Alvino Rey plays "St. Louis Blues" with Stringy the talking steel guitar!

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....

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[sands4us]

DO NOT WATCH THIS SOBER EITHER !! I close my eyes and all I can see is Stringy .... I can't sleep!! Stringy is everywhere......please make him leave me alone.... God save me from Stringy !!

[george corneliussen]

Stringy just might be Peter Frampton's grand daddy.

[RayNDeere]

You're right. During performances, Luise King (Alvino's wife) was backstage using a carbon throat microphone (which was used by military pilots) to get the sounds of Stringy

[bullitt1434]

Notice what Alvino is doing at 3:20....two-handed tapping decades before Eddie Van Halen made the technique popular.

[kless001]

Stringy is a patient assassin and he's coming to get you and me in our sleep.

[Jane Gold]

Exactly. A rubber tube running from the speaker on the guitar amp goes into the mouth, which forms the words. A microphone going to the PA system picks up the sound effect. What you see here was a lip sync. If you listen to Stringy, you can hear female voices, obviously the King Sisters. Yeah, quite clever, Alvino Rey!

[hippiechik95]

Kill it with fire!

[barkwoodrecords]

Hey, Deke -- I got to see Alvino Rey (and Louise King) sometime in the 90s at Scotty's Steel Convention. I was pleasantly surprised since I really don't like the more "pop"-ish big bands. It was so clear to me that Speedy West and even some of the Bob Wills players cropped from him. He did a great version of Floyd's Guitar Blues by Floyd Smith (I think on a frypan-type steel) and used the talk box on Mama Blues. - And he is on the original of Tomorrow Night by Horace Heidt. - Terence McArdle

[Bill Martin]

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!

[Garrett Lajoie]

More along the lines of a talkbox I believe

[JUNGLE SURFER]

yes old stringy is a nightmare but hes good