Blown Away by Reece's playing

[Bill McCloskey]

a few years ago someone posted Reece Anderson playing 3 live sets in 1975. I downloaded them and never really sat down to listen.

Well today I did. I am in complete an utter shock. I am pretty familiar with Reece's wonderful playing on record. But nothing that I've heard before compares to these lives sets. Reece plays his a s s off. And he plays everything: Jazz, Rock, country, blues to the point that I forgot he was playing pedal steel. He shreds like crazy, and so fast and clean. And the licks are like no one else's.

These live sets have opened up worlds of possibilities and inspiration for me. Not sure the best way to share these with the group. Maybe I'll load them up on my youtube channel.

[Lee Rider]

Would love to hear it!

[scott murray]

yes please!

[Levi Gemmell]

Hi Bill, would love if you found a way to share these again!

[Bill McCloskey]

Okay. I'll start putting them up on the youtube channel. There are really quite phenominal and like nothing I've ever heard before. There are times where you would swear it is the Grateful Dead jamming in their prime.

[scott murray]

can't wait to hear it Bill, thanks.

in the meantime I found these 2 live tracks from St. Louis 1978. the man can swing!

Secret Love

Shadow of Your Smile

[Bill McCloskey]

I'll be putting the first one up tonight. It is also Secret Love. He must have opened with that a lot.

[Bill McCloskey]

First one is up. https://youtu.be/KRZ--2NROUQ

There are 33 tracks in all. I'll try and get one up a day

Be sure to like and subscribe and choose alert to be notified when the next one goes up

[scott murray]

subscribed Bill, thanks again.

Reece was something else. like Emmons, his backup work is just as interesting to me as his lead playing

[David Wright]

Heres Maurice 1963 with Bob Wills.....
https://www.facebook.com/10000023758467 ... 7785994602

[scott murray]

fantastic, David!

[Bill McCloskey]

For those that might have missed it, I posted the second track yesterday. Reece doing a wild version of help me make it through the night, although if you got rid of the vocal, you would never guess that is what Reece is playing. https://youtu.be/Y6mWCJLQ5rk?si=U2ep1tm6dC_QjBSz

Track three will post on monday

[Fred]

Every time I hear Reese’s playing I think I should change my E9 universal over to B or Bb. My non pedal playing has always favored 6th or 13th tunings and my universal has a C# instead of a D# at the top.

Anyway, I subscribed and hit the bell. I’m excited to hear every one of these tracks.

[Bill McCloskey]

Thanks Fred. Yeah, I know. Since listening to these I've been thinking about a universal with Reeces' tuning.

In fact, today I'm getting out my 12 string superslide with Reece's extended C6 on it.

[J D Sauser]

Maurice rose to "Steel Guitar Stardom" beyond Texas in the 60's and 70's and his style was heavily influenced by non-steel guitar Jazz players of that time. He was, in those years, VERY modern and thus, today, some of his earlier albums can sound dated because the "late 60's thru mid 70's" clichés are very obviously present on some of those records.

Being based in Texas and able to make a living with and around steel guitar mainly there, allowed him to not have to sound "Nashville", and thus remain unique and different. I think similar to Zane Becks's Jazz side or Julian Tharpe's with whom both had interacted musically in those musically wild and wooly years.
I also believe that when MSA became a major player, he honestly felt he could convince the world that the PSG could also become a "serious" Jazz, R&B and Pop instrument.

I also feel Maurice is one of the few professional player who got even better as he aged beyond the years one would expect growth.
I still remember his show at the 2000 Dallas Steel Guitar Jamboree... it left John Hughey, Hall Rug and Bobby Bowman (the first two know very capable "deep" Jazz players) which were first chatting on the left rear corner turning around starring at Maurice reeling off "chord chains", in visible awe, spellbound (and unbeknownst to most, that night he was not playing his feared Bb6-U but his "standard" E9th-U).
To me that was the "Best Of" Maurice I have ever heard. It was pure Jazz, not Swing, not "Steel Guitar Jazz", yet pleasant and by then free of the after taste of the dated 60's & 70's stereotypes.

By the way, Maurice studied with Jazz greats outside of the steel guitar "world", including Barney Kessel (whom he referenced quite often). Jazz was not something he did on the side of kicks. It was his DNA.

Maurice, while I believe was a natural, was very unlike musicians like BE. He told me once, that he was in awe of BE, among many things because he had seen BE at Seminars and Conventions play all day at several booths and rooms and then do a big splash as the head liner and then take off with the "Cats" and play for the rest of the nite.
Maurice, whom one could stop in the middle of a Bebop solo and get him to "rewind" back several bars and redo it not for not while explaining every chord, interval and degree, the bass he heard "setup to go there or some other place" etc, said "after one show I am DUNNE! I just don't know how he (BE) could do it", yet his solos were truly improvised and recordings of the same tune over the Decades show that the solos were ever changing.
On the other hand, you asked BE what he was thinking and he tried hard to fiend a friendly way to tell you that he wasn't sure he was thinking at all... or at best one could extract was that he had "pockets" and "clichés" (which was true).

Maurice, I think, had the constant awareness of an organist (who plays bass with the feet, comps on the left and solos with the right all at the same time)... that's the computer of a brain he had.

I miss him so much and being able to call him and just ask a question and get concise answer I could understand and run with and expand upon, besides the fatherly kindness he gave me. He even taught me how to invest in real estate. Still today, thinking back, I wonder how I came to get that attention from somebody who was my idol.

... J-D.