Alvino Rey (a pioneer of the electric guitar) appears in a 1944 clip with Stringy, his talking steel guitar puppet. Stringy is kinda creepy, so DON'T CLICK ON THIS VIDEO if puppets are your bête noire!
In this 1939 newsreel, Lucille Ball demonstrates the Sonovox by pressing its contact microphones to her larynx. Alvino Rey's wife wore a throat mic behind the scenes to "give diction" to her husband's pedal steel.
Pete Drake took it a step further by putting a tube in his mouth to perform both parts of the "talking steel guitar". No puppet required! Drake was a respected session musician who was invited by George Harrison to play on 1970's All Things Must Pass. Peter Frampton was also present, and Pete Drake showed him the way to make a guitar talk.
Meanwhile, Pete Townshend had been working extensively with sound engineer Bob Heil, and it was Townshend who gave a Heil Talk Box to Joe Walsh, who used the effect on 1973's "Rocky Mountain Way". Frampton took a Heil Talk Box on tour in 1975. He later licensed the "Framptone" (pictured above).
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| Homer Dudley's 1939 invention, the voice encoder (vocoder) |
The talk box is sometimes confused with the vocoder. They sound similar, but Nerdist tells us something good about telling them apart. A talk box uses the human voice to manipulate the sound of an instrument; a vocoder does the reverse, using a musical instrument to modulate the sound of a human voice.
Stinky kicks off our own series of talk box comps with a selection of 18 rock and funk talk box classics, plus Pete Drake with "I'm Just a Guitar (Everybody Picks On Me)". First Generation Records has five Pete Drake albums on Bandcamp. More talk box tunes to come, courtesy of Jon-Ky Records!
Talk Box Songs Volume 1 (Jon-Ky Records #6) -- https://www.imagenetz.de/e32TN
ReplyDeleteNEW LINK: https://tinyurl.com/talkbox1
DeleteThank you so much Jonder for giving us all the skinny on talk box! I love the Stillwater tune MINDBENDER that uses the talk box...a Capricorn Southern USA band from the 70's. Had no idea it was this old but makes sense since back then everyone had one of those 60 in 1 electronic kits like our family of ten had plus all the huge early boxes of eletronica, Cheers BUD!
ReplyDeleteYup, Stinky included "Mindbender"! Wow, you had a family of ten? One of my friends was the youngest of nine. He said the oldest ones were out of the house by the time he was old enough to go to school, so they were more like aunts & uncles to him.
DeleteYeah we all watched Brady Bunch and Eight Is Enough as we also had 4 boys and 4 girls then a family of 9 next with more on our quiet little Avenue had block games like Capture the Flag at their house with the 'jail' as the patio out back then also Sardines a version of Hide And Seek on the whole outside block where when you find the person you keep squeezing in until only one guy out there looking...LOL... and he/she is it next time. Of course hockey during winter and close enough to walk to grade school with warming house hockey rink as I was an official 'rink rat' since our big family couldn't afford for us to get new hocky pads every year and support official league play but I wear my badge proudly. Yeah my two older brothers from 60 (cassettes only Beatles Hendrix Doors Alice Grateful Dead) and from 62 (vinyl Stones Zeppelin Tom Waits Bob Dylan (a writing teacher) he be) Al Stewart and settled into memorizing all Bruce Springsteen) while the two sisters in the old playroom lower basement room from us had the oldest sister from '64 whole forged the path as First Ave regular (buy booze for us and lend me her friends ID for RHCP first time at the Ave) liking Ted Nugent Wango Tango as our fave while we played there then B-52's Rock Lobster album Talking Heads Steely Dan Aja ELO other fun stuff as she grew our little scene and made fun box cassette recording as was all the rage at the time in the 'hood as one of our weekly Catholic Masses as I had a "preacher' voice and she of the converted...such fun. The other sister there from 66 I was next in age with and became and early friend in our backyard sandbox next to our pool area fence in the backyard by the swingset and where I met my first friend a little red head kitty corner in the backyards whose mom owned a modeling agency downtown Mpls. and got us all into modeling for college money. Then next youngest to me also a sister in 71 a big varsity soccer star and mother of three teaching yoga then little brother from 73 the toadster bass man tore---teese as his/our buds called his Ibenez bass that he stripped the frets from later before he got his Music Man now with a nice house in our old little town there, wife and two kids. The youngest Miss Molly from 75 has a salon in the great state of Alaska with her tax evading partner boyfriend t-shirt artist and I had got her into our scene growing up when she was dating another fellow who was a HUGE Soul Asylum fan.
DeleteThat's quite a family history, and reminds me a bit of my small town childhood in Wisconsin. I didn't know the game Sardines, but we used to play a wild downhill version of Red Light Green Light, as well as flashlight tag (which was my favorite). I didn't have any older siblings, but used to borrow records from friends who did have big brothers and sisters.
DeleteAt my first concert John Kay played a Talk Box. His first solo tour. This is going to be an interesting collection you guys are putting together. Thank you. Just a couple days ago I listened to Jeraboah by Steppenwolf. Coincidence, I think not. Other talk Box songs I saw in concert were done by pre Eagles Joe Walsh and Iron Butterfly, Butterfly Bleu. Then I saw Peter Frampton 2 or 3 times while he recorded his live album. He was everywhere.
ReplyDeleteI knew about "Butterfly Bleu" but not "Jeraboah" -- thanks! Stinky included "Hey Lawdy Mama" and (of course) Walsh and Frampton.
DeleteGreat subject for a blog piece!
ReplyDeleteThank you (everybody over there at Jon-Ky Records) for this informative, entertaining, and to some extent nostalgia-inducing package.
ReplyDeleteHave you got this one lined up? https://youtu.be/f98DOYcfIJ4 tasty bit of talk box at 2.22 in - although cos it's the promo they don't show him using the tube
ReplyDeleteActually this clip from the Top of the Pops does show the guitarist with the tube in his gob - probably Musicians Union rules in the UK! https://youtu.be/8ziyJMiBFAs
ReplyDeleteIt's a pleasure to have a visit from thee Simon Reynolds! "S-S-S-Single Bed" was completely unknown to me until now. Thank you! Stinky came up with the concept and almost all the tracks for this volume himself. I dug into the history and also came across a Steve Hoffman forum about talkbox tunes. The forum included a playlist called “The Talkbox Will Never Die” (from a since deceased blog) with almost 70 songs on it, which was followed by pages of comments adding more songs (many of which are coming up on future volumes). But nobody mentioned "S-S-S-Single Bed" or Steppenwolf's "Jeraboah" (thanks SteVe!)
DeleteJust read that the guy who wrote "S-S-S-Single Bed" was also the composer of "Under The Boardwalk", and that Bananarama did a version of "S-S-S-Single Bed" on their 2009 comeback album.
DeleteThanks to everyone who commented, & stay tuned for more talk-box tunes! - Stinky
ReplyDeleteLate to the party but looks like a fun one; great concept -- thanks Jon-Ky!
ReplyDeleteNice comp...cheers Jonder.
ReplyDeleteI just found out that the guy who invented the Talk Box died 2/28/24. Didn't even get to do the Leap Year thing. I guess you guys were mysteriously inspired to complete these comps. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Heil
ReplyDeleteRIP Bob Heil. His was not the first Talk Box, but as the Wikipedia article says, the Heil Talk Box had more power than earlier devices and could be used reliably in rock concerts, so it became the choice of performers like Joe Walsh and Peter Frampton. Thanks, steVe -- and thanks again for the songs you suggested for these compilations!
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