History
Playing a guitar laid flat and using a bar to slide up and down the strings has been common in the Hawaiian Islands for well over a century. The exact beginnings are lost in the mists of time but it gained popularity as a playing style in America in the post war years when servicemen returning from stations in the pacific brought this "new" idea with them.
Hawaiian guitar became something of a craze for a while. This encouraged manufacturers like Hermann C. Weissenborn and Chris J. Knutsen to develop their own instruments for the growing market. It is the surviving examples of these instruments that are the most coveted by players and that provide the most inspiration to current manufacturers.
Using a slide on a regular guitar has been documented from the early days of the blues. The composer W. C. Handy, whilst waiting at a train station in Mississippi, witnessed an unknown player who left a lasting impression on him. "As he played, he pressed a knife on the strings of the guitar in a manner popularized by Hawaiian guitarists who used steel bars. The effect was unforgettable."
Read more about this topic: Lap Slide Guitar
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and to those eras in history which had most attracted me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.”
—Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)