Bobbe Seymour

David Martin · From: Kingsport, TN 37660 USA

Bobbe Seymour just popped into my mind. People that knew Bobbe, knew how he loved to goof around. I was in his store looking for a Sho-Bud seat. Bobbe said he didn't have any except the one he was using. I said, do you want to sell it. He said, Sure, and we went to the back room and he literally dumped his stuff out of his seat into the floor and said, here you go. I thought he was joking. I left with his seat and still have it. What a character.
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EMMONS LL-III D10(9+9)
Too many Amps

John McClung · From: Olympia WA, USA

Yep!
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Tom Sosbe · From: Rushville,In

Bobbe was defiantly one of kind. Dear friend I think of him often.

Damir Besic · From: Nashville,TN.

I miss Bobbe, he was who he was, one of those guys you either love or hate , I loved the man , I miss him , and I wish I spent more time with him, riding bikes , and flying planes … RIP buddy
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Bob Hoffnar · From: Austin, Tx

He was mean as a snake and the only way you could tell he was lying was if his mouth was open but I gotta say I do really miss him !

He was an absolutely fantastic liar ! There should be an archive of the complex and amazing things he would make up on the spot or go to great lengths to do. He was a truly unique character.
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Bob

Lee Baucum · From: McAllen, Texas (Extreme South) The Final Frontier

As Sheriff Andy Taylor would have said:

Roger Rettig · From: Naples, FL

I'm with Bob Hoffnar on this one. The things he'd make up just to get out of a scrape defied credibility, yet you'd stand there nodding in agreement.

He did me a favour or two but I was lucky! There were some outlandish yarns about repairs being returned to the customer minus a part or two.

But: he was hospitable and one usually got a warm welcome. It was a good place to rest on a long drive north.

I'm still looking for confirmation of all the Elvis Presley sessions he claimed! Smile

RIP, Bobbe - a unique individual.
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Roger Rettig: Emmons D10, B-bender Teles and Martins - and, at last, a Gibson Super 400!
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Brett Day · From: Pickens, SC

When I was looking for my second steel, I was at Steel Guitar Nashville and Bobbe told me he recommended GFI steels. When I first started playing steel, I didn't know what to think of GFI steels because I thought they were too little. When I went back to Steel Guitar Nashville in '04, I was ready to buy my second steel, and I saw an Emmons Lashley Legrande D-10, a Sho-Bud Super Pro, a Mullen Royal Precision, and plenty of GFIs. At the time, my idea for a steel was a doubleneck steel, so Bobbe sets up an Emmons Legrande D-10 in front of me and at the time, I thought I wouldn't be able to handle a doubleneck Emmons, so Bobbe then sets up a red and gold GFI D-10 and lets me try it out, and since it was close to Christmas, I was teaching myself how to play Christmas songs on the C6th neck, which I had no idea I was playing C6th until Bobbe said it was C6th. I was still thinking I wanted the Sho-Bud Super Pro or the Emmons, but Bobbe suggested the GFI and it was the steel I played for five years. Right after I got the GFI, Bobbe and I played a show at the Old Clinton Opry House in Georgia, and it seemed like every five minutes, he'd look at me and say, "Where'd you get that GFI?" and I'd always answer, "Steel Guitar Nashville"! I remember the first time I heard him doing car sound effects on steel, I almost jumped because I didn't know it was coming! He was playing at the Choo Choo City show in '01 when he did the car sound effects, and I was thinking I'd never heard a steel guitar sound like that before! The car sounds meant he'd played the last song and he'd left. I remember walking into Steel Guitar Nashville in Goodlettsville, Tennessee for the first time, seeing Emmons guitars in the window, then seeing Sho-Bud and GFI guitars after walking in.

Keith Hilton · From: 248 Laurel Road Ozark, Missouri 65721

Bobbe was one of my Hilton pedal dealers for years. I can tell you this much---Bobbe was a honest guy. Bobbe was a talented salesman, but always honest and straight forward with me. I grew to like and respect Bobbe, wish he was still around.

Chris Brooks · From: Providence, Rhode Island

A true character, yes; but IMO also a great player. He came up to the New England meeting once. Played great--at a reasonable volume, too.

Ken Byng · From: Southampton, England

I liked Bobbe very much and my wife did too. I was saddened when he and another friend fell out big time. He and Maurice Anderson were one time close friends, but the friendship got very rancorous. Those of us who were members on this site at that time will remember this episode well.

I pleaded with Maurice to put aside his feud with Bobbe, but he told me that he had held out an olive branch to bring the situation to an end. He said that Bobbe was determined to go through with his litigation against him. Fortunately, the incident eventually came to nothing.

As with Roger in his post above, Bobbe gave me the "I played with Elvis a number of times" line, but when I looked at him a bit cross eyed we both burst out laughing because we knew that story was taller than the Empire State Building.

