Back in the mid '90s, I was living in Olympia Washington. I would make frequent trips down to Centralize and Chevaliers to hit the thrift shops and to visit Richardo's Art Yard. On one of these trips, I found a record called 50 Country and Western Hits. It was one of those half-massed Stardust compilations of Nashville also-ranch. I picked it up for my girlfriend at the time. Until I scrutinized the album cover. There were the standards in all of their early sixties grand-sol-pry wannabe stylings; White Stetsons, polo ties, toothy smiles. Until bleached a photo of this balding, pallid, liver-lipped nobody called Pete Drake. On this album he has one of those vacant thousand mile stares and a paisley shirt. In all honesty, I never looked at the album cover until I heard his song. A Southampton-burlesque tribute to the late Port Wagoner's Satisfied Mind. Always wanting to assume that art is born from adversity, and trying to make sense of the soul wrenching truth meets Steven Hawking vocals, and not knowing Drake's background, I contrived my own history of Pete Drake. In my mind, he was a young tracheal (esp?) victim, who fell in love with the true country legends, but because of his ailment (pasty, liver-lipped, voice-box-removed) couldn't sing. So he picked the closest instrument to a human voice box (steel guitar) and rigged the open hole in his neck to a microphone wired in to the pickups on said steel guitar so he could sing.
That is a pretty amazing thing to want to believe in, no?
I began collecting as much of his steel guitar work as possible. I have a lot. I love it more than Charlie Rich singing "Life Has It's Little Ups and Downs". And, that, my friends, is a lot. I am also a huge believer in mix CD's (nee Mixture).Pete Drake, who performs “Forever” with a talking guitar (a weird device that includes a long tube he has to stick in his mouth), So, long, Mr. Drake, not disabled, played steel in The Sons of The Pioneers back in the '50s. He became a session musician for Nashville. He worked an early morning job as a milkman (his nickname was The Milkman) splitting in on literally every session requiring steel guitar that came out of Nashville from 1959 to roughly 1974. Most of you not prone to overalls and bare feet (I pity you) can sample more of Drakes work on Bob Dylan's Nashville Skyline and George Harrison's All Things Must Pass. as poor as my grammar is, my grampar is poorer. That tree in the background is evil. I mean, where to begin? There's so much about this that's Awesome... the weird set, the strange facial expression Mr. Drake makes when he sings to the camera, the person in red squatting nervously in the background (visible at 2:35), the way the clouds spell "PORNOGRAPHY"... I could go on. That's a Sonovox, or something like it. Wikipedia has an article about talk_boxSonovox and its relative. Devices like this were around as early as the thirties. You can hear the effect in old radio commercials of the era (wish I could remember the product that made it famous...). The guitarist Alvino Rey used it on record in 1939. And the sound turns up in movies such as "Dumbo," where it modulates the whistle of the circus train, Casey Jr. I don't think it's drugs or witchcraft, but the alienating pressures of conformity of the '50s, which continued into the '60s for most. Maybe the band had a fight. He's right up there with Weldon Myrick. gawd, I haven't stopped humming this thing since I heard it. Mark, what have you done to me? Get it out of my head! It burns! It's painfully obvious that Drake is Satan, and the backup singers are his thralls. Especially the Dan Akroyd lookalike.there are enough clues in this video to make anyone believe that it's actually a lip-sync, which would explain their odd behavior. 1) The sound coming out of Pete's mouth HAS to be picked up by another microphone close by in order to be heard. We don't even see one in that top-down shot. 2) That gal with the back vocalists sure as hell doesn't look like she's singing that high note at 1:40. 3) I hear at least three women singing. 4) Around 2:06, the guitarist clearly isn't playing what we're hearing. After your third an mouth viewing you'll start appreciating the M's passive aggressive tenancies, "He got the brilliant idea one time to make his steel guitar talk." o THAT'S where Hee Haw got their set Gothic and sinister and a very pretty melody! Or you could say Fellini channeled this. I shudder to thing what rehearsals were liked this setting inspire Devo for the "Whip It" video?...probably ten minutes of indiscrimitate pseudo-beastiality with the on set stuffed animal props that abruptly ends when a bell rings. Seeing this makes me very happy. I bought a Pete Drake record on Starday many years ago. The song "I'm just a guitar" from the album is one of my favorite incredibly strange music tracks.
anyone know what show this hails from?
