ok so maybe not twisted but just slightly bent. I listened to two older albums today that had two artists playing out of their usual genre. The first was Buddy Emmons who is known as the “The World’s Foremost Pedal Steel Guitar” player (It says so on his website). Anyway if you’ve heard the music of Judy Collins, Linda Ronstadt, Ernest Tubb, John Hartford, The Everly Brothers, Ray Price, and Lenny Breau you’ve heard Buddy Emmons.
There are many outstanding steel players, like Ralph Mooney, Lloyd Green, Pete Drake, Weldon Myrick, Hal Rugg, Curly Chalker, Tom Brumley and Doug Jernigan, but Emmons is alone at the top.
“He’s not an ordinary guy,” Lloyd Green says. “In my opinion Buddy Emmons is probably the most intelligent and talented musician who’s ever played the instrument.””He’s like Picasso or Michelangelo. That might be laying it on a little thick, but he’s just flawless in his playing. Nobody is the composite player he is.””He was the first modern great steel player and nobody’s surpassed him yet. Emmons just, by God, came along and sounded like a 1977 steel player when he came here in 1955.”
Anyway I love pedal steel guitar and the album I listened to was Buddy Emmon’s Steel Guitar Jazz. The album was recorded in 1963 and released on CD in 2003 Emmons is helped on the album by Jerome Richardson on soprano saxophone and tenor saxophone; Bobby Scott on piano and Charlie Persip on drums. From CD Universe:
Obvious highlights are the loping treatment of “Where or When,” featuring Richardson’s delicious soprano sax trading off with the leader, and Emmons’ hot playing of “(Back Home Again In) Indiana.” Equally rewarding are the jazz classics: Ray Brown’s soulful “Gravy Waltz,” an intricate romp through Sonny Rollins’ “Oleo,” and Horace Silver’s toe-tapping “The Preacher.”
It was a fun album to listen to and will get a few more listens and my become an album to listen to at work!
While jazz and the pedal steel may not seem like they go together the blues and 
the harp certainly do. But the other artist that I listened to today doesn’t typically play the blues. Charlie McCoy is a country music musician but on his 1975 album Harpin’ the Blues. He switched genre’s and played the blues and it’s not really a giant leap so Charlie did just fine! It’s a nice album with some great tracks like his tribute to Little Walter track 4., “Columbus Stockade Blues” and W.C. Handy’s “St. Louis Blues”. Overall a good listen from a harmonica playing legend and member of say it with me now AREA CODE 615!
Here’s Buddy Emmons “Steel Guitar Rag” with the Lawton Kicks Jazz Ensemble!