Alvino Rey is as important to the development of the electric guitar as Les Paul was, but has been criminally uncredited for it–until now. More and more photos, recordings and film clips like these are coming out of the woodwork to show what a genius Alvino was. This film clip is from 1944 and shows Alvino demonstrating not only his amazing work on the steel guitar, but also his "singing guitar" effect, similar to the Sonovox, manifested in the persona of "Stringy" the talking guitar puppet! Enjoy this and whatever you do, DO NOT TAKE ACID BEFORE VIEWING….we warned you….

21 thoughts on “Alvino Rey plays "St. Louis Blues" with Stringy the talking steel guitar!

  1. the effect has been around since WWII, totally analogue ("speech scrambler"), and as mentioned above, some used a "talkbox" to get a very similar effect…it was basically the "driver" part from the old public address horns, also in the tweeter section of some models of Leslies…a plastic tube ran from the driver into the the musician’s mouth, who would form the effects. this was a much cheaper and easier way to do it than the scrambler, which was heavy on vacuum tubes!

  2. willd.. sounds like a Vocoder.. but those could not have been in use
    when this movie was out.. right?? Wonder how those crazy FX WERE done…..

  3. Rockin steel guitar solo and the drummer can shred too. Looks like the grandfather of rock to me

  4. I hear stringy’s curse breaks if you have intercourse with him

  5. Nice Vid!! Do you like blues? Please check "Steve Vai Blues"  in my channel. You will love it! Thanks!
    Juan Meier
    Line6, Aria, Stromberg and KLD Artist.

  6. Nope. While Sonovox’s were in common use, it is known that Alvino’s wife was wearing carbon mics (fighter pilot style) strapped to her throat as opposed to the Sonovox transducers and did not have a mic in front of her . It looks and sounds very similar but it is quite different in application .

  7. Well Frampton & Joe Walsh and Pete Drake & Iron Butterfly in the ’60’s all had a tube in the mouth. Not only was Alvino using a Vocoder he adapted it for musical use and he also prototyped the first good magnetic guitar pickup used by Gibson on steels & Gibson ES150 , (Charlie Christian). Alvino was a big band leader before all that. Surely as brilliant as Les Paul but a little less self promoting . BTW Les told me he preferred these and P 90’s over Humbuckers by far.

  8. That’s Buddy Cole on the piano! Close-up of him at 1:08

Comments are closed.