Steel Guitar Rag

"Steel Guitar Rag" is the seminal Western swing instrumental credited with popularizing the steel guitar as an integral instrument in a Western band.

Written by Leon McAuliffe, it was first recorded by Bob Wills and The Texas Playboys in 1936. The song stylistically bears a striking resemblance to a popular Hawaiian song, "On The Beach At Waikiki" (words, G.H. Stover; music, Henry Kailimai; arrangement, Sonny Cunha; 1915), which was widely performed on the vaudeville circuits in the U.S. McAuliffe's composition is likely adapted from "Guitar Rag" recorded by guitarist Sylvester Weaver in the early 1920s. Many musicians and bands have recorded this instrumental over the years. A recent version was performed by Country Music Hall of Famer Jimmy Russell.

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Steel guitar

Steel guitar is a type of guitar or the method of playing the instrument. Developed in Hawaii in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a steel guitar is usually positioned horizontally; strings are plucked with one hand, while the other hand changes the pitch of one or more strings with the use of a bar or slide called a steel (generally made of metal, but also of glass or other materials). The earliest use of an electrified steel guitar was first made in the early 1930s by Bob Dunn of Milton Brown and His Brownies, the original Western Swing Band from Fort Worth, Texas; the instrument was perfected in the mid to late 1930s by Fort Worth's Leon McAluff, who played for Western Swing's greatest band ever, Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. Nashville later picked up the use of the steel guitar in the early days of the late 1940s and early 1950s "Honky Tonk" country & western music with a number of fine steel guitarists backing names like Hank Williams, Lefty Frizell and Webb Pierce. The term steel guitar is often mistakenly used to describe any metal body resophonic guitar.