Lunch with Bobby IV.
I hope that my fellow HSGA members and their families had a happy and healthy holiday season. I am writing this in February for the newsletter that will be published in April, so Spring greetings to you as well.
After a brief hiatus during the holidays, Bobby Black and I resumed our lunch visits in January. To start the New Year, we went to the City Café in Manteca, a small diner in a shopping center at the west end of town.
On the drive over to the restaurant, Bobby talked about a recent conversation with his old friend Lucky Oceans. Lucky was the first pedal steel guitarist with the Western Swing group, Asleep at the Wheel, and Bobby followed him. (NOTE: Our fellow HSGA member and former newsletter editor John Ely also played with Asleep at the Wheel for a period of time.) Lucky now lives in Australia and has a full life with children and grandchildren. Aside from reminiscing about the “good old days”, much of their conversation was about the differences in playing pedal steel and non-pedal steel. Both Lucky and Bobby played pedal steel guitar for Asleep at the Wheel.
While Bobby’s professional music career was based on his amazing pedal steel playing, he rarely plays pedal steel these days. His go-to instrument is a custom built eleven-string lap steel. His primary tuning is C6 (same as for 10 string pedal steel) with a D on the high eleventh string.
The motivation for his transition from pedal steel to lap steel was practical: less weight to carry. Pedal steels have many more metal parts and weigh a lot more than lap steels.
For the most part, Bobby has also stopped using heavy Peavey or Fender tube amps for gigging. Thank goodness for micro circuit amps and neodymium speakers. As we get older….well, many of you know the rest of the story.
Beyond this practical issue, Bobby points out that he gets much more personal satisfaction from playing lap steel. In his opinion, lap steel is more challenging in some ways and brings out greater creativity.
During lunch, Bobby shared a story of his first meeting Hank Williams. It was in the early 1950’s in San Jose, California. Bobby and his brother Larry had already started their professional career by that time. (by my calculation, Bobby was 19 and brother Larry was 17.) The Black Brothers were contracted to open for Hank Williams at the Palomar Gardens in San Jose.
On the day of the show, Bobby and Larry went to the club in the early afternoon to check out the stage. When they walked in, some of the Williams crew were already setting up. Bobby asked if Hank Williams was around and someone told him that he was in the dressing room. Bobby and Larry knocked on the dressing room door and they heard a voice say “come on in”
They introduced themselves to Hank and he invited them to have a seat. Not too far into the conversation, Hank invited the boys to bring their instruments in and play some music with him. Bobby declined, but younger brother Larry jumped at the chance and got his guitar from the car. Larry brought in his recently acquired Fender Telecaster electric guitar. Hank offered the boys a swig from his whiskey bottle. Bobby declined, but little brother Larry gladly accepted. (Oh those little brothers!)
Larry and Hank played for quite a while. At one point, Hank said “here’s a song that I’ve been working on.” He proceeded to play and sing “Kaw-Liga”. Bobby believes that he and brother Larry were among the first to hear that famous song by Hank, before it was recorded and became a big hit.
After the jam session, Hank was so impressed by Larry’s playing that he offered him a job as part of his backup band. Bobby is not sure how serious Hank was, or if it was just the whiskey talking. Regardless, Larry was just seventeen years old at the time. His parents were not about to let him leave home. Hank also asked if he could borrow Larry’s new guitar for the gig that night. Of course, Larry said yes.
I am amazed and impressed by all of the famous musicians and singers that Bobby met during his music career journey. He is working on his memoirs and I am hopeful that he will someday complete and publish a book.
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