One of the last times I saw Bobbe was in his store, just the 2 of us, and a consignment of Peavey 112 amps were delivered to his back door. This was very soon after he lost a couple of fingers on a chop saw in his workshop. I carried every amp into his store for him and took them out of their cartons, and some were beautifully wrapped in faux snakeskin I recall.

Lloyd Green later told me an extremely amusing story about Bobbe holding court in his store that I won't repeat here, as Lloyd told me in a private environment. One thing for sure, he (Bobbe) was a larger than life character, a personality that you would would meet just once in a lifetime.
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Show Pro D10 - amber (8+6), MSA D10 Legend XL Signature - redburst (9+6), Sho-Bud Pro 111 Custom (8+6), Emmons black Push-Pull D10 (8+5), Zum D10 (8x8), Hudson pedal resonator. Telonics TCA-500, Webb 614-E,

Olaf van Roggen · From: The Netherlands

Somewhere in my youth I got a steel album " The happy steel guitar" with no player mentioned.
It turned out to be Bobbe Seymour.
I heard he was approached for playing steel with Gram Parsons and the fallen angels, Bobbe recommended Neil Flanz.

J D Sauser · From: Wellington, Florida

Roger Rettig · From: Naples, FL

I will say this for Bobbe; I once caught him in a rare moment of humility.

This was 2004, I think, at the Chattanooga Show. I wandered up to where Bobbe was setting out his sales table and he looked a little bit down. Quietly, I asked him if he was okay. He had this slightly haunted look as he told me:

'Guess where they've scheduled me in the show later on? Right after Doug Jernigan and just before Emmons.'

He actually looked crestfallen but, once he got up to do his routine, he managed to pull it off. I recall one piece being an imitation of a racing-car using a Boss-Tone. Whatever it takes, I guess. He had good thumb-style chops on C6, I remember.

JD talks of him bad-mouthing Buddy Emmons; Bobbe told me once that he'd '....just got off the phone with Emmons. I could hear the stereo playing in the background and I said: "Are you still playing that Ray Charles record you were on??"' Not bad-mouthing, perhaps, but a put-down of sorts.

I know for a fact that he sometimes took advantage of customers just because he thought them of 'no consequence'. That's an unattractive trait but, taken all around, the world is a fractionally better place for Bobbe Seymour's life.

As for the 'Phantom Jet Pilot' claim, I think we can file that along with the Elvis Presley sessions.

That moment of vulnerability he had at Chattanooga brought him up in my estimation, though.

Here we are, talking about him and how long has he been gone? Almost ten years? That's a testament in itself.

PS: I remember that 2004 (or was it 2005?) show because I met Jim Cohen and Bill Cunningham for the first time. Doug J., Junior Knight, Sonny Garrish, Russ Hicks and the Big E - I think Hal Rugg was there, too, as was Mike Sigler. it was worth the drive from FL!
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Roger Rettig: Emmons D10, B-bender Teles and Martins - and, at last, a Gibson Super 400!
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Joe Alterio · From: Irvington, Indiana

Very early in my playing days, I sold my Maverick and bought a Dekley. I needed a few parts for it and when I called Bobbe the first thing he said to me was "A Dekley? What in the world did you buy one of THOSE for?"

Mind you - it was a big deal for me at 22 or 23, broke and eager to get my first pro steel, to have that Dekley and I thought it was classless of him to say at best.

Then, not more than a year later, he had a Dekley for sale and the writeup he had for it on his website made it sound like it was the next best thing to a '60s Emmons push-pull.

I seem to remember him popping off with some anti-semitic comments near the end of his run posting here on the SGF, and things shut down on him pretty fast after that.

He was also pretty disparaging to Reece Anderson when MSA was restarting, going to town with comments about the carbon fiber Millenium being a "plastic guitar." One thing I'm not settled on is whether Bobbe was actually being truthful or fully transparent when calling on the new MSA to make things right with folks that had lost deposit money on guitars that were on order when the old MSA closed its doors in the early '80s - perhaps he did try to help right some wrongs there and, if so, I give credit where it is due and commend him for that. Other than than, his character seemed mostly unseemly.

