Don Davis' talent with steel guitar opened doors to Nashville fame

Monday, December 15, 2008
By ROY HOFFMAN
Staff Reporter

When Alabama Music Hall of Famer Don Davis was a child in the late 1930s, a country music band played at his school in Satsuma. One of its members leaned over a flat keyboard that he plucked — a steel, or Hawaiian, guitar — and the boy was captivated by the metallic yet melodic sound.

"It made my hair stand on end," Davis says at his house in Gulf Shores. "I realized, 'I've got to do that.'"

Soon young Don found a musician to give him a couple of lessons, using a Spanish guitar turned flat. "After I got hot on it," he says, "my parents bought me an electric Hawaiian guitar for $39.95 from Sears-Roebuck. We'd just gotten electricity. There was an electric cord on the porch up to a light. I'd unplug that cord and plug in my amplifier. The cows would come and hear the racket. They kind of liked it."

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