The Big E
By the 1940s, making sliding sounds with bars and bottlenecks on guitars in the blues or Hawaiian traditions was not a new concept. But any guitarist who has dabbled in playing ‘slide’ knows it’s harder than it looks. Standard tuning (EABDGB) often doesn’t really work. Using open tunings (e.g., all strings tuned to intervals found in a major chord such as open G: DGDGBD) opens up greater possibilities, but still comes with challenges for playing chords in musically flexible ways; options are bound by the limited range of notes that can be produced with the slide or bar placed on a single fret. Using bar slants only helps up to a point.
In a bid to increase the flexibility of the instrument, early pioneers like Paul Bigsby began fitting mechanical levers and pedals to guitars to enable players to change the tension on certain strings to offer different tuning possibilities that could be implemented on the fly. Players would typically engage or disengage these devices between songs to work with the tuning that provided the best fit with the song and key. That was until Webb Pierce released the single “Slowly” in 1954. The introduction featured a solo steel guitar part with Bud Isaac using a move from a I to a IV chord and back that clearly wasn’t due to the sliding of the bar, but to the movement of a pedal. So, the story goes, as soon as Slowly hit the airwaves, every steel player with an eye on the future had to somehow get that change onto their guitar. Within the next few years, 8-string instruments were converted into the now standard 10-strings, and different combinations of changes were trialled and implemented by the top pros all searching for that new never-heard before signature lick to play on the next country hit. Steel players were now incorporating pedal and knee-lever changes into their playing in real time as part of a flexible system that offered up almost limitless chordal possibilities while producing the now classic ‘crying’ steel tones that have become synonymous with country music.
A giant of the steel guitar world who lived through and was responsible for many of the innovations that led to the modern steel guitar design and sound was Buddy Emmons. Born in Michigan, Buddy was a child prodigy who moved to Nashville as a teen to work with Little Jimmy Dickens and subsequently enjoyed stints with Ernest Tubb’s Troubadours, then Ray Price’s Cherokee Cowboys, the hottest country bands of the time. He later spent time doing session work in California before a lengthy stint in the Everly Brothers’ band alongside Albert Lee on guitar (what an experience that must have been to hear live). Buddy was a rare combination of musical virtuoso and expert technician. Not only was he a pioneer in developing the standard approach to the changes that define the E9 tuning, he was commonly regarded as one of the greatest players of his time (many would say the greatest of all time). On top of that, he was instrumental in designing the mechanics of the instrument itself as part of first the Sho-Bud, then the Emmons guitar companies.
The life of Buddy Emmons’, or “The Big E” as he was affectionately known is the subject of a recent biography written by Steve Fishell, a Nashville producer and fine steel player in his own right. Steve has drawn on extensive research, interviews with Buddy’s contemporaries, excerpts from Buddy’s own unfinished memoirs and their long friendship to produce an engaging insight into the life of a modern musical pioneer. His story offers a unique insight into that golden age of country music and the evolution of the instrument that helped to define it. Five stars.
Official Buddy Emmons website Source of the cover photo of Buddy and much additional content of interest
