Famous Folks from Sebastian County

Bobby White (1932-2003) All Photos, Memories and Autobiograhpy Submitted by Dusty Helbling "Bobby White in his own words" - below this rememberance HANK THOMPSON & The Brazos Valley Boys really hit the top of the music charts during the 1950's -60's. Billboards selection as touring band for 14 years in a row. What made them so great was Steel Guitar player "Bobby White"....is what I and others say! I first met Bobby in 1951 I was 17 and he was 19. I am working at a Dairy Queen as one would expect back then. But Bobby White had already been playing Steel Guitar in the number 1 Western Swing Band in the country......"Bob Wills & the Texas Playboys" as a teenager! How can that be? Bobby White showed up in Ft. Smith, worked some for Bob Revell Gulf Station at 19th & Rogers next to the DQ. Bob Revell played the Sax & Bobby the Steel Guitar for Clint Fisher & His Musical Buddy's. They had a Radio Broadcast on the local radio station a least once or more times a week from a Dance Hall on the second floor near Garrison on N. 10th St. Pat Porta was the MC for the show. Two of us that worked at the DQ would ride down to watch the radio show with Bob. We would be the only two there besides the band. Pat would say "We got a large audience today!" and the two of us would clap loud and yell! We had a blast, it was hard to stop laughing! When we first arrived all the band is getting warmed up and ready except Bobby White is at the piano trying to pick out a tune by ear! Clint would have to tell him to get the Steel turned on and quit messing with the piano. Seems one of the greatest Steel Guitar players wanted to be a piano player! Bobby White was inducted to The Steel Guitar Hall of Fame in 1990. Gene Gasaway on fiddle & Bobby White on Steel Guitar HANK THOMPSON & The Brazos Valley Boys An Autobiography by Steel Guitar Legend ~Bob White ~ (c. 1977) STEEL GUITARIST "BOB WHITE" was born June 15, 1932 in Jenny Lind, Arkansas. This small coal mining community was named in honor of a famous Opera star, Jenny Lind, the Swedish Nightingale. I would probably have never been a musician except for the advent of World War II. We moved from Arkansas to San Diego, California in 1941 where my folks worked in the aircraft factories. It was there I became acquainted with the Hawaiian guitar. My dad liked those pretty Hawaiian melodies so my brother and I both took lessons to please him. I really wasn't impressed with the twangy sound of an acoustic Hawaiian guitar and didn't take it very serious, although my brother did, and learned to play quite well. It was after the war ended and the family returned to Fort Smith, Arkansas to live that I was bitten by that "whatever-it-is-bug" that makes you just "have" to be a musician. It must have been that six string electric Gibson lap steel that did it---now this "electric" sound was more like it. From then on it was pretty much a race between my brother, C. B. White, and me to outplay each other, until he switched to piano sometime later. I wagged that little Gibson guitar around all through high school. Radio stations were the TV's of 1947, '48, & '49. I would get up at 4:30 every morning - hitchhike five miles downtown to the radio stations and sit there till some of those early morning live singers would let me play (free) with them. Then I'd go to school. I recall playing a 30 minute radio show completely solo one morning, when the scheduled singer failed to show up. Nothing else, just steel guitar. My senior year in high school, I traded for a double neck eight string Rickenbacker. I used an E13th on one neck and an A6th on the other. Never did think I'd get used to that 6th sound, it was just too modern. In June, 1949, I took my first full time professional playing job with a group called "Sonny Hall & The Arkansas Moonshiners". (Yep, this is the same Sonny Hall that most people in Nashville know as the "Nashville Eye", from the Nashville Star Reporter Magazine.) We worked the resort towns in the Catskill Mountains of New York State, some 100 miles out of New York City. I made $20.00 a week and room & board on that job, which was fine with me, ..I was learning to play. When fall and cold weather came along, the "Arkansas Moonshiners" migrated to Houston, Texas for the winter. Houston was a complete panic. The people in New York thought we were quaint, talked real cute, and all that. The people in Houston thought we were hicks, which we were. The only jobs we could get were playing for the kitty. A nightly routine was - head out the Beaumont Highway or