The Greatest Blues Machine

Bill McCloskey · Posted 18 Dec 2005 8:37 am

I'm sitting here working out Allman Brothers, SRV, BB King, and other blues licks on my universal and I have to admit, I'm astonished more people don't use Pedal Steel as the ultimate blues machine. A little sustain, and it is just mindblowing what can be achieved.

Bobby Lee · From: Cloverdale, California, USA

I absolutely agree. I play Extended E9th. Once you add that low E string, the pedal steel becomes the ultimate blues guitar. No effects necessary - just hook into a good tube amp and wail.

I sometimes use a glass bar and take my foot off of the volume pedal for a more bluesy sound.

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Bobby Lee (a.k.a. b0b) - email: quasar@b0b.com - gigs - CDs, Open Hearts
Williams D-12 E9, C6add9, Sierra Olympic S-12 (F Diatonic)
Sierra Laptop S-8 (E6add9), Fender Stringmaster D-8 (E13, C6 or A6) My Blog

Mike Perlowin · From: Los Angeles CA

I agree too, For most of 2001 I played in a blues rock band. We did absolutely no country, not even country rock. It was all Hendrix and Cream and Zep and hard core blues. The "gimmick" of the band if you can call it that was the use of a pedal steel guitar.

However, I did use distortion on many of the tunes. I have my distortion unint on a bypass loop with an MXR 6 band equaliser, so I can EQ the distortion to pull out all the raspyness and really make it scream.

If anybody wants directions on how to make a bypass loop. E-mail me and I'll send you the file.

I play a U-12, and in addition to the low E note, I lower my 12th string (B) to A so I have a bass note for the A chord. It sounds awesome when played with distortion.

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"Never underestimate the value of eccentrics and Lunatics" -Lional Luthor (Smallville)

Bill McCloskey · Posted 18 Dec 2005 11:14 am

Mike, what was the audience reaction?

David Doggett · Posted 18 Dec 2005 11:22 am

One of the bands I play my uni in plays Chicago blues all night long, with a little funk and fusion thrown in. I bought an extra guitar to try out a Sacred Steel E7 tuning. But I started finding so much blues on my uni, I never got aroung to E7. One of my favorite positions is the minor chord with the A pedal down. The 12th string is the low root. There are pentatonic notes from the bottom string to the top.

Another great feature of the uni is that, on a song like Stormy Monday, you can play a mix of open major chord slide guitar licks, and 6th neck jazz chords. Then there are the power chords on the low strings. It's a blues monster.

David Mason · From: Cambridge, MD, USA

I'm not sure what the equivalent pedal is on a universal, but on C6th if you can drop your A's to Ab stuff like "Stormy Monday" and "Whipping Post" just roll right out of the hole. I also use an overdrive box revoiced with a little stompbox EQ, usually a Tubeworks "Real Tube" or a Tube Screamer, but first I split my signal with a Y-splitter so I can blend in the dirt with some separately EQ'd clean signal. I use a little mixer at the end - overdrive, a stereo signal from my Lexicon, and whatever else drum machine, CD, BIAB I want. Your chords come out clean (enough), but there's still plenty of hair and teeth and claws from the overdrive. I just bought a used Digitech Genesis 3 off the forum that does something similar - you can "warp" two amp models together, so you can set up one, "bassman", "blackface" etc. as clean, then "warp" in a controlled percentage of a "rectified", "brit stack" etc. Look out, kitty....

Mike Perlowin · From: Los Angeles CA

Bill the typical reaction to my band was "What is that thing? I saw one on TV once" etc.

Once while we were setting up a guy was SO happy to see a steel because he assumed we were a country band. Boy was he disappointed.

Often, during breaks, guitar players in the aidience would approach me to ask about the steel, and I always let them sit down at it and try it out.

BTW, the guitar player/lead singer was absolutely the hottest player I've ever had the privilege of working with. However, although he could tell you everything there is to know about Hendrix and Zep and their ilk, he didn't (and probably still doesn;t} know who Hank Williams was.

HowardR · From: N.Y.C.-Fire Island-Asheville

Archie Nicol R.I.P. · From: Ayrshire, Scotland

I'm not up to speed with modern effects, but the old Boss-Tone was enough to tear the skin off the unsuspecting listener's back.

ebb · From: nj

the holmes bros with gib wharton early 1990's

Bobby Lee · From: Cloverdale, California, USA

David L. Donald · From: Koh Samui Island, Thailand

If I remember correctly Stevie Ray really liked
Hendrix and Cream and Zep...

