1. Herbert Leroy Remington was an American lap steel guitarist who played Western swing music with Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys from 1946 to 1949.
14 Facts About Herb Remington
1. 2.
Herb Remington is known for "Remington's Ride", a song that became a standard for steel players.
3.
Indiana-born Herb Remington studied Hawaiian steel guitar as a youth, but serendipitously got into Western swing music in his teens and became one of the genres most renowned steel guitarists.
4.
Herb Remington was born in Mishawaka, Indiana, a suburb of South Bend; his mother taught him piano until he was about eight years old.
5.
Herb Remington learned to play a conventional guitar in the finger-picking style of Merle Travis.
6.
Herb Remington had lessons from door-to-door instrument salesmen and mail-order lessons at $1.25 per week.
7.
Herb Remington studied Hawaiian steel, taking sixty lessons from the Oahu Music Company that sold instruments and taught children from several nearby states.
8.
Herb Remington then received his World War II draft notice for military service.
9.
When he was discharged from the Army in 1946, the 20-year-old Herb Remington, playing a double neck Rickenbacker, auditioned for a steel guitar job in a band being formed by Bob Wills's brother, Luke Wills.
10.
Herb Remington wanted famous players to play his instruments as an endorsement to help his fledgling business.
11.
Herb Remington worked with Merle Haggard providing Bob Wills tributes, and later toured and recorded as the Playboys II, a band made up of alumni of Wills's original Texas Playboys.
12.
Herb Remington recorded regularly after 1972 with the River Road Boys.
13.
Herb Remington was inducted into the International Steel Guitar Hall of Fame in 1979.
14.
Herb Remington's wife died in 2015; they had been married for 63 years.