From Honolulu to Fort Worth: How the Hawaiian steel guitar found its way into Western swing

The steel guitar entered Western swing by way of Hawaiʻi.

Its distinctive sound began in the Hawaiian Islands in the late nineteenth century. Joseph Kekuku, a young Hawaiian musician, is generally credited with developing the technique. He laid a guitar across his lap and moved a steel bar along the strings, allowing notes to slide into one another with a sustained, vocal quality. Smithsonian Folkways Recordings

Hawaiian musicians carried the instrument across the United States.

Kekuku toured the mainland beginning in the early twentieth century. Hawaiian ensembles followed the vaudeville circuit, appeared at exhibitions, recorded extensively, and taught the instrument to American students. The Broadway success of The Bird of Paradise in 1912 helped spread the sound, and the Hawaiian pavilion at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco introduced it to enormous crowds. By 1916, Hawaiian records were outselling every other genre in the United States. Library of Congress

An industry grew around the instrument. Publishers issued instruction books. Teachers offered lessons by mail. Schools taught what was then commonly called Hawaiian guitar. Walter Kolomoku, one of the Hawaiian Quintette’s steel guitarists, offered correspondence instruction to students on the mainland. Bob Dunn later said he learned to play as a teenager through Kolomoku’s course. Library of Congress

Dunn grew up in Oklahoma and became fascinated with Hawaiian music while still young. He also listened closely to jazz. The trombone playing of Texan Jack Teagarden became a particular influence. Dunn began treating the steel guitar like a horn, bending into notes, breaking away from the melody, and improvising in long, brassy lines. Texas State Historical Association

By 1934, he was in Fort Worth.

Bob Dunn Plugs In

Milton Brown heard Dunn at a studio jam and hired him for the Musical Brownies. Brown was already building one of the bands that would define Western swing, drawing together fiddles, piano, guitar, bass, popular songs, blues, and jazz.

Dunn gave the band another voice.

Amplification had begun changing the steel guitar. The instrument’s popularity had created a demand for more volume, and manufacturers were developing electric steels in the early 1930s. Hawaiian players were among the first musicians to adopt them. The first electric guitars produced commercially in substantial numbers were steel guitars. Library of Congress

In January 1935, Dunn recorded with Milton Brown and His Musical Brownies. His amplified steel appears prominently on the sessions, including “Taking Off.” The Texas State Historical Association identifies the recording as the first country-rooted commercial record to use an electric guitar. Texas State Historical Association

Dunn played the instrument with the instincts of a jazz musician. His solos swooped, punched, and bent around the beat. The sound traveled quickly through Southwestern dance music. Steel players began studying his records and adapting his approach. Leon McAuliffe was among the young musicians listening. Library of Congress

Take It Away, Leon

McAuliffe grew up in Houston playing Hawaiian and standard guitar. He joined the Light Crust Doughboys in 1933 and moved to Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys two years later. Texas State Historical Association

His steel guitar soon became one of the band’s defining sounds.

In September 1936, the Texas Playboys recorded “Steel Guitar Rag.” The melody reaches farther back than the recording credit suggests. Black blues guitarist Sylvester Weaver recorded “Guitar Rag” in 1923, thirteen years before McAuliffe’s record. Smithsonian Folkways identifies Weaver’s composition as the source of the later Western swing standard. Folkways Media

McAuliffe carried the melody into an amplified Western swing band and made the steel guitar the featured voice. Bob Wills’s spoken introduction helped turn the performance into a calling card for both player and instrument.

“Take it away, Leon.”

“Steel Guitar Rag” became McAuliffe’s signature and one of the standards of steel guitar playing. Texas State Historical Association

By then, the Hawaiian steel had traveled a remarkable distance.

Joseph Kekuku’s sliding technique had moved through Hawaiian touring companies, vaudeville theaters, world’s fairs, phonograph records, correspondence courses, and music schools. Players such as Sol Hoʻopiʻi pushed the instrument into jazz and American popular song. Dunn brought that language into Milton Brown’s Fort Worth band. McAuliffe carried it into the Texas Playboys. Library of Congress

Western swing kept changing the instrument. Players experimented with tunings, added necks, and demanded greater harmonic range. Those experiments continued into the console steel and eventually the pedal steel guitar that became central to country music.

The sound still carried Hawaiʻi with it.

Every long slide between notes, every shimmer of vibrato, every steel line floating above a fiddle band traces back across the Pacific.

Fort Worth gave the sound a dance floor.

Hawaiʻi gave it the steel.

References

Cundell, Guy. “‘Fascinating Rhythm’ — Sol Hoʻopiʻi and His Novelty Five (1938).” National Recording Preservation Board, Library of Congress. Library of Congress

Revell Carr, James. “‘Aloha ʻOe’ — Hawaiian Quintette.” National Recording Preservation Board, Library of Congress. Library of Congress

Rodríguez, Juan Carlos. “Dunn, Robert Lee [Bob].” Handbook of Texas Online, Texas State Historical Association. Texas State Historical Association

Giesenschlag, N. D. “McAuliffe, Leon.” Handbook of Texas Online, Texas State Historical Association. Texas State Historical Association

Troutman, John W. Kīkā Kila: How the Hawaiian Steel Guitar Changed the Sound of Modern Music. University of North Carolina Press, 2016.

Smithsonian Folkways. Original Hawaiian Steel Guitar. Folkways Records, 1979. Smithsonian Folkways Recordings

Smithsonian Folkways. Texas Blues: Early Blues Masters from the Texas Folklife Archives. Notes on Sylvester Weaver’s “Guitar Rag” and “Steel Guitar Rag.” Folkways Media

Smithsonian Institution. “How the Hawaiian Steel Guitar Changed American Music.”