There are many types of "real" blues bands.

There are killer examples of true blues music from each of these rockier bands,
extrapolated directly from the blues.
It's just that they didn't play JUSTclassic blues.

Before Cream, Clapton played with the Blues Breakers...
John Mayhall's not blues. HUH!

David Doggett · Posted 18 Dec 2005 9:57 pm

b0b, Mike said "Hendrix and Cream and Zep and hard core blues." That could be interpreted that they played rock-blues (Hendrix, Cream and Zep) as well as hard core blues (sources unspecified). Since I know Mike was listening to Delta folk blues in the '60s, I expect he knows all the flavors of blues.

On another note, the Holmes Brothers had pedal steel, but was it a uni?

Mike Perlowin · From: Los Angeles CA

Bobby's right. It was really a rock band that was blues based rather than a real blues band.

My field of expertise in the blues arena is the older pre WW2 country blues, including the Mississippi delta bottleneck stuff (which forms the basis of my blues/rock steel playing) and the east coast styles of Blind Blake and Reverend Gary Davis. I never got into the post T-Bone, B.B. King/Buddy Guy stuff.

I played bottleneck guitar for years before I took up the study of the pedal steel guitar. Two years after I started playing pedal steel, I picked up a cheap lap steel and found that I could play all the old bottleneck stuff on it, and in fact, it worked better than a standard guitar for that style.

I bought a 3 neck stringmaster (which I still have) and put cam levers on 2 of the necks so I could get open tunings in the keys of A, C, D, E, and G, and whenever there was room on stae, I'd take both my MSA and the stringmaster to gigs and alternate between them. On 2 occasion, I only took the stringmaster.

Eventually I figured how to integrate the use of the pedals into the style. But it's still based on the old Mississippi delta bottleneck style of Robert Johnson and Fred McDowell.

I urge everybody who is even remotely interested in playing blues on a steel to check out Fred McDowells recordings. Robert johnson was a better singer, but McDowell was a much better guitarist and he had a profound effect on myplayhing that reverberates to this day. I think he defines the delta style and remains it's ultimate exponant.

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"Never underestimate the value of eccentrics and Lunatics" -Lional Luthor (Smallville)

Bill McCloskey · Posted 19 Dec 2005 4:39 am

Certainly it is great for all the slide stuff and I'm also a fan of Fred McDowells, but the interesting thing for me was also how easy it was to find blues licks played on a standard guitar on the pedal, and how the pedal added a dimention to them. I spent some time yesterday working on Hendrix's faster licks from All Along the Watch Tower. It was quite cool. This whole experiment has opened up a lot of channels for me.

Randy Reeves · From: LaCrosse, Wisconsin, USA

Bill, you touched a subject that is close to my heart...playing the blues on any kind of instrument.
after my 74 ShoBud arrived I learned how o tune it.
it was just a moment aftr that when I put the steel to the strings did I hear the potential for playing the blues like I never could before.
not knowing how , yet, to play traditional pedal steel , I found the blue notes all over the fretboard.
what an amazing instrument. are there no limits?
no need to answer.

William Griffith · From: Loxahatchee, FL, USA

Hello, Would abody have any tab and rhythm track for something simple I could play on the E9. Thanks Bill [For Blues]

[This message was edited by William Griffith on 19 December 2005 at 02:07 PM.]

Bill McCloskey · Posted 19 Dec 2005 11:21 am

I use a tool called Guitar Pro. It is for standard 6 string guitar but you can import thousands of files that are transcriptions of guitar parts people have done in all sorts of genres. You can then play a certain section back, and see it as either guitar tab or standard notation. I use the standard notation to then transcribe it for pedal.

David Doggett · Posted 19 Dec 2005 8:14 pm

Anyone who wants to play blues on steel should listen to The Black Ace play a square neck National and L.C. "Good Rockin'" Robinson play a Fender lap steel (both on Arhoolie). They played blues steel guitar, not slide guitar.

Bo Diddley's songs are real naturals for pedal steel. He played an open tuning and moved his one finger up and down the frets like a bar. A lot of Hendrix stuff also works out well on steel. He slid his fingers and bar chords up and down the neck as if he had a steel bar, and sometimes used the mic stand as a bar.

