Bill McCloskey
|
Posted 7 Aug 2018 6:11 pm |
|
Bob Schaefer recorded these pieces when he was well into his 70's. Due to illness, he stopped playing professionally in 1960 and opened a machine shop in Texas. Below is the next installment of pieces I'm making available (thanks to Graham Griffin) to the general public for the first time. Bob made these cassettes for his friends. The playing is remarkable and his take on classic tunes is completely unique. Below, you will find his bio.
Bob Schaefer Part 2, Side A: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxgMpEDCxTY
Songs: Someday My Prince Will Come, Pat a Pan, The Shadow of your Smile, Jamaican Farewell, A Walk in the Black Forest, Harlem Nocturne, Island of the Sun, Panhandle Rag, Moonlight Serenade, Westphalia Waltz
Part 2, Side B: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2GtnbG2sQQ
Songs South of the Border, Jean, 3rd Man Theme, Speak Low, Steel'n The Blues, Roomful of Roses, You Alone, Right or Wrong, What is this Thing Called Love
Bio:
In starting this rather lengthy article, I would like to say right off that I am not an expert in musical knowledge, nor am I a professional musician! I am a 75 year old man who has played various versions of Steel Guitar for about 60 years of which 45 years have been spent playing the "Alkire" Eharp tuning with some additions to this tuning that I have made, and this is what I would like to tell about in the event some of you readers might just be interested in regards to this tuning and what it will and won't do etc etc
I started to learn to playa six string Acoustic guitar with a raised nut around 1936 using the A Major high bass tuning. As soon as National came out with a double neck guitar, I got one and tuned the second neck to a B 11th chordal tuning after much experimentation with C# minor and E major tunings. Electric Steel guitar was very popular in the late 30's---early 40's and I had no trouble getting plenty of playing jobs even though I was so poorly educated musically! I began using the A6th tuning most of the time and mistakenly thought that just strumming across the strings would produce an acceptable major chord. Several Piano and Accordion players informed me that this was incorrect and I began to realize that there was a lot more to music than I had previously thought. I made a concerted effort and learned to read musical notation which helped a lot because then I at least realized what not to play etc etc
The next learning curve came in 1948 when I purchased a 4 pedal 8-string guitar. The 4 pedals were double acting in that each one rocked back and forth which made them very versatile allowing many combinations. It allowed me to play many more chords, but still from an A 6th basic tuning. I kept this guitar for four years and played it on many jobs in and around Chicago. It was very heavy, all of the components were made of steel and really built to last. It was made by a very fine gentleman by the name of Herb Hise who was very innovative and held a large number of patents relating to Pedal Steel Guitar even that long ago. Buddy Emmons knew Herb Hise who is now deceased. Herb invented the little lever device that was placed on the right hand end of lap steel's back then. These were sold by Valco Corp. and sold through several of the larger stores. It would produce two tunings beside the basic tuning----E major, A major, and C# minor etc
In 1950 while living in Chicago, I wandered into the EI Rey Music store where one of two partners by the name of Ray Gaitsch was teaching the Alkire Eharp method of playing the Steel Guitar. Ray showed me the concept of the Alkire tuning and what it could do and I was sold immediately because here was a tuning that allowed you to play any chord within it's tonal range that was asked for on a piece of sheet music and not have to omit some of the notes because they weren't available or be tempted to use a different chord of your own choosing. (often incompatible with what the others in the band were playing) and of course the steel guitar stands out quite loudly when a wrong note or chord is played! I took lessons from Ray Gaitsch for several years. The Alkire course helped me a lot and helped my note reading ability as well as learning new chords. It also taught me to play many Classical Songs that I probably would never had the nerve or ability to even try etc etc One of the main reasons all this was so important to me at that time was that small Combo's of that era usually consisted of Piano, Saxophone and Drums, or Accordion, Sax, and Drums and the fourth player was nearly always either a Bass Fiddle or another Horn player. For the Steel player to be accepted into groups like this you had of necessity be able to read music or be able to play anything the main group members decided to play and in the key that they were used to. Groups like this played very little Hawaiian Music excepting for songs like Sweet Lelanie and Blue Hawaii, all songs were pop standards of the day and in Chicago; Polkas were all the rage---live dance music. Small groups also {didn't stay together long because these were the beginning of the World War 2 years and we were all subject to leaving for the military at any time and so players came and went. Hawaiian Trios were popular during this period, and they having only the steel guitar as the lead instrument were able to play their C# minor--A major-E major- C# minor 7th tunings all night long. Many people still play these same tunings today but the more knowledgeable ones do gap pick so that the chords produced are more correct musically. Many tunings other than the ones mentioned have been used successfully on lap steels. Jerry Byrd who plays some of the prettiest music ever produced on a steel guitar has used many different tunings very successfully!
