Yesterday we looked kindly on the possible Indian origins of the Hawaiian slide/lap steel guitar. Whichever musician was the first to slide steel on a set of strings, guitar historians agree that the Hawaiian steel guitar made its formal debut on the continental mainland in 1915 at Hawaii’s pavilion at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, a massive 7 month long exposition that celebrated the completion of the Panama Canal and attracted millions of visitors. The steel guitar sound so intrigued and inspired Americans that in 1916 record companies sold thousands of copies of Hawaiian-inspired records and many Hawaiian model guitars, along with steel guitar “do-it-yourself’ kits that included song books, steel rods, finger and thumb picks and a mechanism to lift the strings far enough above the body of the guitar that pressing the slide on them wouldn’t make them buzz. Let’s watch Leon McAuliffe and Cimarron Boys play the Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys lap steel classic, “Steel Guitar Rag.”
Tag Archives | Lap steel
Did Lap Steel Start with Joseph Kekuku?
More Hawaiian guitar! Lap steel guitar is a style of guitar playing that originated in the late 1800s when, according to guitar-playing legend, Hawaiian guitarist Joseph Kekuku realized he could make a unique and, frankly, quite beautiful sound when changing the tuning of his steel guitar, resting it on his lap and sliding a metal bolt or bar up and down the fretboard to reach the desired note. Kekuku’s steel guitar style became synonymous with the sound of Hawaiian music and eventually spread worldwide, becoming a fad in the 1920’s and ’30s, especially after the instrument “went electric.” In this video we hear an acoustic lap steel guitar, playing blues “Hawaiian-style.”
