console
Console may refer to:
Computing and video games
* System console, a physical device to operate a computer
** Virtual console, a user interface for multiple computer consoles on one device
** Command-line interface, a method of interacting with ...
-type of
steel guitar
A steel guitar ( haw, kīkākila) is any guitar played while moving a steel bar or similar hard object against plucked strings. The bar itself is called a "steel" and is the source of the name "steel guitar". The instrument differs from a conve ...
with pedals and knee levers that change the pitch of certain strings to enable playing more varied and complex music than any previous steel guitar design. Like all steel guitars, it can play unlimited
glissandi
In music, a glissando (; plural: ''glissandi'', abbreviated ''gliss.'') is a glide from one pitch to another (). It is an Italianized musical term derived from the French ''glisser'', "to glide". In some contexts, it is distinguished from the co ...
(sliding notes) and deep vibrati—characteristics it shares with the human voice. Pedal steel is most commonly associated with
American country music
Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated in the Southern and Southwestern United States in the early 1920s. It primarily derives from blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, old- ...
and
Hawaiian music
The music of Hawaii includes an array of traditional and popular styles, ranging from native Hawaiian folk music to modern rock and hip hop. Styles like slack-key guitar are well known worldwide, while Hawaiian-tinged music is a frequent part ...
.
Pedals were added to a
lap steel guitar
The lap steel guitar, also known as a Hawaiian guitar, is a type of steel guitar without pedals that is typically played with the instrument in a horizontal position across the performer's lap. Unlike the usual manner of playing a traditional ...
in 1940, allowing the performer to play a major scale without moving the
bar
Bar or BAR may refer to:
Food and drink
* Bar (establishment), selling alcoholic beverages
* Candy bar
* Chocolate bar
Science and technology
* Bar (river morphology), a deposit of sediment
* Bar (tropical cyclone), a layer of cloud
* Bar (u ...
and also to push the pedals while striking a chord, making passing notes slur or bend up into harmony with existing notes. The latter creates a unique sound that has been popular in country and western music— a sound not previously possible on steel guitars before pedals were added.
From its first use in Hawaii in the 19th century, the steel guitar sound became popular in the United States in the first half of the 20th century and spawned a family of instruments designed specifically to be played with the guitar in a horizontal position, also known as "Hawaiian-style". The first instrument in this chronology was the
Hawaiian guitar
Hawaiian guitar may refer to:
*Lap steel guitar, a type of steel guitar without pedals that is typically played with the instrument in a horizontal position across the performer's lap
*Ukulele
The ukulele ( ; from haw, ukulele , approximately ...
also called a
lap steel
The lap steel guitar, also known as a Hawaiian guitar, is a type of steel guitar without pedals that is typically played with the instrument in a horizontal position across the performer's lap. Unlike the usual manner of playing a traditional a ...
; next was a lap steel with a
resonator
A resonator is a device or system that exhibits resonance or resonant behavior. That is, it naturally oscillates with greater amplitude at some frequencies, called resonant frequencies, than at other frequencies. The oscillations in a resonator ...
to make it louder, first made by
National
National may refer to:
Common uses
* Nation or country
** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen
Places in the United States
* National, Maryland, c ...
and
Dobro
Dobro is an American brand of resonator guitars, currently owned by Gibson and manufactured by its subsidiary Epiphone. The term "dobro" is also used as a generic term for any wood-bodied, single-cone resonator guitar.
The Dobro was originally ...
Corporation. The electric guitar pickup was invented in 1934, allowing steel guitars to be heard equally with other instruments. Electronic amplification enabled subsequent development of the electrified lap steel, then the console steel, and finally the pedal steel guitar.
Playing the pedal steel has unusual physical requirements in requiring simultaneous coordination of both hands, both feet and both knees (knees operate levers on medial and
lateral
Lateral is a geometric term of location which may refer to:
Healthcare
*Lateral (anatomy), an anatomical direction
* Lateral cricoarytenoid muscle
* Lateral release (surgery), a surgical procedure on the side of a kneecap
Phonetics
*Lateral co ...
sides of each knee); the only other instrument with similar requirements is the
American reed organ
The pump organ is a type of free-reed organ that generates sound as air flows past a vibrating piece of thin metal in a frame. The piece of metal is called a reed. Specific types of pump organ include the reed organ, harmonium, and melodeon. T ...
