There’s nothing quite so entrancing as the sound of the standard guitar or dobro doing its imitation of the human voice. No other musical instruments come so close to the laughing, crying, singing voice of mankind, and that’s very possibly why the instrument has become so popular in the western world.

If you’ve listened to music at all in the last ten years or so, you’ve undoubtedly noticed, or at least heard a style of guitar playing which most approximates the human voice cords. It’s called Bottleneck or slide style guitar playing and was first seen in rock through people like Jeff Beck and Michael Bloomfield in the mid-sixties, then later in the styles of Ry Cooder (played slide tracks on Rolling Stones LP), Mick Taylor, Johnny Winter, Elvin Bishop (not so much anymore), Duane Allman (also Dick Betts), and a motley heap of others.