some other beer joint infested thoroughfare till you found a bar with a few customers, set up and play for the kitty till they stopped tipping, then onto the next joint, and the next, and etc., till closing time. I think the most money we made that winter was about $18.00 a week, out of which room rent was paid. What was left amounted to a lot of chili & beans & 5-cent coffee. Most of my idle time was spent practicing, either learning new songs, or learning the 6th tuning and how to play everything in four different places on the neck. It was very tedious because there was virtually no instruction material available, so it all had to be dug out by trial and error. Early spring of 1950 found us back in New York again with a few changes. I had bought a triple neck Fender, just new on the market, case & all, for $360.00 borrowed money. That was a fine guitar. Back in New York, we made $25.00 per week, plus room & board, PLUS weekly trips to New York City. We had a slick new manager that bought us tailor made clothes, promoted a guest spot on the Milton Berle TV Show<, and fed us a steady diet of top New York night clubs. The Latin Quarter, Copa Cabana, etc. That was a fast life for a 17-year-old Arkie, so in a few months, I moved back to Fort Smith. In the summer of 1950, my brother and I spent a lot of time trying to make a steel guitar sound like a piano. We built a table for it to sit on, drilled holes through the tuning heads, and with a crude pulling device made of welding rods and angle iron, managed to fabricate a method to change four strings on the A6th tuning. I still use those changes today, lowering both fifths with one pedal and lowering both thirds with one pedal. At this time, I converted the 6th tuning to a major 7th by adding an A string on the top side of the tuning. I also moved the A to Bb to achieve a brighter sound. These modifications gave me a lot of new sounds. I had a major 7th open, with one pedal either a 13th, or a full 9th, or with two pedals, a full diminished chord or a flatted 9th. With the other pedal alone, I had another full 9th in a different position, or a flatted 5th on top. With this setup, I moved to Lawton, Oklahoma later that year to work for a piano player named Jimmy Stewart. We practiced every day and played every night. Jimmy had studied since he was 6-years-old, but loved Western Swing music, so we combined the two. It was here I knew eight strings were not enough to get the real good voicings of chords that I heard for the steel guitar. One small problem, though, there were no ten string guitars. I worked a little over a year at the clubs in Lawton with some great bands. I can think of twelve players immediately that came out of Lawton to road bands from Merle Lindsay to Harry James. In 1951, Hank Thompson played Lawton at Fort Sill and dropped by the club after their gig. They offered me a job, $75.00 per week on the road traveling in station wagons. The club owner gave me a raise to the same $75.00, so I stayed in Lawton. Later in the year, Bob Wills was booked in our club for a one-night-stand. Bobby Koeffer was the steel man with Wills, but was leaving to join Pee Wee King. I got a call from the Wills band wanting me to audition the night they were in town. I was hired for the Bob Wills Band in December of 1951, just 2 1/2 years after my first professional job. This was one of the great Bob Wills bands, with people like Eldon Shamblin, Keith Coleman, Joe Holley, Jack Lloyd, etc. A whopping twelve piece band, it was like Heaven. We worked out of Dallas where we made all the Jergens Lotion transcriptions and several MGM recording sessions. Bob Wills paid good wages. We made $190.00 per week in 1952. In April of '52, we left on a "short" tour to the northwest and the west coast that lasted until September, six months away from home. I couldn't wait to get to Los Angeles and talk to Paul Bigsby about a ten sting guitar. I was stunned to find he had a five year waiting list for his custom made instruments. Nevertheless, I placed my order and waited. Later that fall, I was elated when Paul contacted me and offered me a delivery date just a few months away, May 15, 1953. Someone had cancelled out and I got the spot. As it turned out, that was to be an important spot, for Bigsby was to build for me what I consider to be the best and most exposed steel guitar he ever made. I didn't care for the cast aluminum necks and their de-tuning problem, and I wanted (2) ten string necks and (1) eight string, in case I had trouble with the extra strings. Bigsby wasn't crazy about