. Pioneers in development of the instrument include
Buddy Emmons
Buddy Gene Emmons (January 27, 1937 – July 21, 2015) was an American musician who is widely regarded as the world's foremost pedal steel guitarist of his day. He was inducted into the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame in 1981.
Affectionately known by ...
,
Jimmy Day
Jimmy Day (born James Clayton Day; 1934–1999) was an American steel guitarist active in the 1950s and 1960s whose career in country music blossomed about the time the pedal steel guitar was invented after pedals were added to the lap steel gui ...
,
Bud Isaacs
Forrest "Bud" Isaacs (1928–2016) was an American steel guitarist who made country music history in 1954 as the first person to play pedal steel guitar on a hit record. He is known for his playing his innovative technique on Webb Pierce's 1954 re ...
,
Zane Beck Zane Beverly Beck (1927–1985) was an American steel guitarist and builder of pedal steel guitars. He is best known for his 1952 innovation of adding knee levers to the pedal steel guitar to alter the pitch of certain strings, a feature which has ...
, and
Paul Bigsby
Paul Adelburt Bigsby (1899–1968) was an American inventor, designer, and pioneer of the solid body electric guitar. Bigsby is best known for having been the designer of the Bigsby vibrato tailpiece (also mislabeled as a tremolo arm) and prop ...
. In addition to American country music, the instrument is used in sacred music in the eastern and southern United States (called Sacred Steel),
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...
, and
Nigerian Music
The music of Nigeria includes many kinds of folk and popular music, styles of folk music are related to the multitudes of ethnic groups in the country, each with their own techniques, instruments, and songs. Little is known about the country's ...
.
Early history and evolution
In the late 19th century, Spanish guitars were introduced in the Hawaiian Islands by European sailors and Mexican "vaqueros". Hawaiians did not embrace the standard guitar tuning that had been in use upon their introduction. Rather, they re-tuned the guitars to make them sound a major chord when all six strings were strummed, now known as an " open tuning". The term for this is "
slack-key
Slack-key guitar (from Hawaiian ''kī hōalu'', which means "loosen the uningkey") is a fingerstyle genre of guitar music that originated in Hawaii after Portuguese cowboys introduced Spanish guitars there in the late 19th century. The Hawaiian ...
" because certain strings were "slackened" to achieve it. To change chords, they used some smooth object, usually a piece of pipe or metal, sliding it over the strings to the fourth or fifth position, easily playing a three-chord song. It is physically difficult to hold a steel bar against the strings while holding the guitar against the body and the Hawaiians laid the guitar across the lap and played it while sitting. Playing this way became popular throughout Hawaii and spread internationally.
Electrific amplification
Hawaiian lap steel guitars were not loud enough to compete with other instruments, a problem that many inventors were trying to remedy. In Los Angeles in the 1920s, a steel guitar player named George Beauchamp saw some inventions which added a
horn
Horn most often refers to:
*Horn (acoustic), a conical or bell shaped aperture used to guide sound
** Horn (instrument), collective name for tube-shaped wind musical instruments
*Horn (anatomy), a pointed, bony projection on the head of various ...
, like a megaphone, to steel guitars to make them louder. Beauchamp became interested, and went to a shop near his home to learn more. The shop was owned by a violin repairman named
John Dopyera
John Dopyera ( Slovak: ''Ján Dopjera''; 1893–1988) was a Slovak-American inventor and entrepreneur, and a maker of stringed instruments. His inventions include the resonator guitar and important contributions in the early development of the ...
