Jimmy Day – King for a Day
“If it ain’t got a pedal steel, it ain’t country.”
–Gene Watson
Turn a pedal steel guitar upside down and it looks like a mutant insect with its legs up. Buried in the steel’s skeletal underbelly are metal rods leading to foot pedals, rods leading to rods leading to strings, and knee levers leading to god-knows-where. Yet from all this mechanical chaos, when the pedal steel is upright and a master is at its helm, there is no sound as pure, as full or as human as the swoops, cries and purrs that pour from its innards.
The International Steel Guitar Convention, held annually in St. Louis, has celebrated this defining instrument of country music, and its players, for the past 26 years. Those who choose to play the esoteric pedal steel are unsung heroes. In fact, unless you scrutinize an album’s liner notes, you might not even recognize their names. But without players such as Buddy Emmons, Jimmy Day, Noel Boggs or Joaquin Murphy, country music would lack much of its emotional punch. In other words, without the steel, there wouldn’t be nearly as many tears in your beer.
But every year these unrecognized luminaries get their glory, congregating at the convention to renew friendships, share stories and engage in some friendly one-upsmanship. Thousands of country music fans, steel guitar admirers, amateurs, and those who are simply curious flock to the Regal Hotel to marvel at the top-notch (and often historic) performances and to mingle with some of greatest players in the history of the lap and pedal steels — Day, Emmons, Doug Jernigan, Ralph Mooney, Billy Robinson, Hal Rugg and Herb Remington among them.
This year, Remington sat at his booth, dabbling with his triple-neck lap steel and trying out his new bar. Designed with a concave end, the bar has a spot for Remington’s thumb, allowing him to slant the bar over several frets at once. “With this,” he said while playing “Steel Guitar Rag”, “I can reach the notes I need.”
Down the hall, former Hank Williams sideman Billy Robinson doodled on his lap steel and told stories about traveling to Germany in 1949. “There’s Roy Acuff, there’s me,” he said, pointing out the fresh faces in an old sepia-toned photograph. “And there’s Little Jimmy Dickens. He was always getting in trouble with the German police.”
At the convention, stories like these float through the air, sometimes whispered, other times shouted above a steel solo whooshing out of the ballroom. In the hall, at a booth, at the bar, you may bump into a legend, strike up a conversation and come away with a piece of history.
The convention has a curious history of its own. “Back in the ’60s, I would go to Nashville, Tennessee, and attend the disc jockey convention,” recalled DeWitt “Scotty” Scott, founder of the International Steel Guitar Convention. “That is where I heard the steel guitar being played in a way I did not think it could be played. There was playing around the clock; there was someone playing somewhere as long as you knew where it was and if you could stay awake. When I left for Nashville on a Wednesday, I knew that I would not see a bed until Sunday. And I didn’t.” Back in St. Louis, Scott was becoming discouraged at the shaky local country scene, and “it was then I decided I’d have to bring those musicans to St. Louis,” he says.
In October 1968, 65 ardent fans and players attended Scotty’s first steel guitar show, held at the Parkway House, with Maurice Anderson as the featured steel player. In the past quarter-century, as the convention’s digs have gone upscale — from the American Legion Hall to the Regal Riverfront Hotel — and the range has broadened to include performances, booths, gear and instructional seminars, attendance has exploded, averaging 3,000 people over the five-day event. The record draw was 6,000 in 1993.
Legends of the instrument are permanently honored on the lower level of the Regal at the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame. Among the 36 faces peering from the wall are Jerry Byrd (1978), Curly Chalker (1985) and Buddy Charleton (1993). This year, Grand Ole Opry regular Weldon Myrick joined the distinguished group as is the 1997 inductee.
Thirteen of the Hall of Famers have passed on. Most of the pioneers and innovators, now in their 60s and 70s, are nearing the ends of not only their careers, but also their lives. While the flame is handed to younger players such as Joe Wright, Paul Franklin and Scott Walls, there will never be another Noel Boggs or Shot Jackson.
Nowhere was this more poignant than with Speedy West, whose manic steel style is a hallmark of music ranging from Loretta Lynn to Looney Tunes. West hasn’t played since suffering a stroke, and he has to wear a fleece glove on his picking hand because its always cold, but he’s always ready to talk. This year, West said, he was supposed to be undergoing surgery for a blocked carotid artery, instead of milling around on the convention floor. But, he explained, “My son’s playing, and I told him I’d be here if it killed me.”
And at the convention’s close, several of West’s friends bid him goodbye, saying, “We’ll see you next year, Speedy. We’ll come pick you up.”
— Lisa Sorg
Lisa Sorg is the music editor and crime reporter for the Bloomington Voice in Bloomington, Indiana. Her Favorite songs are murder ballads. Dennis Scoville is a pedal steel guitarist from Bloomington, Indiana. He credits Jimmy Day as the reason he started to play.