the wooden necks or the ten strings, but agreed to build it after much persuasion and additional money. The finished product was superb. One piece wooden necks, including tuning head, and the first ten string instrument built to specification. The only one of its kind. Consider that Fender made the ten string pedal steel a catalog item in 1963, ten years later. I don't know when Sho-Bud made a ten string guitar, but at that point in time, there was no Sho-Bud, in fact or in thought. Paul never built another guitar like mine. He said it took too much time. I stayed with the Bob Wills Band until early 1953. Billy Bowman got out of the Army and we used two steel guitars for a couple of months. Hank Thompson was getting real hot by then and I got a call from him again. This time he was paying $500.00 per month and traveling in a bus....ah, much better. The Wills Band was relocating in Los Angeles, so I took the job with Hank and moved to Oklahoma City. The Hank Thompson Band was young and full of life, and it was a good association for everyone. I got my Bigsby guitar soon after joining Hank. I extended the Bb maj7th down to complete the 6th, and added an Eb string on the bottom to get the wide piano voicings. This gave me an advantage over everyone else, for I had the instrument to play modern or progressive sounds. Also, I was one of the very first to take advantage of the pedal changers later that year. My most significant pedal movement was raising the root to the major 9th and the 6th to the major 7th on the Bb tuning. This change, combined with the two other changes used a couple of years previously, offered considerable possibilities for good chord inversions. This basic tuning, as you can see, was converted to the C6th by dropping the major 7th on top and adding the root on the bottom. I played standing up with Hank and thought nothing of using the pedals without using the volume pedal, and used a little skip step to move from one to the other. I had two sets of rods, one for standing up, and one for sitting down. However, I really enjoyed the freedom of standing up and did so for the most part until the early 1970's. There were many highlights with the Brazos Valley Band. My first year with Hank, we were voted the nation's #1 Country & Western Band, and were to receive the same honor every year that I worked in the band. We played an extravaganza in 1953 at Chicago that featured some twenty-five super stars from Jazz to Country. Hank Thompson was the sole Country attraction. The place was Soldier Field and it poured down rain. Over 35,000 people came anyway, so everybody played. I did "Steel Guitar Rag" under beach umbrellas in the middle of a football field for 35,000 people, and all I could think about was "I hope it doesn't ruin my guitar". Another first was the Kate Smith national TV show out of New York City. A great experience was being the first Country band to play the Million Dollar Ballroom chain throughout the Midwest that had previously shunned Country music. This was climaxed by performing at the Meadowbrook Club in New Jersey where Glenn Miller worked so often. These were dance engagements and the places were packed, some watching, some dancing. They all left happy. I always enjoyed working at dances or clubs rather than shows. You are closer to the audience and can achieve better communication with them. Also, you are able to diversify the music and allow more individual performance from the musicians. That Bigsby guitar traveled to every state in the U.S. and every province in Canada many times, and was scrutinized by countless people. The first instrumental record of Hank's, "Wildwood Flower", was an experiment that proved profitable and opened the avenue for other Country and, finally, Big Band tunes with refined Western Swing arrangements. I have always put the "band sound" above an "individual's sound" when it comes to music. The pedal changes on my guitar were used in this manner as to achieve a section sound rather than a pedal sound (with a few important exceptions). Through the years with Hank, we were able to develop the high class instrumental sound with basically fiddles and guitars. This was no accident and required countless hours of experimentation. These were all done on monaural tape...no overdubbing. Anyone that hasn't tried it cannot know the amount of responsibility and work it takes to move a large band smoothly across the country, night after night. Down through the years, I took on more and more of these responsibilities with the Hank Thomson Band. A list of my