. Dopyera and his brother Rudy, showed Beauchamp a prototype of theirs which looked like a big
Victrola
The Victor Talking Machine Company was an American recording company and phonograph manufacturer that operated independently from 1901 until 1929, when it was acquired by the Radio Corporation of America and subsequently operated as a subsidi ...
horn attached to a guitar, but it was not successful. Their next attempt yielded some success with a resonator cone, resembling a large metal loudspeaker, attached under the bridge of the guitar. Buoyed by their success, Beauchamp joined the Dopyera brothers in forming a company to pursue their invention. The new resonator invention was promoted at a lavish party in Los Angeles and demonstrated by the well-known Hawaiian steel player
Sol Hoopii
Sol or SOL may refer to:
Astronomy
* The Sun
Currency
* SOL Project, a currency project in France
* French sol, or sou
* Argentine sol
* Bolivian sol, the currency of Bolivia from 1827 to 1864
* Peruvian sol, introduced in 1991
* Peruvian sol ...
. An investor wrote a check for $12,000 that very night.
A factory was built to manufacture metal-body guitars with the new resonators. Money problems and disagreements followed, and the Doperyas won a legal battle against Beauchamp over the company, then went on their own to form "the Dobro Corporation",
Dobro
Dobro is an American brand of resonator guitars, currently owned by Gibson and manufactured by its subsidiary Epiphone. The term "dobro" is also used as a generic term for any wood-bodied, single-cone resonator guitar.
The Dobro was originally ...
being an acronym for DOpyera and BROthers. Beauchamp was out of a job. He had been thinking about an "electric guitar" for years, and at least part of the dispute with the Dopyeras was over him spending too much time on the electrification idea and not enough on improving the resonator guitar. Beauchamp enrolled in electronics courses and, for his first effort, he made a single-string guitar out of a 2x4 piece of lumber and experimented with phonograph pickups, but had no success. He eventually came up with the idea of using two horseshoe magnets encircling the guitar strings like a bracelet, and six small metal rods wrapped with wire to concentrate the magnetic field (one under each guitar string).
When connected to an electronic amplifier and loudspeaker, it worked. He enlisted the aid of a skilled craftsman to fashion a guitar neck and body to connect to his device. The final construct, he thought, resembled a frying pan, and that is what the instrument was nicknamed. He applied for patent June 2, 1934 and received it on August 10, 1937. Beauchamp asked a nearby engineer named
Adolph Rickenbacker
Adolph Rickenbacker (April 1, 1887 – March 21, 1976) was a Swiss-American electrical engineer who co-founded the Rickenbacker guitar company along with George Beauchamp and Paul Barth.
Rickenbacker was born in Basel, Switzerland as Adolf Ric ...
to help manufacture the product and together they founded a company first named "Ro-Pat-In", soon changed to "ElectroString". The guitar brand was called "Rickenbacker" because they thought the name was easier to pronounce than "Beauchamp" (pronounced Beecham) and because Adolph's cousin,
Eddie Rickenbacker
Edward Vernon Rickenbacker or Eddie Rickenbacker (October 8, 1890 – July 23, 1973) was an American fighter pilot in World War I and a Medal of Honor recipient.
In 1931, the
Great Depression
The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...
was at its worst, and people were not buying guitars; in addition, the patent office delayed on the application, in part because they had no category for the invention—was it a musical instrument or an electrical device? Electrostring's competitors infringed on the patent, but the owners did not have the money to litigate the infringements. Beauchamp was ultimately deprived of economic benefit for his invention because his competitors rapidly improved on it making his specific patent obsolete. Electrostring's most successful product was the Hawaiian guitar (lap steel) A22 "Frying Pan", the first electrified instrument of any kind — made with a metal body, smaller than a traditional Spanish guitar, to be played on the musician's lap.
Two additional breakthroughs emerged: One, the
guitar amplifier
A guitar amplifier (or amp) is an electronic device or system that strengthens the electrical signal from a pickup on an electric guitar, bass guitar, or acoustic guitar so that it can produce sound through one or more loudspeakers, which a ...
, which had to be purchased in order to use the invention; and two, perhaps unrealized at the time, that electrified guitars no longer had to have the traditional guitar shape—this profoundly influenced electric guitar designs forever forward.