Mike, oddly enough, I don't consider either Robert Johnson or Fred McDowell as typical Delta blues musicians. To me the epitome and Godhead of Delta blues was Son House. Although Johnson learned from him, he also was very heavily influence by an Alabama guitarist who had much of the so called Piedmont blues tradition from the Eastern Southern states. That's why Johnson's playing became so distinct and unique. Although it was briefly popular in Johnson's hits, it was a style that essentially died with him. But Son House's style was pure Delta. That style was carried on and evolved through Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Elmore James, and B.B. King (all from the Delta) into electric blues. To me that is the backbone of Delta blues. The electric era is referred to as Chicago blues, but those guys were all from the Delta, as was John Lee Hooker in Detroit.

Fred McDowell was from the middle Tennessee hills. He ended up in the Mississippi Delta, and absorbed some Delta influences. But he had his own "hill country" style with a droning rhythm, doing whole songs on a single chord. The North Mississippi All Stars have electrified and rockified that into their own cottage industry.

[This message was edited by David Doggett on 19 December 2005 at 08:26 PM.]

David Mason · From: Cambridge, MD, USA

Though, I sure am glad Duane Allman and Derek Trucks came along. That old drunken, howling style is something I find it best to admire from afar. It's swell to be open-minded and all, but can you really sit and listen to one of those guys for a whole hour? eeek. I know the doctrine of multi-culturalism informs us that Son House was just as great an artist as Tchaikovsky, but at least ol' Pyotr T. changed keys every once in a while.

Dave Mudgett · From: Central Pennsylvania and Gallatin, Tennessee

To me, there's no point in comparing Tchaikovsky and Son House - apples and oranges, but both great in their own ways.

IMO, "The Greatest Blues Machine" is any instrument you want to play. I love what the pedal steel brings to blues, and there aren't a lot of people doing it, so it's very cool with a lot of unexplored territory. But in blues, more than any other music I know of, it's in the hands, mouth, or whatever is being used to produce the sound. I believe that the guys who played a few strings with a pocket knife, like Blind Willie Johnson, produced a sound that will stand the test of time.

Blues is about pure emotion - sadness, happiness, anger, fear, love, hate, whatever - and is a direct channel to those feelings. As long as technical ferocity, fancy guitars and amps, effects, pedals and levers, and bells and whistles don't interfere with that, great. But sometimes it's tempting to use the gizmo just because it's there. In fact, that's something I need to remind myself of sometimes.

Drew Howard · From: 48854

Buddy Emmons.

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Drew Howard - website - Fessenden guitars, 70's Fender Twin, etc.

Bill McCloskey · Posted 20 Dec 2005 6:10 am

Dave, of course that is right, but what from a strictly mechanical viewpoint I think what makes Pedal Steel interesting from a blues standpoint is the lack of any kind of limitations it brings.

What I mean is that on a 6 string guitar, you can tune it in standard tuning and or you can use an open tuning. Standard tuning will make certain blues licks available to you that you can't get if you have an open tuning but you miss the slide stuff. Open tuning will give you all the slide stuff but there is a limitation in that you can't get all the licks you could with a standard tuning.

With Pedal Steel, both styles of playing become avaiable. I think the possiblities have not been explored yet.

Dave Mudgett · From: Central Pennsylvania and Gallatin, Tennessee

Of course, Bill - I already agreed with you. I'm totally into exploring blues options on pedal steel - it is exciting, since not many are doing it. But my caveat is that I often see gizmos interfere with the direct pipeline of blues emotion to speaker. I'm guilty of it myself. But that's just something to watch out for, to me - not a reason not to do it. Nor will I stop playing blues on my guitar and banjo - oh horrors.

Mike Perlowin · From: Los Angeles CA

David, you may be right about Son house being more "pure" than Robert Johnson and Fred McDowell. Certainly Johnson's record "Hot Tamalies" shows some east coast influence. but Mississippi John Hurt also showed an east coast inflyence, and B.B. King seems to have been influenced by the guys from texas.

I never cared about such things. The music appealed to me, and I learned how to play it.

BTW 40 years ago I copped slide lessons from both Fred McDowell and Bukka White, as well as an autoharp lesson from Mother Maybelle Carter. And our fellow forumite Herb Steiner, who, at the time, was into playing bluegrass mandolin, copped a lesson from Bill Monroe himself.

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