27 Facts About Ralph Mooney

Ralph Eugene Mooney was an American steel guitar player and songwriter, he was inducted into the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame in 1983.

Ralph Mooney was the original steel guitarist in Merle Haggard's band, The Strangers and the most prominent steel guitarist in Waylon Jennings' band, The Waylors.

Ralph Mooney played with many other country artists but most notably in his career was a member of Waylon Jennings' band for over two decades.

Ralph Mooney said he wrote the song in 1949 while living in Las Vegas, getting the idea after his wife left him because of his drinking problem.

Ralph Mooney learned to play the number on his flat top guitar, using a knife as a slide.

Once Ralph Mooney learned what type of instrument McAuliffe was playing, he built his own.

Leo Fender would later borrow this instrument to study its design Ralph Mooney began playing in local bands including Merl Lindsey And His Oklahoma Nightriders, and eventually joined Skeets McDonald's band, with whom he made his first recordings.

Ralph Mooney joined Wynn's band, playing with them around Los Angeles, Bakersfield, and Las Vegas, and joining Stewart in the studio when the singer got his first record deal on Intro Records.

Ralph Mooney sold the song to Claude Caviness, who formed Pep Records in hopes of finding a hit for his singing wife Marilyn Kaye.

Ralph Mooney was hired as a staff musician for Capitol Records, where in 1958 he began playing sessions with Buck Owens.

Ralph Mooney played Owens' first session after successfully confronting Capitol for creative control of his recordings; Owens' favorite song from the session is "Second Fiddle".

Ralph Mooney's band, including Ralph Mooney, were the house band.

Ralph Mooney's first Capitol single, "Sing a Sad Song" was a Wynn Stewart composition.

Ralph Mooney spent the last years of the 1960s doing sessions work, recording an instrumental album with James Burton, and sporadically playing with Wynn Stewart.

Ralph Mooney joined Jennings' studio and touring band The Waylors in late 1970, at a time when Waylon was growing frustrated with RCA Records' restrictive control over his recording sessions.

Ralph Mooney would go on to play every pedal steel part on Jennings' albums until 1987, as well as most of the dobro parts, occasionally on the same song, as on "You Ask Me To".

Ralph Mooney was a cult legend in his own right, a steel-guitar genius, and he was in his heyday.

Ralph Mooney continued to play with Waylon Jennings through most of the 1980s.

In 1988, Ralph Mooney himself had a heart attack; he quit drinking and smoking, and by the 1990s he had mostly retired.

Ralph Mooney still made regular appearances at the International Steel Guitar Convention in St Louis, Missouri.

In January 2011, rumors circulated that Ralph Mooney's health was deteriorating.

On March 20,2011, Ralph Mooney died of complications from cancer.

Ralph Mooney was survived by his wife of 62 years, Wanda; his son, Richard; his daughter, Linda Yates; four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Ralph Mooney primarily used the E9 neck of the instrument; the second neck, rarely used, was set up with a dobro-style open G tuning instead of the C6 more commonly used by other players.

Ralph Mooney's setup was different enough from the standard of the day that Sho-Bud declined, saying they "would rather not build one that weird," so Seymour bought the parts from Sho-Bud and built the instrument himself.

Seymour said this was a Super-Pro model with an E9 tuning the near neck and that the outside neck was tuned "like a G dobro," and that Ralph Mooney used the instrument throughout his time with Jennings.

At some point after this, Ralph Mooney began using instruments made by GFI, a company founded by Gene Fields, who worked as a designer at Fender during the development of their pedal steel line.