Lap steel
The first lap steels had a smaller body, but still retained a guitar-like shape. Instrument makers rapidly began making them into a rectangular block of wood with an electric pickup, the precursor of the pedal steel. According to music writer Michael Ross, the first electrified stringed instrument on a commercial recording was a western swing tune by Bob Dunn in 1935. He recorded with
Milton Brown
Milton Brown (September 8, 1903 – April 18, 1936) was an American band leader and vocalist who co-founded the genre of Western swing. His band was the first to fuse hillbilly hokum, jazz, and pop together into a unique, distinctly American hy ...
and his Musical Brownies. Brown has been called "The father of western swing" The inherent limitation of the lap steel was its constraint to very limited chords not changeable during a performance without re-tuning. For that reason, scores of different tunings are available for lap steel players.
Lap steel becomes console steel
The next problem to be dealt with was the need to play with different
voicings
''Voicings'' was the last recording by the Minneapolis jazz vocal group Rio Nido. The album was one of the early recordings to feature live "direct to digital" recording techniques.
Track listing
# "Northern Lights" (D. Karr, L. Ball)
# "I'm ...
on the same guitar; i.e., the way the strings are tuned. The only way to accomplish this at the time was the addition of a duplicate neck and strings on the same instrument, tuned differently. Players continued to add more necks, eventually getting up to four. This meant a bigger and heavier instrument, now called a "console" which necessitated putting it on a stand or legs rather than the performer's lap.
Noel Boggs
Noel Edwin Boggs (1917–1974) was an American musician who was a virtuoso on the lap steel guitar and a member of the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame. He was one of the pioneers in electric steel guitar who helped popularize the instrument beyond i ...
, a lap steel player with
Bob Wills
James Robert Wills (March 6, 1905 – May 13, 1975) was an American Western swing musician, songwriter, and bandleader. Considered by music authorities as the founder of Western swing, he was known widely as the King of Western Swing (although ...
, received the first steel guitar made by instrument maker
Leo Fender
Clarence Leonidas Fender (August 10, 1909 – March 21, 1991) was an American inventor known for designing the Fender Stratocaster. He also founded the Fender Musical Instruments Corporation. In January 1965, he sold Fender to CBS, and later foun ...
in 1953. Fender relied on prominent performers to field test his instruments. Boggs was one of the first players to switch to a different neck during a solo.
Leon McAuliffe
William Leon McAuliffe (January 3, 1917 – August 20, 1988) was an American Western swing guitarist who was a member of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys during the 1930s. He was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a me ...
, composer of "
Steel Guitar Rag
"Steel Guitar Rag" is the seminal Western swing instrumental credited with popularizing the steel guitar as an integral instrument in a Western band.
Written by Leon McAuliffe, it was first recorded by Bob Wills and The Texas Playboys
James ...
", also played with Bob Wills, and used a multi-neck steel guitar. When Wills said his well-known tag line, "Take it away, Leon", he was referring to McAuliffe. A
Fender Stringmaster
The Fender Stringmaster is a series of console steel guitars produced by Fender from 1953 to 1980.
Models were available with two, three and four necks, each neck with eight strings. The four neck version, known as the ''quad'' or Q-8, was di ...
triple-neck console steel was heard in a number one hit song in 1959,"
Sleep Walk
Sleepwalking, also known as somnambulism or noctambulism, is a phenomenon of combined sleep and wakefulness. It is classified as a sleep disorder belonging to the parasomnia family. It occurs during slow wave stage of sleep, in a state of low ...
", a steel guitar instrumental by
Santo and Johnny
Santo & Johnny were an American rock and roll instrumental duo of Italian descent from Brooklyn, New York, composed of brothers Santo Farina (born October 24, 1937) and Johnny Farina (born April 30, 1941).
They are known best for their instrum ...
, the Farina Brothers.
Console steel becomes pedal steel
The expense of building multiple necks on the same instrument made them unaffordable for most players, and a more sophisticated solution was needed. At this point, the goal was simply to create a pedal that would change the pitch of all the strings at once to emulate a second neck. In 1939, a guitar called the "Electradaire" featured a pedal controlling a solenoid, triggering an electrical apparatus to change the tension on the strings. This was not successful. That same year, bandleader
Alvino Rey
Alvin McBurney (July 1, 1908 – February 24, 2004), known by his stage name Alvino Rey, was an American jazz guitarist and bandleader.
