Robert Lee "Bob" Dunn (February 5, 1908 – May 27, 1971) was an American pioneer Western swing steel guitarist.
Bob Dunn's style was virtually unique among the steel guitarists of his time. He was an admirer of the trombonist Jack Teagarden and took a similar approach to his soloing, using a horn-like phrasing far away from the Hawaiian style of the day. He always tried to treat the steel guitar as a jazz instrument, or what he termed a "modern instrument".
Whilst at Fort Worth he met Milton Brown, who invited him to a studio jam. Dunn made a great impression on Brown and immediately became a member of Milton Brown and His Musical Brownies. Dunn, with his homemade pickup and became the first to use an electric guitar to record a country-rooted song, entitled "Taking Off." Dunn fell in love with western swing music. His amplified steel guitar was featured on several recordings. He played and recorded more than ninety tunes with the Brownies before Brown's death in 1936.
He left the band following the death of Milton Brown in 1936 and played with many different groups, including Moon Mullican, Roy Newman and His Boys (1937), Cliff Bruner's Texas Wanderers, Bill Mounce and the Sons of the South, and Buddy Jones and the Sheldon Brothers (1939).
He made some recordings on Decca under the name Bob Dunn's Vagabonds (actually Cliff Bruner's Texas Wanderers). When the Vagabonds broke up, Dunn played in a variety of different western swing bands, including Bill Boyd’s Cowboy Ramblers, Dickie McBride’s Village Boys, Bill Mounce’s Sons of the South, and the Sons of Dixie.
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| Bob Dunn' with Benny Leader's Band 1948 |
After serving in the United States Navy during World War II, he played in a number of bands in the late 1940s. In 1950 he retired from performing and opened his own music store in Houston, where he also taught music. He operated the store for more than twenty years, until his death from lung cancer on May 27, 1971. Dunn influenced generations of steel guitar players. In 1992 he was inducted into the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame and the Texas Western Swing Hall of Fame. In late 2010 the Origin Jazz Library label released a comprehensive 2-CD set of remastered recordings of Dunn's work, titled Bob Dunn: Master of the Electric Steel Guitar 1935-1950.
(Edited mainly from The Handbook Of Texas &, Brad’s Page Of Steel)