Slide Guitar

I love the sound of slide guitar. The slide adds a new dimension to what can be done on the guitar. It can add excitement, it can make the guitar “speak”, on an acoustic guitar, a slide can hold notes for what seems like forever, it can play legato (slurring the notes together), and it can play staccato (short, articulated notes).  A slide can add another voice to a guitarist’s bag of tricks.

There are a number of stories about who was the first to play slide on the guitar, but it is generally accepted that it was brought here by Hawaiian groups that toured America around 1918. The Hawaiians played with a metal bar with the guitar held flat on the lap. A lot of the early bluesmen picked up this technique and played slide with the guitar flat on their lap. Leadbelly’s few slide pieces were played this way, Booker White played songs this way, Kokomo Arnold, Casey Bill Weldon, and the Black Ace all played “Hawaiian” or lap style. It is also believed that Charley Patton’s slide songs were played “lap style.”

Who the first person was to put a metal or glass “slide” on their finger and play with the guitar in an upright position isn’t known, but this style became the predominant style in blues, and then rock, while lap style became the predominant style in country music.

But there were other ways to slide, there were “knife songs.” These were songs played with a pocketknife held in the hand and used as a slide. In fact, in W.C. Handy’s first experience of hearing the blues, while waiting for a train in Mississippi, he heard an unknown musician who used a knife in the same way that the Hawaiians used a steel bar.  Mance Lipscomb played with a knife, and Gus Cannon used a knife on his banjo. Booker White can be seen using a nail, and The Black Ace used a medicine bottle.

Mance Lipscomb – Jack of Spades

Booker White – Poor Boy

Black Ace – I Am the Black Ace

Some musicians who played with a slide (either metal or glass) on their finger were: Robert Johnson, Son House, Muddy Waters, Johnny Shines, Elmore James, Hound Dog Taylor, Tampa Red, Earl Hooker, and many others.

Johnny Shines – Ramblin’ Blues

Son House – Yonder Comes the Blues

Muddy Waters – Long Distance Call

What you use as a slide, and how you play are personal preferences. I’ve seen slide played lap or upright, with the slide on the pinky, ring, middle, and even index.  The slide could be glass, brass, copper, steel, ceramic, socket wrench, or even bone.

 

Personally, I like to use either glass or brass. I wear my slide on my pinky, and I like it to go as far down the finger as it can, and to have the tip of my pinky sticking out. I also make my own glass slides. To make my slides, I use a bottle cutter and a candle.

This works pretty well, and I don’t have to go out and buy an expensive glass cutting saw. To make a slide, I score the bottle in two places, once right below the lip, and again 2 to 3 inches below that. I like the slide to be fairly straight, so I try not to use bottles that flare out from the neck. Once the bottle is scored, I hold the first score over a candle flame and slowly rotate. Every so often I take it away from the flame and run it under cold water, again slowly rotating. Do this a couple of times and the lip will just pop off. I then repeat at the second scored line. Usually this produces a clean break, sometimes though the glass will not crack on the score line, or will have cracks in the glass going up the slide.

After I have the neck off, I take some wet/dry sandpaper, and smooth down the edges. It doesn’t cost a lot, and is fairly easy to do.  If you aren’t the handy type, you could purchase a glass slide, there is a company in England that will sell you a glass bottle neck beautifully polished, and beveled:  www.diamondbottlenecks.com

However, I like making my own, and since I know that I’ll eventually break them, it’s cheaper in the long run. Today I cut three bottlenecks; one got too hot and cracked, the other two turned out perfect.