Who played on this Skeeter cut?

[Aaron Goldstein]

Long story short: I have a good friend who works for the union up here in Toronto. She’s responsible for assigning royalties for tracks that don’t have the personnel listed. She basically spends her day hunting down the names of people who played on various things, so that she can direct royalties their way.

There is some amount of money (no idea how much) due to the steel player on the later cut of Skeeter Davis’ End Of The World (or their estate).

It’s the version on The Best Of Skeeter Davis. Here is the Spotify link:
https://open.spotify.com/track/4Ya02upe ... gY0DOHHNnw

Can anybody say definitively who played steel on this cut? Or even if you could suggest who it sounds like, that could be a good start.

Thanks all!

[Lee Rider]

Got this off of Chat:
The pedal steel guitar on Skeeter Davis’s 1962 Nashville recording of The End of the World is generally credited to Pete Drake.

The song was recorded June 8, 1962 at RCA Studio B in Nashville and produced by Chet Atkins as part of the emerging “Nashville Sound.”

Drake was one of the core Nashville A-Team session players during that exact period and was frequently the steel guitarist on Atkins-produced sessions in the early 1960s.


Not definitive but a start anyway. Others with more knowledge of his playing should comment.

[Terry Wood]

The Original recording hit was Pete Drake. Later on, Jimmy Day I know did do some touring with her for a time. She was quite a singer.

[Aaron Goldstein]

Thanks for your replies.
We’re talking about the second cut, which is unbelievably similar to the first but definitely a new cut,

[Donny Hinson]

I'm old, but even my weary old ears can detect that the album cut that's referenced sounds like a cut-and-paste recording, composed of the original and at least one later version. You can easily hear the first cut (and vocal tone change) at 0.21 seconds, but there's another, less obvious, at 0.48 seconds, and probably a couple more in there, too. That said, FWIW, all the steel guitar that I hear is from the original cut w/Pete Drake.