tradition, steel guitar’s relationship with country larity of The Bird of Paradise and many subsequent music has been the most enduring within the realm of imitations helped to introduce the sounds of Hawai- popular culture. ian music and the Hawaiian guitar to many parts of Guitar-like instruments were introduced to the North America (Garrett 2008, 178-179). In 1915, the Hawaiian islands by Spanish and Portuguese sailors Panama-Pacific International Exhibition in San Fran- and Mexican cowboys during the first half of the cisco included a “Hawaiian Pavillion” for the purpos- 1800s. John Troutman cites an 1840 advertisement es of increasing knowledge and understanding of the for guitar strings in a Hawaiian newspaper called The islands, and to promote them as a tourist destination Polynesian as the first proof of guitars on Hawaiian (Garrett 2008, 184). As opposed to other foreign eth- soil (2013, 29-30).

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