Hal Merrill

I will provide a very brief history here and follow with a more detailed description on how the steel guitar works. There is elsewhere a great deal of published literature on steel guitar history. 

The steel guitar was invented in Hawaii in the late nineteenth century, and was better known at the time as a Hawaiian guitar. There remains some uncertainty as to who the actual inventor was. The early steel guitars were simply traditional Spanish guitars with the strings raised off of the fret board, and were played with various types of “bars” made of various materials including steel, hence the name “steel guitar”. 

The steel guitar was introduced into the (U.S.) mainland music scene in the early 1900’s and soon found it’s way into jazz. One of the first great recordings of jazz being played on steel guitar happened in Chicago in 1935 with Bob Dunn recording the song “Taking Off” with Milton Brown and the Musical Brownies. This was the first recording of electrified steel guitar, and proved beyond a doubt that the steel guitar was in its own right a sophisticated musical instrument, capable of playing complex jazz harmonies just like the horn section. In fact, on this recording, if you weren’t listening closely, you might mistake Bob’s playing for a one or two trumpets. 

There have been many extremely talented steel guitarists who have played jazz music on the instrument since then.  Many of them have influenced my playing.  They are too numerous to mention by name for fear of leaving someone out.  

As the steel guitar evolved, musically, the need developed to provide more tunings to accommodate the complex chord voicings used in jazz music. So to alleviate the need for triple, or even quadruple neck steel guitars, pedals were introduced in the 1950’s.