Hank Williams - Your Cheatin’ Heart - steel guitar part played by Don Helms

If you only know one country song, it might as well be this one.

This video demonstrates the steel guitar part of Don Helms, the steel guitarist of Hank Williams, on the song.

I say steel guitar because, according to the Wikipedia entry for Don Helms, his steel guitar was a double-neck 1948 Gibson Console Grande which did not have the pedals as would be found on a modern pedal steel guitar (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Helms).

I have listened to the original 1953 recording and have done my best to translate the steel part for the E9 tuning using pedals as well.

Since the song was played at an easy tempo with the licks simple enough to remember without too much difficulty, I decided to record the video in one go against a backing track I cobbled together.

File note 15 Dec 2017:
A viewer kindly directed me to watch the Legends of Steel Guitar videos by Jim Vest because it has Don Helms on it. If you want to watch how Don plays the opening lick of Your Cheatin' Heart, it is on this Youtube video:    • Legends of Steel Guitar - Part 3  
The opening lick can be seen at time 6 : 18 on the video. Don plays the lick on his 1949 vintage Gibson steel guitar on the E6 neck.




IMPORTANT NOTICE

Great care and effort has been expended on trying to ensure that the steel part is accurate. However there is always a risk that what I am demonstrating could be wrong in terms of note, in terms of position of the steel bar, in terms of which strings are plucked. I could have been suffering from slight deafness on the day of recording or I was feeling off because the wife was nagging me again. This video represents the best that I could do after researching the original recording and any available footage. Unless I was standing right next to the player and videotaping the performance, there’s no way I can accurately say for certain that what I play is perfectly accurate to what the original player did. Do not assume my demonstration as the final word, cast in stone-like. I could be wrong. Nobody is perfect, least of all me. Viewers should exercise caution when watching the video and they would be well advised to check for themselves against the original recording and any associated footage. I may be playing it wrong but you may be playing it right. Isn’t this fun, learning things together?