“Bobby Black is one of the greats at his chosen instrument and one of the last members of the first generation of players to introduce it to American music. And he is definitely the only member of that club who spent most of his life in Northern California, San Mateo to be specific.”
But at the same time, I’m thankful for its inclusion because it served as my introduction to Bobby Black, a pedal steel guitarist who has made amazing music in the Bay Area since the 1950s. On 70 Years of Swinging Steel, a compilation released by Little Village Foundation, you hear Black weave through Western swing, rags, boogie woogie, jazz standards (“Take the A Train”), and honky tonk—a wide range of old-time music made cohesive by the artist’s Hawaiian steel-based sound.