Career
Alvin McBurney was born in Oakland, California, United States, but grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. Early i ...
worked with a machinist to design pedals to change the pitch of strings but was without success. The Harlan Brothers of
Indianapolis
Indianapolis (), colloquially known as Indy, is the state capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Indiana and the seat of Marion County. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the consolidated population of Indianapolis and Marion ...
created the "Multi-Kord" with a universal pedal that could fairly easily be configured to adjust the pitch of any or all strings, but was extremely hard to push when tensioning all strings at once. The
Gibson Guitar Company
Gibson Brands, Inc. (formerly Gibson Guitar Corporation) is an American manufacturer of guitars, other musical instruments, and professional audio equipment from Kalamazoo, Michigan, and now based in Nashville, Tennessee. The company was former ...
introduced the "Electraharp" in 1940, which featured pedals radially oriented from a single axis at the instrument's left rear leg. The instrument was not popular and only 43 were sold before production was halted, but the U.S. entry into World War II played a part in lack of demand. After WW II, Gibson redesigned and reintroduced the Electraharp and Bud Isaacs used one on the song "
Big Blue Diamonds
"Big Blue Diamonds" is a song written by Earl J. (Kit) Carson in 1950 and published by Lois Music, BMI. It was first recorded by the country singer, Red Perkins, and originally issued as a 78 rpm single on King Records #903 b/w "Rag Man Boogie" ...
" for King Records. The most successful pedal system from the various contenders was designed about 1948 by
Paul Bigsby
Paul Adelburt Bigsby (1899–1968) was an American inventor, designer, and pioneer of the solid body electric guitar. Bigsby is best known for having been the designer of the Bigsby vibrato tailpiece (also mislabeled as a tremolo arm) and prop ...
, a motorcycle shop foreman and racer who also invented the commercially successful Spanish guitar vibrato tailpiece. Bigsby put pedals on a rack between the two front legs of the steel guitar. The pedals operated a mechanical linkage to apply tension to raise the pitch of the strings.
Bigsby built guitars incorporating his design for the foremost steel players of the day, including
Speedy West
Wesley Webb West (January 25, 1924 – November 15, 2003), better known as Speedy West, was an American pedal steel guitarist and record producer. He frequently played with Jimmy Bryant, both in their own duo and as part of the regular Capitol ...
,
Noel Boggs
Noel Edwin Boggs (1917–1974) was an American musician who was a virtuoso on the lap steel guitar and a member of the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame. He was one of the pioneers in electric steel guitar who helped popularize the instrument beyond i ...
, and
Bud Isaacs
Forrest "Bud" Isaacs (1928–2016) was an American steel guitarist who made country music history in 1954 as the first person to play pedal steel guitar on a hit record. He is known for his playing his innovative technique on Webb Pierce's 1954 re ...
, but Bigsby was a one-man operation working out of his garage at age 56, and not capable of keeping up with demand. One of Bigsby's first guitars was used on " Candy Kisses" in 1949 by Eddie Kirk. The second model Bigsby made went to Speedy West, who used it extensively.
Pedal steel in country music: the birth of a new sound
In 1953, Bud Isaacs received one of Bigsby's new creations, a double-neck steel which featured pedals to change the pitch of only two strings. Isaacs was the first to push the pedal while notes were still sounding. Other steel players strictly avoided doing this, because it was considered "un-Hawaiian". When Isaacs first used the setup on the 1953 recording of
Webb Pierce
Michael Webb Pierce (August 8, 1921 – February 24, 1991) was an American honky-tonk vocalist, songwriter and guitarist of the 1950s, one of the most popular of the genre, charting more number one hits than any other country artist during the ...
