Western Swing Steel Guitar
Veteran Had Hawaiian Start

SHAMROCK, Texas — Herb Remington came to Western Swing music by way of Hawaii.

"If you're a true steel lover," Remington says, "you like it all."

Remington, a veteran steel guitar player and more recently manufacturer, is in the Texas Panhandle to join the Magic City Boys for their summer Western Swing concert tour.

Born in Mishawaka, Ind., in 1926, Remington brings almost 60 years of musical experience to the Panhandle-based Western Swing band, which includes many of the former Texas Playboys who were with Bob Wills half a century ago.

"My mother gave me piano lessons when I was about five," Remington says.

When he heard a guitar, he liked the sound better than the piano. He learned to play an acoustic, or standard guitar, then he heard a Hawaiian steel guitar.

"I heard that sliding sound," Remington says. "I loved the sound and said, 'Boy, I've got to do that.'"

He took lessons on the steel guitar once a week and fell in love.

"I started playing by ear," Remington says, "and I loved Hawaiian music."

He was drawn further into the aloha sound by a radio station that broadcast music from Hawaii.

"They had a program called ‘Hawaii Calls’," Remington remembers. "It came on every Sunday. I looked forward to it and listened to that steel guitar player and tried to figure out what he was doing that I wasn't doing."

During high school, Remington had a Hawaiian band, though they played a little bit of everything.

Graduating in 1944, he headed for California and tried to find a Hawaiian band that needed a steel guitar player.

"They were all covered, and there was no possibility," Remington says. "I knew a few country tunes, and western swing was just really getting started out there."

He auditioned for a job with Ray Whitley, a cowboy movie star who had a big band.

"They hired me," Remington says. "I was there about three weeks."

The union, however, had a three-month waiting period, and when they found out that Remington hadn't gone through the required waiting period, Whitley was forced to fire him.

"You had to belong to the union to make it in Los Angeles," Remington explains.

Remington worked for a few non-union clubs until the Army caught him as World War II was ending.

"I was in the infantry," Remington says. "Never went overseas."

But he took his steel guitar with him.

"I wouldn't give it up," Remington says.

The same week he was discharged in 1946, Remington heard that Bob Wills was holding auditions to find a steel guitar player for the band of Luke Wills, Bob's brother in Fresno, Calif.

"I auditioned in Hollywood at Jay's Motel," Remington recalls, "in a motel room with some of the Playboys. I played two tunes, ‘Dream Train’ and Steel ‘Guitar Rag’."

When he finished, Bob Wills said, "Let's keep the kid here and let Roy Hunnicut go with Luke." Hunnicut was Bob Wills' steel guitar man at the time.

"That was it," Remington says. "I was hired, and boy, I was on top of the world."

That first night, Remington borrowed some cowboy boots and a cowboy hat that didn't fit.

The next day, they left on tour. The tour took them from California to Louisiana, playing one-night stands everywhere in between. They were gone three months.

Road trips are fun when you're young, Remington says.

"Nothing but girls and music," he laughs, "but it's not for a married man or an older guy."

Even now, though, he says he likes being on the road.

"I still hit the road now and then and enjoy it," Remington says. "It's in my blood."

It was while on the road that he met a young lady he'll never forget.

He was at the Aviatrix Club in Amarillo.

"It was about two o'clock in the morning and a bunch of musicians decided they were going to have a jam session," Remington says. "We were having fun playing, and all of a sudden this door banged open."

A woman walked in and asked if she could sing with them.

"That's just not done at a jam session," Remington says.

They did let her sing, however.

"She sang some old standards, some that Ella Fitzgerald had sung," Remington says.

He says she knocked all the guys out.

"It was Patsy Cline," Remington says. "She was 18 years old."

Remington left the Texas Playboys in 1950 and married his bride of 52 years, Melba, in Houston.

"I started playing in a little Hawaiian trio around Houston," Remington says, "playing luau parties."

That became more popular. His wife learned how to play a ukulele and keyboard.

"We renamed her Melani to play in the Hawaiian group," Remington says.

He and Melani and their group, the Beachcombers, traveled the country from coast to coast for 15 years. They had three men and three hula girls. Remington's wife sang in the band, played instruments, acted as mistress of ceremonies, danced, made all the costumes. Remington says he couldn't have done it without her.

They played in Hawaii and spent a year at the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas.

"We played country clubs and conventions," Remington says. "We'd play about three luaus per week, and the rest of the time we picnicked and fished."

He says having his wife with him was great.

"We had a lot of fun," Remington says.

After Bob Wills died, Leon McAuliffe, who wrote ‘Steel Guitar Rag’, formed the Bob Wills Original Texas Playboy band.

"None of the original Playboys were in the band," Remington grins.

After McAuliffe died, Johnny Gimble and Remington assembled the old Texas Playboys, renamed them the Texas Playboys II and continued to perform across the country.

"We're still booking under that name," Remington says. "We've been to Washington, D.C., three times for three different Presidents."

The eight-member band still works all across the nation.

Remington's wife tired of the road in the early 1970s, and they settled back in Houston, but Remington and his wife continued to work as a duo in the Houston area.

As she became less active, Remington started playing with western swing groups.

In addition to the Texas Playboys II, he played with the River Road Boys and the Wild River Boys.

"Everybody's over 60," Remington says. "We're staying quite busy, which is fine with me. I have no desire to retire. I can't imagine such a thing."

In the 1980s, Remington decided he wanted to build a better steel guitar.

"I did, and we call it Remington Steel," he says. "They're all the way around the world now."

He has sold Remington Steel guitars from Tasmania to Europe.

"I have one in every European nation," Remington says. "Even Iceland."

Three guys in Houston take his design, make a cabinet and do the metal work on a computerized lathe, he says. Remington does the final assembly and testing.

"They're beautiful instruments," Remington says.

He admitd that he's too busy for his own good. In a way, he says he wishes he hadn't started making guitars.

"It keeps me real tied down," Remington says. "I think everybody should go fishing. Days spent fishing don't count on your life span."