Pete Drake – Forever
1964
124K Likes
Best comments
1.“Literally everyone in this video is an alien doing their best job to impersonate human behavior...”
More comments
- 2.“'This is Earth radio, and now here's... human music.'”
- 3.“The blonde is tapping out 'Help' in Morse code.”
The story
Before Peter Frampton made a guitar talk, before Joe Walsh and Roger Troutman, there was a Nashville session man with a plastic tube in his mouth. Pete Drake got the idea from jazz guitarist Alvino Rey and built his own version: the steel guitar's sound runs up a tube into the player's mouth, and he shapes it into words. Here he plays his biggest hit with it, and the steel guitar does the singing.
Forever was written by Buddy Killen and first went to number 9 in 1960 for the Little Dippers, who were really the Anita Kerr Singers under another name. Drake's 1964 version, credited to Pete Drake & His Talking Steel Guitar, hit number 25 on the Hot 100, sold over a million copies and earned him a gold record and a nickname: King of the Talking Steel Guitar.
The novelty is the hook, but the man was no novelty act. He played on Lay Lady Lay, Stand by Your Man and Rose Garden, worked with George Harrison on All Things Must Pass and produced Ringo's country album Beaucoups of Blues. He died in 1988 and became the first steel guitarist in the Country Music Hall of Fame. Not bad for a guy who talked with his mouth full.