's song " Slowly", he pushed the pedal while playing a chord, so notes could be heard bending up from below into the existing chord to harmonize with the other strings, creating a stunning effect which had not been possible with the older (non-pedal) lap steels. Of this recording of "Slowly", steel guitar virtuoso Lloyd Green said, "This fellow, Bud Isaacs, had thrown a new tool into musical thinking about the steel with the advent of this record that still reverberates to this day." It was the birth of the future sound of country music and caused a virtual revolution among steel players who wanted to duplicate it.
Also in the 1950s, steel guitar hall-of-famer
Zane Beck Zane Beverly Beck (1927–1985) was an American steel guitarist and builder of pedal steel guitars. He is best known for his 1952 innovation of adding knee levers to the pedal steel guitar to alter the pitch of certain strings, a feature which has ...
added knee levers to the pedal steel guitar capable of bending notes downward. The player can move each knee either right, left or up (depending on the model) triggering different pitch changes. The levers function basically the same as foot pedals, and may be used alone, in combination with the other knee, or more commonly, in combination with one or two foot pedals. They were first added to Ray Noren's console steel. Initially, the knee levers just lowered the pitch, but in later years with refinements, could raise or lower pitch.
Buddy Emmons' contributions to pedal steel
When "Slowly" was released, Bigsby was in the process of building a guitar for steel virtuoso Buddy Emmons. Emmons heard Isaacs' performance on the song, and told Bigsby to make his guitar setup to split the function of Isaacs' single pedal into two pedals, each controlling a different string. This gave the advantages of making chords without having to slant or move the bar, e.g., minors and suspended chords.
Jimmy Day
Jimmy Day (born James Clayton Day; 1934–1999) was an American steel guitarist active in the 1950s and 1960s whose career in country music blossomed about the time the pedal steel guitar was invented after pedals were added to the lap steel gui ...
, another prominent steel player of the day, did the same thing, but reversed which strings were affected by the two pedals. This prompted future manufacturers to ask customers if they wanted a "Day" or an "Emmons" setup. In 1957, Emmons partnered with guitarist/machinist Harold "Shot" Jackson to form the
Sho-Bud
Sho-Bud is a brand name for a manufacturer of pedal steel guitars that was founded by Shot Jackson and Buddy Emmons in 1955 in Madison, Tennessee.
History
In the early 1950s Shot installed string pullers with pedals on Fender, Rickenbacker, an ...
company, the first company devoted solely to pedal steel guitar manufacture.
Emmons made other innovations to the steel guitar, adding two additional strings (known as "chromatics") and a third pedal, changes which have been adopted as standard in the modern-day E9 instrument. The additional strings allow the player to play a major scale without moving the bar. He also developed and patented a mechanism to raise and lower the pitch of a string on a steel guitar and return to the original pitch without going out of tune. The Sho-Bud instruments of the day had all the latest features: 10 strings, the third pedal, and the knee levers.
Modern pedal steel
The pedal steel continues to be an instrument in transition. In the United States, as of 2017, the E9 neck is more common, but most pedal steels still have two necks. The C6 is typically used for western swing music and the E9 neck is more often used for country music. The different necks have distinctly different voicings. The C6 has a wider pitch range than the E9, mostly on the lower notes.
Certain players prefer different setups regarding which function the pedals and levers perform, and which string tuning is preferred. In the early 1970s, musician Tom Bradshaw coined the term ''
copedent
Copedent is a term used to describe the tuning and pedal arrangement on a pedal steel guitar and is unique to that instrument. Typically expressed in the form of a table or chart, the word is a portmanteau of "''chord–pedal–arrangement'' and ...
'' ( ), a portmanteau of "chord-pedal-arrangement". Often represented in table form, it is a way of specifying the instrument's tuning, pedal and lever setup, string gauges and string windings.
There are proponents of a " universal tuning" to combine the two most popular modern tunings (E9 and C6) into a single 12 or 14-string neck that encompasses some features of each. It was developed by Maurice Anderson and later modified by Larry Bell. By lowering the C6 tuning a half-step to make it a B6, many commonalities with the E9 tuning are achieved on the same neck and it is called the E9/B6 tuning.
