Alvino Rey was an American swing era musician and pioneer, often credited as the father of the pedal steel guitar. He was mainly associated with orchestral, big band and swing music, and towards the end of his career, jazz and exotica. He showed very early signs of his mechanical and musical aptitude, he built his first radio at the age of 8 and, within a couple of years, became one of the youngest licensed ham operators in the country. His interest in music grew when he received a banjo as a tenth birthday gift. He began studying guitar at the age of 12, listening to recordings by guitarists Eddie Lang and Roy Smeck. At 15 he invented an electrical amplifier for guitar, but neglected to have in patented. In spring of 1935 Rey was hired by the Gibson Guitar Corporation to produce a prototype pickup with engineers at the Lyon & Healy company in Chicago, based on the one he developed for his own banjo. The result was used for Gibson's first electric guitar ES-150. The prototype is kept in the Experience Music Project museum in Seattle, commonly known as the Hendrix Museum. The Sonovox innovation was one of the first known talk box experiments.
Alvino Rey is as important to the development of the electric guitar as Les Paul was, but has been criminally uncredited for it--until now. More and more photos, recordings and film clips like these are coming out of the woodwork to show what a genius Alvino was.