Early Gospel Singers – E

Started the sacred steel guitar style when he introduced the lap steel guitar to the Church of the Living God during the late 1930s (see more below). Willie was born in 1921 in the LaCrosse community of Schley County, Georgia, near Ellaville and Plains. His family moved to Philadelphia, PA before he was a year old.

In Philadelphia circa 1936, his older brother, Troman (1905-1949), took lessons from a Hawaiian steel guitarist named Jack, whom he heard playing live over the radio. Inspired by Troman’s success with the steel, Willie took up the instrument and played it in the House of God, Keith Dominion church his family attended. By 1940, he began to travel the eastern US from New York to Miami to play for revivals, church meetings, and later, on street corners. He recorded seven 78 rpm records, including two on which the Soul Stirrers–arguably the most popular black gospel quartet of the day–sang backup as Willie sang lead and played fills on his Epiphone Electar.

Willie was tremendously popular among the House of God congregants and the inspiration for dozens, if not hundreds, to take up the electric steel guitar. Today the steel guitar (which many House of God congregants still refer to as the “Hawaiian guitar”) is the dominant instrument in that church as well as a related organization, the Church of the Living God, Jewell Dominion.

Source: Steel Guitar Forum

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Notes on ‘Sacred Steel’ :

Sacred Steel is a musical style and African-American gospel tradition that developed in a group of related Pentecostal churches in the 1930s.

The Church of the Living God, was founded in 1903 by Mary Magdalena Lewis Tate. Following her death in 1930, the church divided into three branches, known as the Keith, Jewell and Lewis dominions. The steel guitar was embraced in the worship of two of these dominions, the Keith Dominion (officially, The House of God Which Is the Church of the Living God the Pillar and Ground of the Truth Without Controversy), headquartered in Nashville and the Jewell Dominion (Church of the Living God, Pillar and Ground of the Truth, Which He Purchased With His Own Blood, Inc.) headquartered in Indianapolis. Brothers Troman and Willie Eason introduced lap steel guitar to worship services in place of the traditional organ. This new instrument was met with great enthusiasm and taken up by others including the Bishop J.R. Lockley. The three toured together and later Willie put the new style down on record, recording a total of eighteen sides in the 1940s and 50s.

Since then, Sacred Steel has grown and flourished within the Keith and Jewell Dominions in churches in at least 22 states, including Alabama, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, South Carolina and Tennessee. The most famous practitioner is Robert Randolph of the Robert Randolph and the Family Band. Randolph, the son of a deacon and a minister, took up pedal steel guitar at 17. Just seven years later, he went on to become one of the most original and talented practitioners of the Sacred Steel form.

Willie Eason’s nephew Aubrey Ghent had also become a celebrated steel guitarist, preserving the sacred steel tradition and bringing it to a wider audience. Ghent’s father, Henry Nelson, was also schooled by Eason and played sacred steel for over 50 years, sharing the stage with Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Mahalia Jackson. Unlike Robert Randolph and the Family Band who have crossed over to doing more secular music, Aubrey Ghent has stayed closer to the gospel roots of tradition, as have many of the steel guitarists of the Jewell Dominion.

Source: Wikipedia