chores at the time I left the band are as follows: Keep the job contracts and collect the specified money from the individual operators each night, and be responsible for same until check-in at conclusion of tour; Furnish Hank with desired expense money and keep record of same; Cash personal checks for each individual band member as needed; Check band into hotels or motels; Check band out of hotels or motels, pay the bill and collect from each band member any added room service charges and enter into records; Pay union representatives the traveling tax when they came by; Send in gate receipt money when requested; Post same into records; Sell song books and pictures and keep proceeds separately till check-in at conclusion of tour; Operate a small loan and "beverage" business for the band members, independently of everything else; Rehearse the band; Work on new arrangements; Rotate as one of four bus drivers; And finally....play steel guitar. In the latter part of 1959, I struck out on my own, formed a band known as Bob White & The Bob-O-Links, and played mostly engagements around Oklahoma. I also backed Hank as a single on quite a few dates. It was obvious, however, that I'd never make it as a road band without a name, so in January of 1960, I opened one of the first private clubs in Oklahoma under the state's new liquor laws. The "Someplace Else Club" of Oklahoma City was quite successful and I stayed there until 1963, playing and operating the club. This was followed by working in various places and clubs using a small combo. By 1964, I had worked my way to California, looked at the Pacific Ocean, and then decided to sit still for a while. This was accomplished by getting into the real estate business around the San Francisco area, first as a salesman, and then as a broker. The result was a sort of self-imposed semi-retirement, playing only on weekends. In 1967, Ray Price started calling regularly with a job offer, so finally I said, "What the heck, once a musician, always a musician" and in the spring of 1968, I joined the Ray Price Band in Dallas, Texas. Much to my chagrin, the first thing Ray's band manager said when I arrived was, "don't want any Hank Thompson licks around here." I thought, "WOW!!! Here's where I catch up on a lot of needle point" because the closest thing I had to an E9th tuning was an E13th with one pedal. A few months of that association proved to be quite sufficient. Since Ray wouldn't sing "Green Light" or "Humpty Dumpty Heart", I felt about like Jerry Ford and decided to return to Fort Smith and raise my kids. A two year lay off from the music business sharpened my playing desires once again. Father time had finally kayoed the old Bigsby after nineteen years and it was necessary to look around for an up-to-date instrument with up-to-date capabilities. In 1972, I decided on an MSA Double 12, with ten floor pedals and six knee levers. From ten strings to twelve. From a half inch steel bar to a seven eighths inch steel bar. That's a lot of changing, but the new musical possibilities made it all worthwhile. Ben Jack, now the country's foremost collector of guitars & steel guitars had built a fantastic 16 track recording studio near Fort Smith and, in 1975, suggested that I do an album which he would produce, thereby making the "Steel Trek" LP possible. This album exemplifies my feelings of the steel guitar as a musical instrument, and was designed to illustrate the progressive trip of its adaptability from the fifties swing to the "now" sound of a Moog synthesizer. With the exception of Gene Gasaway's fiddle on "Blue Steel Blues" & "Bits & Pieces", all section work in the album was entirely steel guitar using as many as six tracks on "Sing", "Top Of The World", & "My Love". The basic album tracks consisted of drums, bass, piano, and steel guitar. Everything else was tracked in. The fact that "Steel Trek" is almost entirely steel guitar could be easily overlooked if not listened to very closely. In the 50's, I had recorded with artists such as Bob Wills, Hank Thompson, Wanda Jackson, Johnny Horton, Sonny Hall, Billy Gray, Joe Carson, and Freddy Hart, just to name a few. The "Steel Trek" album was more satisfying than any of those, discounting the exposure element. Last year, I did the Hank Thompson album, "Back In The Swing Of Things", along with Curley Chalker. More recently, I have done studio work in Houston and Oklahoma City, mostly with lesser known artists. I now work locally in Fort Smith, Arkansas at the Crossroads Club, which is operated by my brother and myself. Come see us!!!