From Honolulu to Fort Worth: The Birth of the Electric Steel Guitar

The sound of Western swing relies on the sliding, crying tone of the electric steel guitar. That sound did not start in Texas. It started in Hawaii in the late 1800s.

A young Hawaiian musician named Joseph Kekuku discovered a new way to play the six-string acoustic guitar. He laid the instrument flat across his lap. Instead of pressing the strings down with his fingers, he slid a piece of metal along them while plucking. This changed the vibrating length of the strings and created a smooth, gliding sound.

Kekuku taught this method to others, and it quickly spread. In 1915, Hawaiian music gained massive popularity in the mainland United States during the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. A national fad for Hawaiian music began. Soon, Hawaiian records were outselling almost every other type of popular music in the country (Koskoff, 2005).

Texas musicians heard these Hawaiian records and loved the sliding sound. They started adding steel guitar players to their local dance bands. There was just one problem with the acoustic steel guitar. The instrument was not loud enough to be heard over fiddles, horns, and noisy dance hall crowds.

In the early 1930s, inventors like George Beauchamp created magnetic pickups to amplify the steel guitar. A musician named Bob Dunn took notice. Dunn played in a popular Texas band called Milton Brown and His Musical Brownies. He took a homemade electric pickup and attached it to his acoustic steel guitar.

In 1935, Dunn went into a recording studio with Milton Brown's band. He recorded several songs using his amplified steel guitar. This session marked the first time anyone recorded an electrically amplified instrument in country or Western swing music (Townsend, 1976). Dunn did not just play Hawaiian melodies. He played aggressive solos inspired by jazz horn players.

The electric steel guitar soon became the defining sound of Western swing. A teenager named Leon McAuliffe learned the instrument and joined Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. In September 1936, McAuliffe recorded a song called "Steel Guitar Rag." Bob Wills started the recording by calling out, "Kick it off, Leon."

"Steel Guitar Rag" became a massive hit. It popularized the electric steel guitar across the entire country (Lange, 2004). McAuliffe based the song on earlier blues and Hawaiian melodies (Ruymar, 1996). He mixed those influences with the new electric volume. From that point forward, the electric steel guitar belonged strictly to Western swing and country music.

References

• Koskoff, Ellen. Music Cultures in the United States: An Introduction. Routledge, 2005.

• Lange, Jeffrey J. Smile When You Call Me a Hillbilly: Country Music's Struggle for Respectability. University of Georgia Press, 2004.

• Ruymar, Lorene. The Hawaiian Steel Guitar and Its Great Hawaiian Musicians. Centerstream Publications, 1996.

• Townsend, Charles. San Antonio Rose: The Life and Music of Bob Wills. University of Illinois Press, 1976.