"Steel Guitar Rag" is the seminal
Western swing
Western swing, country jazz or smooth country is a subgenre of American country music that originated in the late 1920s in the West and South among the region's Western string bands. It is dance music, often with an up-tempo beat, which att ...
instrumental credited with popularizing the
steel guitar
A steel guitar () is any guitar played while moving a steel bar or similar hard object against plucked strings. The bar itself is called a "steel" and is the source of the name "steel guitar". The instrument differs from a conventional guitar i ...
as an integral instrument in a Western band.
Written by
Leon McAuliffe, it was first recorded by
Bob Wills
James Robert "Bob" Wills (March 6, 1905 – May 13, 1975) was an American musician, songwriter, and bandleader. Considered by music authorities as the founder of Western swing, he was known widely as the King of Western Swing (although Spade C ...
and
The Texas Playboys in 1936. The song bears a striking resemblance to "Guitar Rag" recorded by guitarist
Sylvester Weaver in 1927., although others have claimed stylistic similarities to a popular
Hawaiian song, "On the Beach at Waikiki" (words, G.H. Stover; music,
Henry Kailimai; arrangement, Sonny Cunha; 1915), which was widely performed on the vaudeville circuits in the U.S.
[Santoro, ''Stir It Up'', p. 183: "Hawaiian sounds began to outsell other forms of pop music on the mainland U.S., and had such an impact that Mexican bands added steel guitar players and masqueraded as Hawaiians to crash the lucrative U.S. vaudeville circuit."] Many musicians and bands have recorded this instrumental over the years. A recent version was performed by Country Music Hall of Famer Jimmy Russell.
References
Bibliography
*Dempsey. John Mark. ''The Light Crust Doughboys Are on the Air: Celebrating Seventy Years of Texas Music''. University of North Texas Press; Har/Com edition (September 2002)
*Harrington, Joe S. ''Sonic Cool: The Life & Death of Rock 'n' Roll''. Hal Leonard, 2002.
*Komara, Edward. ''Encyclopedia of the Blues''. Routledge, 2005)
*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, 1939-1954''. University of Georgia Press (August 2004)
*Oliphant, Dave. "Texas Jazz: 1920-50". ''The Roots of Texas Music'' edited by Lawrence Clayton, Joe W. Specht, pp. 37–65. Texas A&M University Press, 2005.
*Ruymar, Lorene. ''The Hawaiian Steel Guitar and Its Great Hawaiian Musicians''. Centerstream Publications, 1996.
*Santoro, Gene. ''Stir It Up: Musical Mixes from Roots to Jazz''. Oxford University Press, 1997.
*Stambler, Irwin; Grelun Land. ''Country Music: The Encyclopedia''. St. Martin's Griffin, 2000.
*Townsend, Charles. ''San Antonio Rose: The Life and Music of Bob wills''. University of Illinois Press, 1986.
External links
YouTube documentary
{{Authority control
Western swing songs
1936 songs
Leon McAuliffe songs
Bob Wills songs