“Really beautiful”: the 1957 pedal steel performance Jerry Garcia said no one has matched
There are countless rabbit holes and niche sub-scenes across the musical landscape, and throughout his extensive voyages of acid-fueled musical discovery, Grateful Dead hero Jerry Garcia explored as many of them as it is possible for one man to do. Among those musical niches that he adored, of course, was the pedal steel guitar.
A curious-looking contraption, the pedal steel guitar is a pretty self-explanatory instrument. Instead of being played upright, like a traditional steel guitar, the advent of the pedals, à la keyboard, dictated that the pedal steel be played horizontally on one’s lap.
While it was never going to be the most popular or widespread instrument in the world, its early emergence at the beginning of the 1940s revolutionised the realms of country, bluegrass, and even traditional Hawaiian music.
Inevitably, though, the pedal steel guitar’s ability to administer continuous sliding notes and very specific vibrato meant that it coupled very well with the world of blues. Although the guitar remained the weapon of choice for most blues legends throughout the 1940s and beyond, there were a few pioneering figures who combined those traditional 12-bar sounds with the unmistakable sounds of a pedal steel guitar.
Given his interest in the instrument and his impressively deep-rooted knowledge of its history, Jerry Garcia tended to seek out that smattering of steel pedal blues records. After all, the spark for the Dead’s emergence might have been drenched in LSD and hallucinogenic trips, but the root of their sound – like all great rock outfits – was invariably the blues.
“There’s a Chuck Berry recording where he plays pedal steel on a 12-bar blues,” Garcia shared of his expertise during a 1971 interview. “It’s called ‘Deep Feeling,’ and it’s on the other side of one of those famous cuts.” That track first appeared back in 1957, on the B-side of Berry’s ‘School Day (Ring! Ring! Goes The Bell)’ – whether or not that track could be described as one of his more “famous cuts” is a different debate.
Either way, as Garcia explained, “You’ll know right away what it is, although you’ve heard it before and probably didn’t recognise what it was.”
Adding, “You probably thought it was just an extremely well-articulated guitar or maybe slide guitar. But you listen to it, and it’s pedal steel.” As it turns out, Chuck Berry’s six-stringed skills were not entirely limited to his upright Gibson ES-350T.
“He plays it in a way that nobody else plays it, and it’s really beautiful,” the songwriter continued. “There are other guys who play pedal steel blues, but nobody’s been able to get out of that stiff phrasing.”
Berry’s unique pedal steel playing style ended up becoming a major influence on Jerry Garcia, in fact, spurring him on to play the instrument in the Grateful Dead offshoot band New Riders of the Purple Sage during the early 1970s.