Meanwhile back to the Eharp. I started using the Eharp out on jobs from 1954 till 1960 when because of a rather serious operation, the removal of my right kidney, made me decide to give up my second source of income and I have never played in public since that time. But since 1960 I have experimented quite a lot with ways to get more out of my Eharp Guitar, trying to get more 4 noted chords and come up with ways to cut down on Bar movement plus greater tonal range etc etc So the first thing that I did was to have Len Stadler (Marlen Guitars) build me a double ten pedal guitar with four pedals for the Eharp tuned neck, and six pedals for the A 6th tuned neck (I still hadn't quite gotten the strum strum sound out of my system) This read well on paper, but I soon found out that I could not mix the two plying styles and
gave up on this idea after about one year when another Brainstorm hit me (ha ha) so having seen literature put out by Reece Anderson's M.S.A. Corp. I had him build me a single 12 version of the Eharp. I added one higher and one lower string to give both more chord possibilities and greater tonal range etc I kept this guitar for three years, and by this time I was living in Texas around 1973 and this made it very easy to go over to the M.S.A. factory and order still another BIGGER AND BETTER GUITAR from Reece (all of his guitars were very well made) the result of still more experimentation. This new guitar was a double necked 12 string with eight pedals and four knee levers and thinking one Eharp neck tuned standard, and the other neck tuned an octave lower would open he door to a great new sound and be the last of my ongoing experiments. Hey that didn't quite work out that way. After trying the low octave tuning for just a few hours I knew it would never work as far as playing full chords were concerned (the sound was much too blurry) but would only work when playing low register single note etc etc Heck this was not what I wanted so I did try one other thing and that was to tune the second neck just two and a half tones lower than the standard Eharp neck and this did provide a very pleasant contrasting sound but I soon tired of that too, because I had to learn two different fretboard and note locations---a real pain at times etc etc So now what?
Around 1981 I saw an ad. for a 14 string Sierra Guitar, bought it, and sold my M.S.A. This move to a 14 stringed instrument has been one of the best moves that I could have made as far as MY steel playing goes. This guitar had eight pedals and five knee levers on it, and with the two extra strings I was able to extend the original Eharp tuning two notes higher and two notes lower than its original tuning. Since that time I have purchased another 14 string Sierra with the Gearless Tuning feature which I like. This is most likely my last instrument. I like it a lot!
So now what can be played with this tuning you might ask? Well anything that you might wish to play, and at times have to practice to be able to play the more difficult songs by heart. Songs having ten or more different chords in them are sometimes hard for me to remember without some practice before time. Fast passages in some Classical music also will require some practice so they can be performed smoothly and without a mistake etc etc Most all of the simpler POP, C&W, Waltzes, Hawaiian, etc etc and songs with only three or four chords in them can be easily memorized and or played by ear. Over these many years, I have accumulated a rather large musical library of all types of music dating from way back up to the present time, and I especially like going on through a lot of these songs from time to time. In this regard, reading music is a real help to me because otherwise how could I possibly remember several thousand different songs that I like to play for pass time. Now of course most active players don't have, and don't need to know that many songs. The Professional player of today most likely only needs to know about fifty songs really well to feature him or her on solo, plus perhaps a few more where background playing is required. The dropping of four or five songs a year and replacing them with others works out quite well for most performers. The ability to read musical notation greatly simplifies the learning of new songs, plus you have immediate knowledge of the appropriate chordal harmony intended by the composer of the song. However on those chordally simple songs, songs with only three or four chords in them, it surely is not necessary to see the written music PROVIDED you can play the melody correctly and memorize it. Then of course it is fairly easy to figure out the correct chords to play if you have any kind of ear at all. For those that don't or can't read musical notation, tablature seem to be the best way to record the way a person has played a song so that it is not forgotten. Tab is used by most if not all of today's steel guitar teachers because it is an easy way to show the student where to play certain notes and it shows the fret to play them on. Trouble is that many times the student players will play the songs just that way as the Tab showed---multiply that by the number of different students and they all sound alike---all sound like the teacher that created the Tab. I much prefer that a student first learn to read music, then learn where all the notes are on his guitar on every string, and of course learn chords and where and how they are found on the guitar. Then by just reading the top melody note of the music of a song and with the chord symbol on top he can add the correct sounding harmonies on his own. Most all Fake Books containing a Thousand songs or more are written in this way. It truly is not as difficult as a person would think. We have all heard sayings like I don't read enough music to hurt my playing, but if you think about it, the guitar you play does not know how you learned any particular song. All written music is for, is to first teach you the song, and then it keeps a record of that tune in the event you have forgotten it or a part of it so that you can go back and refresh your memory. Written music should not be used as a crutch to the point where you can't playa song without it. |
|
