There is a very good reason I haunt thrift stores with funny smells and drag my young children into antique stores full of expensive breakable things; it is in the hunt for those big, black round things known as records.
And I had a recent experience that hopefully explains why.
The Saturday before last, I was looking through a small pile of records in a Beatrice thrift store where I had previously found a promo 45 by cult power pop band Big Star and a Harry Bellafonte record that featured Bob Dylan’s first appearance on vinyl (and you probably won’t be surprised to find out that he wasn’t there for his voice; it was for his harmonica playing).
Anyway, the records there are only five for $1, so it’s pretty painless to take a chance on something. And in this stack that day, along with lots of records that will one day find their home in a dumpster, was a record by Pete Drake and his Talking Steel Guitar titled “Talking Steel and Singing Strings.”
I had heard the name Pete Drake somewhere before, but who knows when or where.
As it turns out, this guy was a consummate Nashville session man in the sixties and seventies, playing on host of hits, including Tammy Wynette’s “Stand By Your Man,” Charlie Rich’s “Behind Closed Doors,” George Jones’s “He Stopped Loving Her Today” and an endless list of others.
He even played on Bob Dylan’s “John Wesley Harding” and “Nashville Skyline” and George Harrison’s “All Things Must.” This is a guy that really got around.
But what really struck me when I put this record on the turntable wasn’t his steel guitar playing, which is as good as you’d imagine it from someone of his reputation. What grabbed my attention was his voice, or rather, what he did to it.
In some ways, the voice sounds electronic, but this was recorded in the early sixties, way before they were using computers in the recording studio.
For a sample of his vocals and an interesting time capsule visit to 1963, watch this:
While the music seems pretty tame (some would just say “pretty”), that voice thing is just weird, but in a way that’s kind of cool.
I had heard a talk box before from Peter Frampton on “Show Me the Way,” which either reeks of the seventies or just plain reeks, I can never decide which.
And I had also heard something similar from Neil Young on an album from his schizophrenic period, otherwise known as the eighties.
One of the specific Neil Young songs Pete Drake’s vocals reminded me was “Transformer Man” from “Trans”:
Neil Young – “Transformer Man”
The vocal distortions in both songs are odd and interesting and somehow otherworldly, but Pete Drake’s vocals provide a context for Young’s that makes what he did with “Transformer Man” and others seem a little less unusual.
But even on its own, “Talking Steel and Singing Strings” is a very interesting album and a fun introduction to a largely-forgotten musical innovator, virtuoso, and sideman.
All in all, it was well worth the 20¢.