Use in non-traditional genres
The pedal steel most commonly associated with American country music, but it is also sometimes heard in jazz, sacred music, popular music,
nu jazz
Nu jazz (also known as jazztronica, or future jazz) is a genre of jazz and electronic music. The music blends jazz elements with other musical styles, such as funk, electronic music, and free improvisation.Definition from Sergey Chernov, June 7, ...
, and African music.
In the United States in the 1930s, during the steel guitar's wave of popularity, the instrument was introduced into the ''House of God'', a branch of an African-American
Pentecostal
Pentecostalism or classical Pentecostalism is a Protestant Charismatic Christian movement
denomination, based primarily in Nashville and
Indianapolis
Indianapolis (), colloquially known as Indy, is the state capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Indiana and the seat of Marion County. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the consolidated population of Indianapolis and Marion ...
. The sound bore no resemblance to typical American country music. The steel guitar was embraced by the congregation and often took the place of an organ. The first documented use of a pedal (rather than lap) steel in this tradition was in 1952, but it did not become
common until the early 1970s. This musical genre, known as " Sacred Steel" was largely unknown until, in the 1980s, a minister's son named Robert Randolph took up the instrument as a teenager, and has popularized it and received critical acclaim as a musician. Neil Strauss, writing in the ''New York Times'', called Randolph "one of the most original and talented pedal steel guitarists of his generation.
The pedal steel guitar became a signature component of Nigerian
Juju music
''Juju Music'' is the 1982 major label debut of Nigerian jùjú band King Sunny Adé and His African Beats. It was produced by keyboard player Martin Meissonnier, who introduced synthesizers and Linn drums into Adé's established juju sound. ...
in the late 1970s. Nigerian bandleader
King Sunny Adé
Chief Sunday Adeniyi Adegeye (born 22 September 1946), known professionally as King Sunny Adé, is a Nigerian jùjú singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. He is regarded as one of the first African pop musicians to gain international s ...
featured pedal steel guitar in his 17 piece band, which, wrote ''New York Times'' reviewer Jon Pareles, introduces "a twang or two from American blues and country" Norwegian jazz trumpeter
Nils Petter Molvaer
Nils is a Scandinavian given name, a chiefly Norwegian, Danish, Swedish and Latvian variant of Niels, cognate to Nicholas.
People and animals with the given name
* Nils Bergström (born 1985), Swedish ice hockey player
*Nils Björk (1898–1989), ...
, considered a pioneer of Future jazz (a fusion of jazz and electronic music), released the album ''Switch'', which features the pedal steel guitar.
See also
*
Steel guitar
A steel guitar ( haw, kīkākila) is any guitar played while moving a steel bar or similar hard object against plucked strings. The bar itself is called a "steel" and is the source of the name "steel guitar". The instrument differs from a conve ...
*
Console steel guitar
The console steel guitar is any type of electric steel guitar that is built in a frame supported by legs. It may be a lap steel or a pedal steel. Console steel guitars are typically heavier instruments that have multiple necks and/or more than six ...
*
Lap steel guitar
The lap steel guitar, also known as a Hawaiian guitar, is a type of steel guitar without pedals that is typically played with the instrument in a horizontal position across the performer's lap. Unlike the usual manner of playing a traditional ...
*
Electric guitar
An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar (however combinations of the two - a semi-acoustic guitar and an electric acoustic gui ...
*
Frying pan (guitar)
The Rickenbacker Electro A-22, nicknamed the "Frying Pan" is the first electric lap steel guitar. Developed in 1931/1932, it received its patent in August 1937.
A previous attempt, the Stromberg company‘s transducer-based "Stromberg Electro", ...
*
Resonator guitar
A resonator guitar or resophonic guitar is an acoustic guitar that produces sound by conducting string vibrations through the bridge to one or more spun metal cones (resonators), instead of to the guitar's sounding board (top). Resonator gui ...
Slide guitar
Slide guitar is a technique for playing the guitar that is often used in blues music. It involves playing a guitar while holding a hard object (a slide) against the strings, creating the opportunity for glissando effects and deep vibratos tha ...