Susan Alcorn, the revered pedal metal guitarist who introduced the instrument past its conventional function in nation music, died on Friday, January 31. Baltimore’s High Zero Foundation shared the information on-line, writing, “We are going to by no means be the identical and we’re eternally grateful to have shared a lot music with YOU, Susan.” The musician’s husband, David Lobato, advised WRTI that Alcorn died of pure causes. Susan Alcorn was 71 years outdated.
After coming to the pedal metal guitar by way of nation bands, Alcorn pursued a solo profession wherein she refined her method to the instrument on a virtuosic degree. Her revolutionary and award-winning efficiency fashion drew from free jazz, classical music, Indian ragas, bluegrass, and Indigenous traditions, amongst different genres. In follow, that fusion gave her music the sound and smoothness of liquid, it doesn’t matter what rhythmic or atonal construction lay beneath it.
Born in 1953, Alcorn was raised by a musical household; her mom performed piano and sang within the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, her father mimed well-known singers at events, and, collectively, they accrued a large vinyl report assortment. Soundtracking her childhood had been greats like Igor Stravinsky, Duke Ellington, and Peggy Lee, earlier than she dove deeper into people, blues, and obscure psychedelic bands like Mad River and the Freak Scene. As soon as she entered highschool, Alcorn was spinning bluegrass and Twentieth-century classical music in equal quantities, each of which might vastly affect her path as a musician.
When she and her household relocated to central Florida, Alcorn developed a keenness for nation blues musicians and the sound of fretless stringed devices, particularly, particularly after watching elder males play lap metal at a park. It wasn’t till years later, whereas residing in Chicago, that she first thought of choosing up a pedal metal guitar herself. After falling in love with Muddy Waters’ evocative efficiency fashion throughout his exhibits on the membership Alice’s Revisited, she noticed a rustic band with a pedal metal guitarist and was mesmerized. “The metal bar appeared to softly float on prime of the strings, and it had this kind of spherical metallic sound that I had by no means earlier than heard reside,” Alcorn advised The Quietus in 2010. “So the following day I discovered a store that offered these devices, purchased one, and commenced bugging anybody I might discover who might educate me one thing.”
By the point she was 21, Alcorn had immersed herself within the pedal metal guitar and was taking part in in nation and western swing bands in Houston, Texas. The musically conventional views of the native nation scene taught her that improvisation was finest in small doses, notably for the pedal metal guitar. As an alternative of permitting the routine criticism she confronted to dispirit her, Alcorn discovered learn how to higher match the specs and roots of the county and bluegrass style by learning greats like Buddy Emmons, Lloyd Inexperienced, and Bukka White—and, then, after studying the foundations, gravitated towards breaking them as soon as once more. To flourish, she drove to the Third Ward to review jazz improvisation with Dr. Conrad Johnson and learn how to embrace dissonance on the guitar.
