Del Casher

Del Casher.

Del Casher (born as Delton Kacher (1937)) is a US guitarist and inventor of the wah-wah pedal, the Ecco-Fonic tape reverb/echo unit and the Fender Electronic Echo Chamber.

He was fascinated with chemistry as a child:

"I started doing experiments with my chemistry set when I was about 10 years old; I’d build miniature rockets, using powdered magnesium and potassium nitrate."

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After hearing Les Paul recordings, Casher modified his acoustic guitar by cutting a hole in the back to add pick-ups and controls and adding a home-made tremolo arm into an electric guitar. In the late 1950s, Casher was a guitarist within the trio The Three Sons and toured Japan in 1958. He was in demand as a studio guitarist for Hollywood movies, backing Elvis Presley in the film Roustabout (1964). He also performed with Bill Page's All Amplified Orchestra for the Sounds Of The Sonic Sixties album.

In 1967, he invented the wah-wah pedal, which became very popular with rock guitarists in the following decades.

In 1972, Casher was music director for the children's TV show The New Zoo Revue and also composed the closing theme for the NBC News Center 4 which was used by NBC for 18 years.

Frank Zappa

In 1966, Casher played guitar on the song Space Boy, sung by Florence Marly, with drums, production and song lyrics by Frank Zappa. In the 1960s, Casher also performed with The Mothers.

"Frank Zappa was from Cucamonga; he came by one day, said he’d heard about me, and said he wanted to record something for a singer who had a song about a Russian cosmonaut who was lost in space (chuckles). I used to get these strange requests all the time, and Frank’s request was no different. In those days he wasn’t a guitar player, so he asked me to play guitar and bass, laying down tracks using the Ecco-Fonic to get the spacey sounds, while he played on a snare drum I had in the studio. I think this was one of the first recordings Frank did when he arrived in L.A. He was very pleasant, and he looked as weird as the sounds we created, but boy, was he talented! When he played the drum, I knew something great was going on, and we enjoyed that session so much he asked me to join his new group. I politely declined because my studio schedule was beginning to happen. Later, he formed the Mothers of Invention, and he asked me to play at several of his concerts while he and his manager, Herb Cohen, were getting a record deal together; it was an interesting experience. Frank employed me to perform with him on the David Susskind TV show featuring a 'Freak Out' concert. I met with Frank a few years ago and he mentioned this show to me; I’m still trying to find a copy of it."

"To me, Frank was one of the most exciting musicians I’ve known, because he went beyond being a musician. When I first met him, he said he was interested in playing guitar, and asked me what was the most expensive guitar, and I told him that the most expensive one was a Gibson ES-5, like the one I had, so he went out and bought one. He invited me to his home one evening, and instead of putting on a bunch of records and saying “listen to these,” he showed me his 8mm home movies. He was fascinated with film, and he proved that his talent was much more in-depth than just with music."

"He also asked me to play one of his early concerts at U.C. Santa Barbara. During the concert, the smoke machine freaked out everybody, which is what he wanted. My wife was in the audience, and was terrified! She expressed some feelings about that on the way home from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles, which is about 120 miles. I did play the Whiskey A-Go-Go on Sunset Strip with Frank.... without telling my wife where I was that night. We had a ball; we alternated sets with a kid named Lowell George and his band, Little Feat. Playing with Frank in his early days was great."

— Del Casher, interview by Vintage Guitar magazine (excerpt), 1997

Del Casher is also interviewed in the documentary Cry Baby:The Pedal that Rocks the World.

External links

• Wikipedia:Del Casher

Notes

The reference to Little Feat would be The Factory at this time.