[mrbojangles111]

I just finished a biography about the Carter family. A few times in the book it was meantioned that Maybell Carter would play her guitar in a Hawaiian-style. It was not discribed in much detail but what i could gather it is a type of slide playing with the strings raised higher on the fretboard using some kind of riser near the nut of the guitar. Does anyone know more about this?

[TheJosh]

its usually on a whole different guitar- a lap steel
it has strings way off the fret board, and is played on the lap.
americans loved that hawaiian guitar sound (fender first made 'lectric lap steels), especially country music folk, and evolved into the pedal steel.

it sounds really trebley and islandy and chill with lots of slide-age....

[matt_theripper]

It can also sound kick ass if you are playing it with a resophonic (Dobro) or completely acoustic (Wiessenborn) guitar.

[dadfad]

Hawiian-style is (in that context) basically just referring to playing slide, usually in a lap-style. Back in those days there were no electric lap-steels, but many companies including Gibson and Dobro made guitars with extended nuts and (usually) a thicker square-neck for placing the guitar on your lap and using a slide-bar. Often it was just a regular guitar but with a "nut-extender" that was placed over a regular nut to raise the strings. (You can still buy them for a couple of dollars.)

Hawiian-music was sort of a fad in the thirties (my mom learned lap-slide as a little girl along with her piano lessons). It was a very simplified only semi-authentic Hawiian-style, recorded for mainstream consumption (in the same way that say Pat Boone recorded "cleaned-up" R&B for mainstream pop consumption in the early 50s).

Some musicologists say blues-slide was inspired by this fad, although there are numerous accounts of slide-guitar blues being played long before the Hawiian-thing became a fad (and even before there was recorded music at all) so that's definately not true.

Authentic Hawiian music has a very rich old tradition, just as the old country-blues styles. It was done in open and altered tunings. Some of these altered tunings were considered very special by whatever remote Hawiian village had developed it, and was kept a secret so that other villages couldn't duplicate the sound and tunes played by another (there were even village executions of "traitors" who might give away the secret-tuning of one village to another, so they took it pretty seriously. Slightly different regional styles and tunings obviously developed (That can be related a bit to the tuning open-Dm DADFAD which was a very regional style, specific to the remote area (back in the 20s-30s) of Bentonia County, Mississippi.)

There are some very accomplished traditional-style Hawiian guitarists around today, like Ledward Kaapana, George Kahamoka (spellings?) and others. They often use custom-made guitars with extra strings, etc. It's often called "slack-key style."

So anyway, there's the difference between the general informal term "Hawiian-style" and authentic Hawiian-style. The term was often used back then to describe the music of any artists who played slide, whether traditional country-folk like Mother Maybelle, or country-blues like Blind Willie McTell.

[wilson78jr]

I have a CD titled Hawiian Slack key guitar. Most of the songs are played in Open E tuning, with a few in A. The picture on the front shows a guy playing a regular Dreadnaught acoustic with a ^-shaped nut extention and a ceramic slide. He has the guitar tipped up to play lap style. The music itself sounds very cool, with parts that sound like Mississippi delta blues as well as Florida cracker (Saltwater Cowboy), and yet it is unique enough to be identifiable as Island music.

[matt_theripper]

i heard a great version of somewhere over the rainbow at the end of the adam sandler filum 50 first dates. if anyone knows where i can get hold of it on a cd with similar stuff i'd be very greatful.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I know what you are talking about. My brother has a CD of that type of stuff, I'll ask him who it is and let you know.

[TheJosh]

the dude that sings somewhere over the rainbow is Israel Kamakawiwo'ole

he's dead....but he was like four hunerd pounds

[matt_theripper]

the dude that sings somewhere over the rainbow is Israel Kamakawiwo'ole

he's dead....but he was like four hunerd pounds

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Beat me to it.

[cheabz]

Hey, get yourself an ukulele. Now that's hawaiian style!