W. C. Edgar · Posted 7 Nov 2023 6:13 pm

I loved the guy and all his antics...
When I first moved to Nashville he hired me to work at Steel Guitar World when it was in Millersville
It was Bobbe, Mike Daly, Buck Reid, and GiGi Emmons was the office manager.
What a great time, great folks to this day & I miss it a lot...
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First owner of Steelseat.com
1980 Sho-Bud Pro II & 1977 Sho-Bud Pro l
Lawrence 610 Pickups
1979 Peavey LTD
1980 Peavey Nashville 400
Goodrich L-120
Toured with Tim McGraw, Alan Jackson, Ty England & more

Damir Besic · From: Nashville,TN.

never walked out of his store empty handed, no matter if I bought something or not , I’d always walk out with a free CD or cassette tape or something… he told me one time his name was Bobbe Rip’em Off Seymour lol … full of shit, with a big heart , larger than life …
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Dean Holman · From: Branson MO

I spent a lot of time over at Bobbe’s store when it was in Goodlettesville, and I had moved to Nashville to play for Ricky Skaggs. He liked that I would play all the guitars in there, and they would be tuned for other customers to try out. He liked that I could play quietly and it didn’t disturb him if he was on the phone. I had heard stories about Bobbe over the years, but I could only treat him with kindness and respect, because he did the same towards me. He was always fair dealing with me, when it came to trades or purchases, and he had taken me flying before. He was a character, and I think some of his bs was probably put on. Whether he lied to me about anything, can he construed as embellishments or bending the truth a little, but for the most part, he was just always super nice to me, and funny. and I miss him a lot.

Brett Day · From: Pickens, SC

The place where Steel Guitar Nashville was in Goodlettsville will be the Steel Guitar Nashville I'll always remember. When I first went to the shop in 1999, Bobbe wasn't there, but his office manager at the time, Jeannie was, and I remember seeing a lot of Emmons guitars, Sho-Buds, and GFI guitars. I remember feeling like a kid in a candy store, surrounded by pedal steel guitars. I remember my mom asking Jeannie if there was an Emmons steel that would be right for me, and Jeannie lead me into another part of the store, where an Emmons GS-10 was being tuned, and not knowing whose steel it would be, I wondered who it was going to, and I felt like I wanted that steel so badly, and felt discouraged because I thought it was going to somebody else. I then woke up on Christmas morning in 1999 to find that steel set up in the den of my house! Jeannie always called my first steel "the Emmons". I met Bobbe for the first time in December of 1999, and at that time, I wondered where the Emmons was because I thought somebody had gotten the Emmons before me! Bobbe always asked me how my steel playing was going after I started, and it was awesome!

Dave Mudgett · From: Central Pennsylvania and Gallatin, Tennessee

I really liked Bobbe. He was always very kind to me, when he had absolutely no commercial or financial incentive to do so. I would go to his shop whenever I was in town, starting in the late 80s or early 90s when he was in Millersville and I was just another guitar slinger (and a college professor, no less) and didn't even play steel. But more so after I started playing steel and he was at Midtown Ct in Hendersonville. I think it helped that I was heavily into vintage guitars and wheeling-dealing. I guess it takes one to know one. When I started playing, he gave me tons of useful free advice. He never minced his words, and that's the way I prefer it.

OK - yes, he was the Master BS'er. I think he assumed people knew he was BS'ing - I mean, sometimes he could hardly control laughing at what he said himself. I'd give him the stink eye when he'd blurt out a tall one, and he'd laugh. He was sort of like the W.C. Fields of steel guitar - "Never Give A Sucker An Even Break". But down underneath it all, he loved steel guitar, and if he saw the fire for playing in you, you were one of the family. I saw him a week or two before he passed - I was down for the Four Amigos Nashville Guitar Show. He was in bad shape, I wasn't surprised to read he passed shortly thereafter.

Anyway, I miss him. Whenever I'm in town, I wistfully look over as I'm driving down Nashville Pike at New Shackle Island Road or eating over at Cafe Rakka across the street.

Lee Baucum · From: McAllen, Texas (Extreme South) The Final Frontier

Roger Rettig · From: Naples, FL

Despite all the negatives, the steel guitar world was richer for his presence.
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Roger Rettig: Emmons D10, B-bender Teles and Martins - and, at last, a Gibson Super 400!
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Kevin Hatton · From: Buffalo, N.Y.

Great player. Always stopped at his shop.Good conversations.

John A. Russell · From: Norfolk, UK

I called at Bobbe's shop each time I visited Nashville from the UK.

I bought several sets of Cobra Coil Strings from him one time.
On a return visit, he asked me how I liked the strings, I said that they kept breaking.

He grabbed a handful of sets of Cobra's and gave them to me for free.

He gave me also a handfull of his "Backing Tracks" to give to David Hartley after I let him speak to David on my Phone.

He always introduced me to visitors to the shop as "His Friend "Jarn Russell"

Fond memories of him.

JR.
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Franklin S10, Telonics X10 pup, Telonics Volume Pedal, Telonics 500 Combo Amp, with Mike Johnson Tone, BJS Bar. Vox AC15C2, Fender Stratocaster, Music Man Albert Lee. Brent Mason Nashville Telecaster. Fender 65 Deluxe Reverb Amplifier.Cali76 Studio Compressor, Boss DM3 Delay. Hall & Collens Signature Echo unit.

Bob Hoffnar · From: Austin, Tx

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