Welcome to my blog! This blog will be dedicated to looking deeper into different items or add-ons for instruments that alter the sound that usually comes out of that instrument, hence the title of this blog.
To start us off, I'll discuss bottle neck slides. Their history, their production, how it works and famous people who used it are all topics that will be addressed, in that order. So what is a bottle neck slide? A bottle neck slide is literally what it sounds like, the neck of a glass bottle (originally a wine bottle ) that would be slipped on either the pinky, ring, or middle finger of the hand that held the neck of the guitar. They were first used around the 1920s for Ragtime music. Sylvester Weaver, an African American blues musician, was the first recorded artist to use the bottle neck slide in 1923. He used it for the wavering sound that can be applied to an already stuck chord that gives sort of a wailing feel, corresponding rather well with blues. It made its way into country music and Hawaiian music, as well as Rock music in the 60s. Even in these vastly different forms of music, however, they were all calling back to the heart-string-tugging blues origins of the slide. To play with a bottle neck slide became known as playing slide guitar or playing a bottle neck guitar.
As stated above, they started out as the necks of wine bottles. It wasn't limited to this for people have different size fingers or perhaps wine bottles weren't readily on hand. Other glass bottles were also used in the 20's. These were used until approx. 1975 when manufactured glass slides were popping up in music stores around the nation. They were no longer bottle necks, so the term slide guitar became more popular. The slides also started coming in different materials that just glass. Some were steel, brass, or plastic. Some musicians used knives, pipes, or other objects that gave the unique resonance that the artist was looking for.
Bottle neck slides were created for a distinct purpose, to make the transition from one chord to another smooth and seamless without making that unique sound the human finger makes when it slides up or down the neck. The bottle neck, made of glass or a like material, is many times smoother than the human finger, so the action of sliding it down a taught metal string makes more of a glissando slide rather than an abrupt slur. Also the material itself will resonate with a different timbre than normal fingerings. The finger with the bottle neck isn't useless when it comes to fretting (the act of shortening the guitar strings with your fingers to increase the pitch) however, for with enough pressure the musician can still play chords, though they will sound different with the slide's unique resonance.
Some clouted people who used bottle neck slides are Blind Willie Johnson, Fred McDowell, and the Memphis Jug Band. George Harrison of the Beatles experimented with the slide during "Strawberry Fields Forever" in the mid-60s, and later used the slide in many other songs during his solos. Many famous rockers have also dabbled with the slide, such as Lynyrd Skynyrd, Led Zeppelin, the Eagles, and ZZ Top. Duane Allman, from the Allman Brothers Band, used a glass medicine bottle for his slide. Not exactly a bottle neck, but it produced a similar, yet still unique sound. Elmore James, Muddy Waters, and Roy Rogers are all influential slide users in classic electric blues. This is a clip of Roy Rogers playing his slide guitar. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NW08Rc802MQ
That, in a nutshell, is the bottle neck slide, aka bottleneck guitar, aka slide guitar. Hope this was educational and I'll be bringing you more next week.
