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Steel guitar legend West dies
Wesley
Webb “Speedy” West, a Tulsaarea
resident whose innovative
and ubiquitous steel-guitar licks
made him one of the best-known
musicians ever to play that instrument,
died Saturday. He was
79.
Services are pending with Bixby
Funeral Service.
Born in Springfield, Mo., West
moved from a Missouri farm to
the West Coast following World
War II, spending a couple of
hard dues-paying years before
landing a job with the popular
western-swing band of Oklahoma
expatriate Spade Cooley.
“I got out there and like to
starved to death,” he recalled in
a 1991 interview. “First thing I
did was get a job in a drycleaning
plant. I worked drycleaning
by day, beer joints by
night. Counting driving time, it
was an 18-hour day for two
years.”
Taking a cue from recording
star Alvino Rey, who’d introduced
the pedal-steel guitar to
pop audiences, West had a custom
instrument built that featured
three necks and four pedals,
thus becoming the first
country-music steel-guitarist to
use pedals. That became one of
his major claims to fame, as did
his incredible run as Capitol Records’
first-call steel player from
1950 through 1956.
“I broke the all-time record for
anyone playing any instrument,”
he said. “During that time, I
played on more than 6,000 records
for 177 different artists,
both pop and country — Bing
Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Dinah
Shore, the big bands of Nelson
Riddle and Billy May, Jim
Reeves.”
In addition to playing on others’
records, he and guitarist
Jimmy Bryant cut a number of
albums under their combined
names, with many of their recordings
still available. It’s on
those sessions that West opened
up and gave flight to his musical
imagination, coaxing stratospheric
leads, wobbly bent notes and
exploding chords out of his instrument.
Listening to West on these
tracks, as writer-historian Rich
Kienzle notes in his book
“Southwestern Shuffle,” is “like
peering into a volcano.”
In the 1991 interview, he admitted
to being depressed after
his stroke. But then, he said, “I
sat down and made up a positive
side and a negative side for all
the things that had happened to
me. . . . When I added it up, I
had about 100 positive things
and only one negative thing, and
I thought, ‘Old buddy, you’d better
change your way of thinking.’”
He is survived by his wife,
Mary West; a daughter, Tauni
Oakley of Broken Arrow; a son,
Gary West of Bethany, a vocalist
and guitarist who performs in
the Oklahoma City area under
the name Speedy West Jr.; and
three grandchildren.
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