I think the tree is wrapped with bacon.Pete Drake's "talking steel guitar" effect was created when he sang through the pickup on his pedal steel, making a robotic sound that anticipated "Freak-A-Zoid" and vocoders by decades. On Forever, Drake uses the effect most extensively on "I'm Just a Guitar (Everybody Picks on Me)," but otherwise delivers more predictable fare on the order of an instrumental rendition of Bill Anderson's "Still," an entrancing steel guitar arrangement of Santo & Johnny's "Sleep Walk," and an occasional original. A vocal chorus chimes in wordlessly or, as on "Sleep Walk," by dreamily intoning the song title. Drake was a virtuoso and a sought-after sideman who deserved to step forward as a soloist. Forever is a treat for enthusiasts of the steel guitar and Drake's ability, but only ones who also have a liking or tolerance for easy listening -- the country music content on Forever is very low.this is a talk-box steel guitar feature...which is awesome, lip-syncing comes as no surprise. It's really amazing how many actual live performances were recorded for television cameras back in those days, but I don't think it was because the audience was "purist" and refused the "bakery" of lip-syncing. Hollywood musicals normalized lip-syncing decades before this. The singer Millie_Kirkham usually performed the extremely high notes for songs recorded in Nashville.The MC's name is Uncanny Vinny, his is the stuff my parents used to play on their old record player console in the living room while drinking martinis after work. And yes, that is definitely Alfred Molina in the back up singers. Imagine Pete doing "do you feel like I do" on that thing with the back up singers. Awesome! Wow, I really love that song. The MC at the beginning gets creepier every time I watch him, but the band itself and the song don't really strike me as that bizarre. It's amusing to think of the set as mirroring a real life situation..."Just another sunny day in front of the tar-paper shack, playing mush steel guitar through a talk-box with some friends, ya know. Ole' Marvel dragged his sane-see! new Vibrator amp out here to hit some chords behind me on the Stray-caster, and my it sure does sound heavenly. Let's hear those high notes more time, girls! Ah-one, ah-two..."So the blond behind him is just there to look pretty? She's not singing and her hand-claps were not even trying to look like they could have been audible in a universe where syncing might have attempted to look Check out Aldo Rey of King Family fame. Check out the King Family as well. Great stuff. authentic. Did anyone notice the young Tom Hanks on the far left of the chorus? did some research and it's from the 1966 film, I thought it was Aldo Rey as well, but a productive minute of Boggling found that his name was Alvino Rey, and he was as much fun as I remember from the old King Family TV show back in the day. It's been a lot of fun hearing three of his songs again. I love the link between him and ARCADE FIRE. They have two members who are grandsons of his, and they even put one of his sons on a B-side of theirs. Great tip of the hat to a great musician, boys! Actually, Peter Frampton did get the idea for the talking guitar from Pete Drake, at least according to his site
*Second Fiddle to a Steel Guitar (1966)
Coal Miner's Daughter (1980) .... Cowboy at Tootsie's
Willa (1979) (TV) Nashville (1975) .... Trout
Music Department
"Push, Nevada" (composer: song "Ring of Fire") (1 episode, 2002)
- The Amount (2002) TV episode (composer: song "Ring of Fire")
Living Proof: The Hank Williams, Jr. Story (1983) (TV) .... Himself Roadie (1980) .... Himself
Johnny Cash! The Man, His World, His Music (1969) .... Himself Country Music on Broadway (1965) .... Himself
(1966)
Directed
Victor Duncan
Original Music
Audrey Williams
When a snooty Nashville social climber’s opera charity benefit is cancelled at the last second, she reluctantly allows her husband, country music fanatic Arnold Stang, to hastily put together a lineup of 30 country-western stars, The incredible musical line-up ranges from Lefty Frizzell, Sonny James and Bill Monroe, to Dottie West, Connie Smith and Kitty Wells, to jokesters Minnie Pearl and Homer and Jethro.
Singer and songwriter (and future Hank Williams Jr. manager) Merle Kilgore emcees the show-within-a-show,