Mikey Likes It - The Origin of Slide

    Have you ever thought, "I'd love to play guitar but I'm afraid of steel strings touching my delicate, soft skin?" Well, good ol' Mikey's got the answer for ya': Use a slide! It's easy, accessible, fun, and it's sure to broaden you're ability and approach to playing guitar.
    Though often used as an additional tool in a guitarists arsenal, most folks don't know that playing with a slide was actually born out of necessity. Back in the 1920's Tennessee, a man named Cletus Earnest Henry McCracken was playing around with his guitar while maintaining his daily ritual of draining as many bottles of wine as he could muster. Sure enough, about halfway through the day he wound up getting his left ring finger stuck inside the mouth of a wine bottle. After, he and his drinking buddies tried desperately to pull it off to no avail, he figured he'd just break the bottle. So he whacked the bottle on the rail of the nearby train tracks and it broke. Well, most of it broke. He looked down to find that the neck of the wine bottle was still stuck on his dang finger! "Aw, to hell with it," he said. "Let's keep pickin." And with that he picked up his guitar and commenced to sliding his bottlenecked finger up and down the strings and, wouldn't you know it, it produced a not altogether unpleasant sound. Cletus' eyebrows arched upwards! "I reckon I like this here sound!" As he continued to slide his finger along the strings he exclaimed "By golly, I've invented a new kind of playing! I think I'll call it 'broken-bottle-stuck-on-yer-finger style!'" Before long, word spread of Cletus' 'broken-bottle-stuck-on-yer-finger' style and soon people just took to calling it slide.
    Now you can follow in Cletus' footsteps, but it's much easier to just go to your local shop and buy a pre-made glass or brass slide. So go on and get yer' slide on!
-Mikey
 
Disclaimer - This story may not be true

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Mike Sparber has been roaming the hallowed halls of Sylvan since 2004 and is an admirer of all stringed instruments. He moved here from the DC suburbs in 1999 and can usually be found with his wife at concerts around the Bay Area or with his dog, Ernie, at the beach.