When the pedal steel guitar went mainstream
If I were forced to pick the instrument most evocative of the United States, it would have to be the pedal steel guitar. Found in everything – from bluegrass to exotica, these hulking instruments are the very essence of Americana.
The first pedal steels had bodies much like ordinary acoustic guitars. Players held a slide in their left hand to change the instrument’s pitch, meaning that it had to be played sitting down with the instrument laid across the lap. By the 1930s, George Beauchamp and Adolf Rickenbacker were busy finding a way to amplify the guitar.
They eventually came up with the electric pickup, which was first used on lap steel guitars. Manufacturers decided to remove the hollow body and replace it with a slab of wood or metal fitted with electrified pickups. These original lap steels became immensely popular throughout America and gave birth to all manner of picking techniques and tuning variations.
In 1932, Ro-Pat-In (later Rickenbacker) introduced the A22, also known as the Frying Pan. The first electrified string instrument of any kind, the A22, was first employed by Bob Dunn during a session with Milton Brown and His Musical Brownies. Today, that session is regarded as the first commercial recording to feature an electric string instrument. Around this time, the instrument became popular among jazz, swing, Hawaiian, folk and country outfits.
As the instrument evolved, it became associated with several key players, including Alvino Rey, Noel Boggs, Leon McAuliffe, Speedy West, and Joaquin Murphy. Despite their talent, many of these instrumentalists found the lap very limiting as players only had a small selection of basic chords to choose from. Throughout the 1940s, they took things into their own hands, adding extra necks to provide different tunings. Legs were occasionally added, giving birth to the “console” steel.
By the late 1940s, lap virtuoso Nook Boggs had developed a piano-style chordal approach and adopted the first-ever Fender pedal steel. But it was Santo & Johnny who gave the instrument its moment in the sun. In 1953, a steel player called Bud Isaacs attached a single pedal to one of his guitar necks and altered it to change the pitch of two strings simultaneously. With that, the modern pedal steel was born.
A few years later, In 1959, Santo & Johnny recorded Sleepwalk’ using a Bud Isaacs pedal steel guitar. The track rose to number one on the Billboard charts, cementing the pedal steel as America’s most beloved instrument.
